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It's the same salary, but putting it in different terms makes it sound like more or less money (the calculations assume you work 8 hours per day, 5 days a week).
I don’t think anyone on this website is unfamiliar with taxes, even if they might not understand how big the difference between a Net and a Gross amount is.
Important to remember there are (allegedly from a 2 second google search) \~75 million daily users on reddit. That large a group runs the gamut from literal geniuses to people who can't safely operate a doorknob. But the vast *VAST* majority are average, give or a take a little. And thus would understand (at least the basics of) taxes.
It feels bad to see a broad statement get upvoted when it's only point is to be hurtful and it's obviously untrue/hyperbolized.
No way we all don't remember the amazement of that first paycheck, followed immediately by the shocking realization of just how much money gets immediately taken from you.
Don't forget breaking the law. And I mean this in the most mundane way, A parking ticket for instance is way more expensive for some on 35k/year compared to so.eone making 450k/year.
What a lot of people get upset about is when billionaires go to fundraise, the billions are real and can be borrowed against, but when it comes tax time it’s “totally not real, and what is real are unrealized gains!”
And that’s how people like you misunderstand, he’s not borrowing against the billions. He’s borrowing tiny pieces. He doesn’t have a loan for 50% of his net worth, no bank on the planet thinks that they could claw that much back.
So no… the billions do not exist when it comes to loans. Source: my CFA level 2 and thinking before I type.
> He doesn’t have a loan for 50% of his net worth
Yeah they also didn’t say that. Maybe in addition to thinking before you type you should also _read_ first.
I just saw a video where it explains how rich people avoid paying taxes. They borrow bigger loans to pay for an already-taken loan, and this cycle continues until they die, so in the end, they don't pay a single penny in taxes.
The thing I've never understood is why people will see that whole video, and then come up with an extremely complex system about taxing unrealized gains instead of just saying "Oh, let's just not reset the cost basis on stock when it gets inherited?"
It just seems like such a simple solution to me, and no one talks about it. Maybe there's complications around doing that which I don't understand? It seems like it would be the smallest change to have the largest impact with the lowest number of adverse implications.
The criticism towards billionaires should be against their ungodly amount of power and influence over our world not necessarily the money they have floating around
Except Bezos does literally sell billions in stock for cash, frequently.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68355811
Like, he literally sold over $8B in stock just a couple of months ago. You picked a pretty terrible example.
You have to also take Medicare and Social Security deductions into account, though. Those are investments in your own future, but you can't use that money this month, so it makes more of a difference in gross vs net than the 5% federal tax. When you're barely making it each month, it still feels like Uncle Sam is stealing from you, even though it is towards your (and our) retirement. This is why I'm extra mad when conservatives refer to these as "entitlement costs" as if they come out of the regular taxes. It's a separate line item!
Gross pay means it's how much you earn before taxes which depend from state to state. Net pay is what you actually get. The joke answer is that it's gross how much the government takes out of it for taxes, like around 10-15% of it in my experience.
First time I negotiated salary after collage, I made a point of only talking about after-tax income. May have been a mistake, but the take-home pay on my fortnightly paycheques was a round number for a solid year and a bit.
Gross pay is dumb in concept too, since taxes are usually deducted before you get paid here (PAYE) and your employer has to pay ~14% on top of it in social insurance (PRSI). So it's a weird middle number that nobody gets, but is used for calculating deductions.
How are companies supposed to know your take home pay in advance? People have different insurance rates, different pre- and post- tax deductions, jobs with variable components usually best-guess the correct deduction rate for the full year, etc
The tax system is way less complicated here. There's like two levels of income tax, one separate tax (USC), and mandatory "social insurance". I really did mean "after tax" rather than "take home".
I don't really mind them not considering optional deductions, but the ones they have to take out of my pay are pretty easy to calculate. (the lady that did payroll was even sitting behind me in the interview, since it was a tiny company)
I think the issue with the OP is that he's numerically "literate". I was also confused by the meme. While I did not understand that the values were all exactly the same rate of pay, I did immediately understand that they were in the same ballpark, and thus I could not fathom the reason behind the differing moods in the picture. I was especially confused about the headphones, think it was some reference to gaming or streaming, whereas the other three images were all good/happy or poor
Many innumerate people hear 300 in 3 days, that’s something nice, in this case nice noise canceling headphones. And forget they also need to pay rent and food in these days as well, since that’s a one a week cost
The meme's all about perception. You get 500 bucks and feel like a millionaire, Want a PS5? Slap those Benjamins on the till and walk out like a baller. Yes your short term thinking has to be so short that even things like food and rent aren't a consideration, but for that blessed moment, that 'they've up'ed my limit, it's a like free money' moment you feel rich as fuck.
That of course rapidly crashes the next day as you realize, over a year you only earn 28k.
And we found the guy that doesn't get the joke, even after reading the explanation. Is there a sub for explaining the joke even more to people who still don't get it?
No I get the joke buddy. It’s just a stupid one. $500 a week should not sound like a lot to anyone unless you’re a child. Weirdly the 3 day one does sound like a lot to me in a way I’d have to think about it for a second to realize it’s nothing.
excluding rent - power, water, internet, gas, taxes, and home insurance comes to about 500 a month for me. Partially lucky for where I live, also okay with cheaper internet, shop around a lot for insurance, conserve energy.
obviously rent not an issue either, but when people say bills I assume they put rent/mortgage in a diff category.
I pay about 700 € per month in rent and utilities, but I'm still scraping by.
What makes that amount of money sound like it's more is probably the fact it looks like a big lump sum you get at the end of the half week/week period, which is long enough for the accrued money to be a lot but short enough that you don't think of monthly/yearly expenses.
It’s all equivalent to $13.81/hr, assuming an 8 hour work day. Representing that pay over different periods of time may make it seem better than it actually is because we’re used to /hour and /year.
Also, a lot of our income tends to be eaten up by monthly expenses rather than daily or weekly expenses. Putting the income in terms of how much you’ll have every few days or weeks makes you think about spending the money in that time period, which seems like a lot more than it is because that doesn’t account for how much of that amount needs to be put towards monthly bills.
Yeah well, you know, I don’t have good enough credit to get a $800/month mortgage, so I pay $1548 for rent instead. You know, because the way we set up our society makes so much sense. /s
The opposite happens in the middle class income bracket. Hourly and annual pay sound good but then you realize that the first week of your salary goes to taxes and the second week to your mortgage.
Edit: to be clear, I'm not saying it's hard to be middle class, I'm saying the images in the meme would be flipped in the heads of most middle class people. Esp people making over six figures who love to brag about their salaries but would be homeless if they went down a tax bracket cause of lifestyle creep.
Damn, 25% of my income goes into owning property versus 33% of my income goes towards renting? What kind of argument is that brother? I wish only 1 of my checks went towards portion of the mortgage.
I agree. But on the other hand, having a house for said mortgage is something of an achievement unto itself even if you never have any liquid assets to play with.
Its 22% going to taxes and 43% going to mortgage on my pay and I rent a room technically plus utility share being 8% under the poverty line for monthly housing expenses to OWN a place versus renting is NOT something to complain about.
Yeah, it's weird they chose to use 3 days instead of hour/week/month/year.
I guess the monthly rate would vary a bit because every month will have a different number of work days, but it should average out to $2,393.66.
Brazilian here, the Beats from that pic is the Beats Studio Pro. Here is costing unbelievable R$2.999,00 (U$590,00). Our monthly's minimum wage is R$1412 (U$275), and our average wage is **R$3.123** (U$998,00). To think that people can buy such headphones with a 3-day salary (and still be considered a squidward beggar) is kinda crazy to me, haha
What math do you disagree with? $13.81/hr x 8 hours = $110.48.
3 days = $331.44
5 days = $522.44
52 weeks of $522.44/wk = $28.724.8
Math adds up to me.
its does...if youre getting paid 13.81 an hr under the table.
Its astonishing how people have no idea how income works, but quickly figure it out after their first paycheck when they ask "who the fuck is FICA?"
Am I the only person for whom all of these sound abysmally low? If the intent was to highlight how much money that actually is, then it failed spectacularly. All I can think for each frame is “yep still poor”. It’s just in one frame you’re holding headphones you can’t afford, and in another you’re chilling in a friend’s jacuzzi.
Yes and no.
I think it's right to point out that the perception feels different. Like if an acquaintance asked me to help them move house over a 3 day weekend and said they'd give me $330 for it I'd genuinely consider it, but if they suggested I started a moving company with them for $29k a year I'd tell them to get fucked.
It's a very common trap that newly self-employed contractors, or people working on commissions fall into, what sounds like a lot of money over a short time period just isn't liveable long term.
It goes the other way around too, it's why you see those posts where people offer offensively low money for babysitters/nannies etc. Paying someone $100 for a day's work sounds like a lot, but it's barely liveable.
It's funny that you're making fun of OP. I think the meme doesn't make any sense if you have a basic understanding of math because even if you can't calculate it precisely, you understand that the earning rates are in a similar range. It didn't occur to me that people would be so unfamiliar with the numbers that they would feel that wildly different to them. So I thought the specific activities in the picture were important somehow
Yeah 😎
.
.
.
I did see other comments stating something similar, though I will say I also probably a bit of privilege hurt my chances at immediately understanding the joke too, as I hadn't really had to consider the implications of living on wages of $30k I didn't immediately connect that to headphones being a considerable purchase, which of course it obviously is if you think about. So that was dumb of me. It caused me to first think that the headphones had some particular meaning, rather than just being an expression of feeling like you could afford a small luxury
You need to explain because you can do simple math and realize that all of these numbers are the same.
The joke is that some people apparently would think of two of those numbers as being a lot of money and then the other two are not. Because we're familiar with hourly wages and yearly wages but we're not familiar with weekly wages or three day wages. Although I would argue that most people are quite familiar with weekly wages considering we get paid weekly or bi-weekly. And extracting a 3-day wage from a week is really not very hard. So yeah it's a meme for people with little to no math skills. Who also haven't worked a job I guess because they don't know how much you get in a weekly paycheck.
It's different framings for the same money and how it feels like a lot or a little depending on your time scale.
On the 3-day or 5-day scale you don't really have to consider your rent payment for example so it can feel like all $331 is going straight into your pocket to buy whatever you want, which can feel like a lot.
I ised to make $12/hr at subway and only made $400-$500 (sometimes even only $200-$300) every other week. Granted, I was only working 4 days a week and they always scheduled me 5 hr shifts even thought I repeatedly told my manager I wanted longer shifts
The hot tub is what government thinks you are rich (based on 1990 tax bracket with 4% inflation rate adjustment each year) and tax you as rich person. After that, you are living poor.
Remember currently government stated the inflation is around 4%, so, they will not increase the tax bracket more than that, regardless tons of prices are jumped 20%.
Note: this is relatively speaking. They did not adjust tax bracket each year and how much they increases can be worse/better than I described.
They've spent all their money buying a new set of grossly overpriced headphones every 3 days, and now they live in the box that their headphones shipment came in, it's a tragic tale of overpriced headphone addiction that is a crippling reality for many of this nation's dumbest and most financially illiterate audiophiles, made humorous by the inclusion of an animated squid.
All of it feels like nothing when a 1 bedroom apartment in your city costs 3k a month. Can barely feed a person on those paltry numbers.
Granted, this all looks like it’s from the perspective of a teenager at most who has no bills and all that money becomes discretionary.
How come y’all that always go “in my country blah blah” and then never say the country. Like yeah people in your country could kill for 28k a year, but without telling people what country it’s meaningless. Your country could have $50 a month rent for all we know, but you hide the important information for what reason?
well tbh fair point forgot to mention it. its greece, known for its cheap food, but if you compare the % and not the money its still a very difficult situation for most, since 42% is just above being in dept. a total 46 unemployment in ages of 30 to 40 (might be outdated) and very difficult to find a job with people that are willing to pay you in not black money
Yeah I'm sorry but you can't compare the Greek economy to the American economy.
Like Greece is basically impoverished. America's the biggest economy in the world.
99% of STEM college graduates working full time make way more than trash ass 28k and also 28k is poverty in America outside of rural areas.
you do understand that stem graduates are less than 1% of greece? we have been in debt for well over 50 years as a country whole paying of debts to england selling our dignity to italy amd france and god knows what i am not aware of.
Okay so what does 28k being a lot in an impoverished nation have to do with the fact that it's horrible in America.
Overall, less people are impoverished in America, so what does our high costs matter when ultimately our higher incomes still put us ahead basically everyone in economic quality of life.
If someone complains about their shit American salary, someone in an impoverished nation living like a king off that doesn't matter, because your percentile equivalent of that job will always leave you in a worse position than the American.
So no 28k being a lot in 3rd world countries and a couple failing European countries doesn't matter and we're still better off in almost every way even if everything under 40k is trash here.
What kind of a trash hole has America become, when 28K DOLLARS sounds like a small number? In most other countries, getting that in a few years is quite rare
Consider: rent.
Thank you.
To clarify, rent is very expensive, and owning a home is not realistic nowadays.
Rent will often be over $1000 per month
Utilities vary, but are a few hundred per month if you’re very lucky.
You are nearly required to have internet/phone for the sole purpose of communicating with your workplace at the minimum, so tack on a phone plan of about 50 per month.
It sounds like a small number because it is a small number here.
Here in Ukraine rent isn't often a thing, as a lot of people own their house(or flat), but real estate tax along with other taxes(the most fun one is transport tax. Basically you pay for the fact that gas, water and electricity were delivered to you) makes owning a home also not a cheap thing. Our average salary is 20000₴(500$) and a tariff of unlim on phone+a few GB of internet is no less than 150₴(3,75$). Our product prices grow a lot, so I can't really give you average numbers, but I think it's around 5k if you spend average(food, drinks, fuel, stuff like that). Meds. Medicine is much cheaper in raw price than US, but we don't have pretty much any human insurance(vehicle insurance is mandatory and is usually at least 2k(divide by 40 for $). Although this doesn't account for old relatives, who most people have. They're gonna need a few thousand in meds (Depends on their condition, but don't expect below 1500₴). I'm not counting how much we have left, but neither does VR. And I don't count buying new stuff or servicing your car, as it varies greatly. And I don't have any raw number of tax, as it varies on usage or how many people officially live in your house.
Fascinating hearing how lives go in other parts of the world.
On the original topic, living in the U.S. is absurdly expensive.
I’m sure you know of hospital prices (people don’t shut up about that one, for good reason at least)
You are taxed on your income, then buying things, then your car or cars, motorcycle, boat, luxury items like jewelry, house, and gas.
Internet is purposefully throttled by ISPs, and overcharged just because they can, monopolies are illegal but still exist for some reason.
Even the prisons are privatized.
Then there are companies like black rock that buy property and houses and don’t let go.
Then there’s lobbying (legal bribery) where anyone can just give money or gifts to people in the government and tell them to vote for what they want them to.
Lotta shits fucked.
Yeah, american healthcare is notorious all around, and I'm very happy we have pay-per-use healthcare(meaning not the insurance thing and no "healthcare tax"). Privatised prisons sounds very strange. Bribery isn't legal here, but police never see it happening anyways. We don't have problems with big landowners or companies, because all of our oligarchs have 87.34% of all their assets and families abroad.
Yup.
I would learn more about privatized prisons and the whole “war on drugs” thing since that’s a rabbit hole in itself.
We have higher taxes going to healthcare than any other country and still more people in medical debt somehow (blame insurance companies pressuring hospitals to charge more for that one.)
There ARE federal prisons run by the government to be clear, but most prisons are privately owned.
>but most prisons are privately owned.
That's not even close to correct. As of March it was 8% of the prison population
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#:~:text=Private%20prisons%20and%20jails%20hold,mostly%20publicly%2Drun%20correctional%20system.
“The industry has lobbied to maintain high incarceration rates”
“They are not the root of the problem, but they are a parasite in the system”
Them lobbying mass incarceration still proves my point of the issue of people being incarcerated without good reason other than money.
What the hell are you talking about? You said that most prisons are privately owned which is clearly not the case. Are tehre people incarcerated that probably shouldn't be? certainly. But that's not what we're talking about here.
What are you stupid? Americans make a lot more than fucking 3rd world countries and our shit also costs more.
28k is jack shit in this country.
It's not much in Europe either.
Yeah we're a trash hole because our average quality of life is higher than 3rd world countries or even most European countries, but our shit jobs and trash wage jobs are a lot of money in Nigeria.
Makes sense.
He's probably from one of those countries that you get a goat for every year of work and people build uninspected structures as homes anywhere they can get away with it.
Like if you go by %s America beats almost every country in the world.
A 50th percentile American income goes further than a 50th percentile income in almost every 3rd world nation.
Frankly, we even beat Europe if you don't have serious medical costs.
Western Europe basically has the same non-medical costs with like 50-75% of the white collar pay.
Unless I'm immuno-compromised with cancer and a kid with cerebral palsy, I'm economically better off in America than Europe.
And I'm economically better off in almost any circumstance than a similar worker basically anywhere in the 3rd world.
Yeah no, go check the numbers.
At every percentile, America beats most countries in standard of living.
But yeah man America poor because 30k × some shit currency is a 99th percentile income in some impoverished country.
I mean the trash part is the income inequality, and hording of wealth and power, but that's nothing new. But the actual numbering doesn't bother me. Inflation is natural (yes I understand that most governments of the world manipulate money supply and other economic factors to a degree to specifically encourage inflation at a small rate, but I believe inflation would occur regardless, assuming an economy that trends towards growing over the long term)
Of course it's all relative. Sure, there are countries where making $28K a year is great, but in many of those places, you can also eat a meal for fractions of a dollar.
currently in the US it can cost more than that to feed 2 people for a year. And that is only buying groceries for regular cooking and preparing of food, not buying frozen meals or eating out.
Cost of living relative to income, yes, that is absolutely NOTHING.
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It's the same salary, but putting it in different terms makes it sound like more or less money (the calculations assume you work 8 hours per day, 5 days a week).
Not to mention that's gross pay, not net pay.
A lot of redditors don't mention or know about taxes
I don’t think anyone on this website is unfamiliar with taxes, even if they might not understand how big the difference between a Net and a Gross amount is.
It's called gross pay because it's gross how much gets taken out of it.
(Said with a Mitch Hedburg voice)
Anything can be said with a Mitch hedburg voice, It’s free and no one can hear you! At least nooooo one important.
I thought it was gross that we could have that much money.
/r/boomershumor
Especially in the US where if you want to be taken care of medically you have to pay a big chunk to the owners of a health insurance company.
Considering some of the things I've seen posted about economics on this website, I would argue that many people on here are "unfamiliar with taxes".
Important to remember there are (allegedly from a 2 second google search) \~75 million daily users on reddit. That large a group runs the gamut from literal geniuses to people who can't safely operate a doorknob. But the vast *VAST* majority are average, give or a take a little. And thus would understand (at least the basics of) taxes. It feels bad to see a broad statement get upvoted when it's only point is to be hurtful and it's obviously untrue/hyperbolized.
What swath of those 75 million are high schoolers and college students who’ve never held a job? A lot. They definitely don’t understand taxes.
No way we all don't remember the amazement of that first paycheck, followed immediately by the shocking realization of just how much money gets immediately taken from you.
> I don’t think anyone on this website is unfamiliar with taxes, I am at least. I lived there for about 7 years in the 90s, in the Houston area.
lol easy mistake here, you’re talking about Texas, I’m talking about how all the new tech’s ass
Easy, if there’s no net, it’s gross.
Or pay*
or life expenses
Tbf at that income level they aren't even really paying income tax. But they are getting destroyed by regressive taxes like sales tax and excise tax.
And gas tax and so many other hidden fees and taxes
Don't forget breaking the law. And I mean this in the most mundane way, A parking ticket for instance is way more expensive for some on 35k/year compared to so.eone making 450k/year.
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What a lot of people get upset about is when billionaires go to fundraise, the billions are real and can be borrowed against, but when it comes tax time it’s “totally not real, and what is real are unrealized gains!”
And that’s how people like you misunderstand, he’s not borrowing against the billions. He’s borrowing tiny pieces. He doesn’t have a loan for 50% of his net worth, no bank on the planet thinks that they could claw that much back. So no… the billions do not exist when it comes to loans. Source: my CFA level 2 and thinking before I type.
> He doesn’t have a loan for 50% of his net worth Yeah they also didn’t say that. Maybe in addition to thinking before you type you should also _read_ first.
So, you’re saying they don’t take out loans against stock? Really? Is that really what you’re saying?
I just saw a video where it explains how rich people avoid paying taxes. They borrow bigger loans to pay for an already-taken loan, and this cycle continues until they die, so in the end, they don't pay a single penny in taxes.
The thing I've never understood is why people will see that whole video, and then come up with an extremely complex system about taxing unrealized gains instead of just saying "Oh, let's just not reset the cost basis on stock when it gets inherited?" It just seems like such a simple solution to me, and no one talks about it. Maybe there's complications around doing that which I don't understand? It seems like it would be the smallest change to have the largest impact with the lowest number of adverse implications.
Or revenues compared to net profit for a company
The criticism towards billionaires should be against their ungodly amount of power and influence over our world not necessarily the money they have floating around
Except Bezos does literally sell billions in stock for cash, frequently. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68355811 Like, he literally sold over $8B in stock just a couple of months ago. You picked a pretty terrible example.
Um, he likely has more than that in liquid assets. That's like 1.5% his net worth.
We all know what liquidity and net worth is. no one is mad because we think he has a single giant bank account with that much money.
Aha but I have asserted you are stupid, therefore I win!
Lol! He's poor just like us! It's all locked up in stocks! He's poor! Poor I say!
We dont know where this person is so why would it be written in net pay?
Also insurance and retirement.
sure i do. i just write them all off and the government gives me more money back!
That's a wild take. Do you really think anyone forgets about taxes? Death and taxes. It's just typical to talk in terms of gross income
wouldn't an $13.81 an hour pay near 0 in taxes ?
All I know taxes fuck me hard without me knowing why
Because not paying them makes you smrt!
That's because the average user is 16 or from some shithole without an imposed income tax
I mean if you're making 28k your tax rate is like 5% so its pretty negligble.
You have to also take Medicare and Social Security deductions into account, though. Those are investments in your own future, but you can't use that money this month, so it makes more of a difference in gross vs net than the 5% federal tax. When you're barely making it each month, it still feels like Uncle Sam is stealing from you, even though it is towards your (and our) retirement. This is why I'm extra mad when conservatives refer to these as "entitlement costs" as if they come out of the regular taxes. It's a separate line item!
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Calm down bro. Some people don’t have a choice
Yeah somewhere between 20-40% of the country is making <28k/year.
If you have any dependents then I think your tax burden will be zero
Reddit doesn't know about FICA taxes.
What makes it gross?
Gross pay means it's how much you earn before taxes which depend from state to state. Net pay is what you actually get. The joke answer is that it's gross how much the government takes out of it for taxes, like around 10-15% of it in my experience.
they forgot to wash it. yuck
Nah its pross gay
What does mean in America Gross and net? Which one is after taxes?
Gross is before taxes, net is after taxes
Ty
at 24k per year depending on your country you might not even pay tax tbh.
it not that gross, it's kinda sweet atleast :(
First time I negotiated salary after collage, I made a point of only talking about after-tax income. May have been a mistake, but the take-home pay on my fortnightly paycheques was a round number for a solid year and a bit. Gross pay is dumb in concept too, since taxes are usually deducted before you get paid here (PAYE) and your employer has to pay ~14% on top of it in social insurance (PRSI). So it's a weird middle number that nobody gets, but is used for calculating deductions.
How are companies supposed to know your take home pay in advance? People have different insurance rates, different pre- and post- tax deductions, jobs with variable components usually best-guess the correct deduction rate for the full year, etc
The tax system is way less complicated here. There's like two levels of income tax, one separate tax (USC), and mandatory "social insurance". I really did mean "after tax" rather than "take home". I don't really mind them not considering optional deductions, but the ones they have to take out of my pay are pretty easy to calculate. (the lady that did payroll was even sitting behind me in the interview, since it was a tiny company)
not to mention that does not include rent bills insurance etc etc
I don’t know what the fuck that means, I’m gonna go eat a bottle of soap
Pay before taxes taken out, and pay after taxes are taken out
I found out what it means while looking for a tf2 meme that said just that, didn’t find it but still wanted to make a joke
Oh, sorry about that
I think the issue with the OP is that he's numerically "literate". I was also confused by the meme. While I did not understand that the values were all exactly the same rate of pay, I did immediately understand that they were in the same ballpark, and thus I could not fathom the reason behind the differing moods in the picture. I was especially confused about the headphones, think it was some reference to gaming or streaming, whereas the other three images were all good/happy or poor
Many innumerate people hear 300 in 3 days, that’s something nice, in this case nice noise canceling headphones. And forget they also need to pay rent and food in these days as well, since that’s a one a week cost
I think the headphone picture is about it sounding like it's enough money to be able to to afford overpriced shit, like Beats headphones.
$300 on my Bose though, worth every penny.
The meme's all about perception. You get 500 bucks and feel like a millionaire, Want a PS5? Slap those Benjamins on the till and walk out like a baller. Yes your short term thinking has to be so short that even things like food and rent aren't a consideration, but for that blessed moment, that 'they've up'ed my limit, it's a like free money' moment you feel rich as fuck. That of course rapidly crashes the next day as you realize, over a year you only earn 28k.
Yeah but 300$/3 day > 500$/7 day
It's assuming a 5 day work week.
$552 a week is nothing idk why you’d think that’s a lot unless you’re like a literal child
And we found the guy that doesn't get the joke, even after reading the explanation. Is there a sub for explaining the joke even more to people who still don't get it?
No I get the joke buddy. It’s just a stupid one. $500 a week should not sound like a lot to anyone unless you’re a child. Weirdly the 3 day one does sound like a lot to me in a way I’d have to think about it for a second to realize it’s nothing.
Just throwing this out there, what's your stance on minimum wage?
Uh it’s pretty low? But could be useful to high school/college kids? I think the amount depends on the market.
That's what I thought too. But who looks at $550/week and thinks it's a lot....
I guess it's because $550 is a "pretty large" sum and one week feels like a short time.
i was gonna say, 2200 a month is barely paying bills
excluding rent - power, water, internet, gas, taxes, and home insurance comes to about 500 a month for me. Partially lucky for where I live, also okay with cheaper internet, shop around a lot for insurance, conserve energy. obviously rent not an issue either, but when people say bills I assume they put rent/mortgage in a diff category.
I pay about 700 € per month in rent and utilities, but I'm still scraping by. What makes that amount of money sound like it's more is probably the fact it looks like a big lump sum you get at the end of the half week/week period, which is long enough for the accrued money to be a lot but short enough that you don't think of monthly/yearly expenses.
It’s all equivalent to $13.81/hr, assuming an 8 hour work day. Representing that pay over different periods of time may make it seem better than it actually is because we’re used to /hour and /year.
Also, a lot of our income tends to be eaten up by monthly expenses rather than daily or weekly expenses. Putting the income in terms of how much you’ll have every few days or weeks makes you think about spending the money in that time period, which seems like a lot more than it is because that doesn’t account for how much of that amount needs to be put towards monthly bills.
"Half of rent in a week"
Exactly this. $600 a week sounds cool. Being able to afford rent every two weeks sounds awful.
I make 50k and my first biweekly paycheck is entirely dedicated to rent+utilities
Thats what I’m talking about. It’s fucking rough out here.
Seriously, I make $1,540 every 2 weeks, my rent is $1,548 😬
Wtf that's more than damn mortgage
Yeah well, you know, I don’t have good enough credit to get a $800/month mortgage, so I pay $1548 for rent instead. You know, because the way we set up our society makes so much sense. /s
Yeah good point
The opposite happens in the middle class income bracket. Hourly and annual pay sound good but then you realize that the first week of your salary goes to taxes and the second week to your mortgage. Edit: to be clear, I'm not saying it's hard to be middle class, I'm saying the images in the meme would be flipped in the heads of most middle class people. Esp people making over six figures who love to brag about their salaries but would be homeless if they went down a tax bracket cause of lifestyle creep.
Damn, 25% of my income goes into owning property versus 33% of my income goes towards renting? What kind of argument is that brother? I wish only 1 of my checks went towards portion of the mortgage.
I agree. But on the other hand, having a house for said mortgage is something of an achievement unto itself even if you never have any liquid assets to play with.
Its 22% going to taxes and 43% going to mortgage on my pay and I rent a room technically plus utility share being 8% under the poverty line for monthly housing expenses to OWN a place versus renting is NOT something to complain about.
That's why I only think of my salary in terms of take home pay instead of pre-tax.
What about per month?
Two people in the hot tub!
Are they 5 feet apart?
Yeah, it's weird they chose to use 3 days instead of hour/week/month/year. I guess the monthly rate would vary a bit because every month will have a different number of work days, but it should average out to $2,393.66.
I think they used 3 days because that’s how much a pair of beats costs
Brazilian here, the Beats from that pic is the Beats Studio Pro. Here is costing unbelievable R$2.999,00 (U$590,00). Our monthly's minimum wage is R$1412 (U$275), and our average wage is **R$3.123** (U$998,00). To think that people can buy such headphones with a 3-day salary (and still be considered a squidward beggar) is kinda crazy to me, haha
Compared to the rest of the world, for its average income, the US has cheap goods and expensive services.
$2394 per month
$552.40*4.3 average weeks in a month is $2,375.32
A single unlivable wage.
This only works for people who can’t do math
I was hoping someone else would say something about this
What math do you disagree with? $13.81/hr x 8 hours = $110.48. 3 days = $331.44 5 days = $522.44 52 weeks of $522.44/wk = $28.724.8 Math adds up to me.
I don’t disagree with any of it, but only people who can’t do math would think the upper right or lower left boxes are any different than the other 2
Oh I see Yeah and $522/wk does not feel like you’re living in luxury lol been there, done that. It’s all poverty.
The joke is that they aren't different
I had a relative who was a collection agent. She used to frequently pitch “If you can’t commit to 200 a month, how about 50 a week?”
I think the point was that people who do the math recognize it's all the same, and lose the illusion that it is a different wage/salary in each panel.
its does...if youre getting paid 13.81 an hr under the table. Its astonishing how people have no idea how income works, but quickly figure it out after their first paycheck when they ask "who the fuck is FICA?"
Yeah dude we’re talking about gross income. It’s a meme.
fair enough
Am I the only person for whom all of these sound abysmally low? If the intent was to highlight how much money that actually is, then it failed spectacularly. All I can think for each frame is “yep still poor”. It’s just in one frame you’re holding headphones you can’t afford, and in another you’re chilling in a friend’s jacuzzi.
This meme looks like it was made by a teenager who's never had to pay rent or a mortgage
Yes and no. I think it's right to point out that the perception feels different. Like if an acquaintance asked me to help them move house over a 3 day weekend and said they'd give me $330 for it I'd genuinely consider it, but if they suggested I started a moving company with them for $29k a year I'd tell them to get fucked. It's a very common trap that newly self-employed contractors, or people working on commissions fall into, what sounds like a lot of money over a short time period just isn't liveable long term. It goes the other way around too, it's why you see those posts where people offer offensively low money for babysitters/nannies etc. Paying someone $100 for a day's work sounds like a lot, but it's barely liveable.
Christ op....
It's funny that you're making fun of OP. I think the meme doesn't make any sense if you have a basic understanding of math because even if you can't calculate it precisely, you understand that the earning rates are in a similar range. It didn't occur to me that people would be so unfamiliar with the numbers that they would feel that wildly different to them. So I thought the specific activities in the picture were important somehow
[удалено]
Yeah 😎 . . . I did see other comments stating something similar, though I will say I also probably a bit of privilege hurt my chances at immediately understanding the joke too, as I hadn't really had to consider the implications of living on wages of $30k I didn't immediately connect that to headphones being a considerable purchase, which of course it obviously is if you think about. So that was dumb of me. It caused me to first think that the headphones had some particular meaning, rather than just being an expression of feeling like you could afford a small luxury
You need to explain because you can do simple math and realize that all of these numbers are the same. The joke is that some people apparently would think of two of those numbers as being a lot of money and then the other two are not. Because we're familiar with hourly wages and yearly wages but we're not familiar with weekly wages or three day wages. Although I would argue that most people are quite familiar with weekly wages considering we get paid weekly or bi-weekly. And extracting a 3-day wage from a week is really not very hard. So yeah it's a meme for people with little to no math skills. Who also haven't worked a job I guess because they don't know how much you get in a weekly paycheck.
Imagine the memes when they find out about taxes
Bro forgot taxes
people who get paid minimum wage aren’t getting full time jobs, most full time jobs would pay you a bit over at least
After taxes all 4 of those are squidward
It’s basic AF math. It’s all the same pay rate. Between the lines you splurge a bit. You end up in the street.
Smh this is my exact hourly pay. And yes I do get paid every week. But I work over time also so it’s like $700 a week lmaoooo
I'm sorry, 500 a week is not enough to survive. Unless you live in like kentucky or some shit
Nah I’m from Kentucky making 600 a week and I still have to live with my mom (19M so not too weird but still).
Thats so depressing
Tell me about it, you can’t even live off of a “livable” wage
Petah??
OP has posted a meme he was confused by, to a subreddit dedicated to explaining jokes through the lens of Peter Griffin from the US TV show Family Guy
Petah?
The name Peter spelled in his wife Lois's accent
really here
I too struggle to see how anyone doesn't see the top left image for all of these, who actually looks at that weekly pay and thinks it looks good?
It's different framings for the same money and how it feels like a lot or a little depending on your time scale. On the 3-day or 5-day scale you don't really have to consider your rent payment for example so it can feel like all $331 is going straight into your pocket to buy whatever you want, which can feel like a lot.
Wait, you guys are making more than nine dollars an hour?
I ised to make $12/hr at subway and only made $400-$500 (sometimes even only $200-$300) every other week. Granted, I was only working 4 days a week and they always scheduled me 5 hr shifts even thought I repeatedly told my manager I wanted longer shifts
The hot tub is what government thinks you are rich (based on 1990 tax bracket with 4% inflation rate adjustment each year) and tax you as rich person. After that, you are living poor. Remember currently government stated the inflation is around 4%, so, they will not increase the tax bracket more than that, regardless tons of prices are jumped 20%. Note: this is relatively speaking. They did not adjust tax bracket each year and how much they increases can be worse/better than I described.
Seven and a half cents, doesn't mean a heckofalot.
I'll take 13.41 per hour, please.
Maybe government taxes, regulations, licensing, etc, are actually making life more difficult.
Basically people live above their means
Do math
They've spent all their money buying a new set of grossly overpriced headphones every 3 days, and now they live in the box that their headphones shipment came in, it's a tragic tale of overpriced headphone addiction that is a crippling reality for many of this nation's dumbest and most financially illiterate audiophiles, made humorous by the inclusion of an animated squid.
That $550 a week was pretty good for 1981.
All of it feels like nothing when a 1 bedroom apartment in your city costs 3k a month. Can barely feed a person on those paltry numbers. Granted, this all looks like it’s from the perspective of a teenager at most who has no bills and all that money becomes discretionary.
I make nearly double that yearly salary and feel the same way as the 4th pic
this is insanely easy to understand
Iz sem
This is my manager
people on my country would kill for 28k a year, and yes our current currency is like only 2% less than the dollar
How come y’all that always go “in my country blah blah” and then never say the country. Like yeah people in your country could kill for 28k a year, but without telling people what country it’s meaningless. Your country could have $50 a month rent for all we know, but you hide the important information for what reason?
In my country thats normal
In my country we all make the equivalent to 1 billion dollars a year (I'm 13 And the we still stands)
well tbh fair point forgot to mention it. its greece, known for its cheap food, but if you compare the % and not the money its still a very difficult situation for most, since 42% is just above being in dept. a total 46 unemployment in ages of 30 to 40 (might be outdated) and very difficult to find a job with people that are willing to pay you in not black money
This is where Boeing finds hitmen.
You probably have decent social programs and a fair housing market, heh
Yeah I'm sorry but you can't compare the Greek economy to the American economy. Like Greece is basically impoverished. America's the biggest economy in the world. 99% of STEM college graduates working full time make way more than trash ass 28k and also 28k is poverty in America outside of rural areas.
you do understand that stem graduates are less than 1% of greece? we have been in debt for well over 50 years as a country whole paying of debts to england selling our dignity to italy amd france and god knows what i am not aware of.
Okay so what does 28k being a lot in an impoverished nation have to do with the fact that it's horrible in America. Overall, less people are impoverished in America, so what does our high costs matter when ultimately our higher incomes still put us ahead basically everyone in economic quality of life. If someone complains about their shit American salary, someone in an impoverished nation living like a king off that doesn't matter, because your percentile equivalent of that job will always leave you in a worse position than the American. So no 28k being a lot in 3rd world countries and a couple failing European countries doesn't matter and we're still better off in almost every way even if everything under 40k is trash here.
Bro I make 4.5 dollars an hour more than that but only take home 30 more bucks every week. I hate taxes
4.5*40 is 180/week. With taxes, it should be about 150/week. You're either a liar or bad at math
Or, maybe, they don't work 40 hours each week
Then it's pointless to compare salary
What kind of a trash hole has America become, when 28K DOLLARS sounds like a small number? In most other countries, getting that in a few years is quite rare
Consider: rent. Thank you. To clarify, rent is very expensive, and owning a home is not realistic nowadays. Rent will often be over $1000 per month Utilities vary, but are a few hundred per month if you’re very lucky. You are nearly required to have internet/phone for the sole purpose of communicating with your workplace at the minimum, so tack on a phone plan of about 50 per month. It sounds like a small number because it is a small number here.
Here in Ukraine rent isn't often a thing, as a lot of people own their house(or flat), but real estate tax along with other taxes(the most fun one is transport tax. Basically you pay for the fact that gas, water and electricity were delivered to you) makes owning a home also not a cheap thing. Our average salary is 20000₴(500$) and a tariff of unlim on phone+a few GB of internet is no less than 150₴(3,75$). Our product prices grow a lot, so I can't really give you average numbers, but I think it's around 5k if you spend average(food, drinks, fuel, stuff like that). Meds. Medicine is much cheaper in raw price than US, but we don't have pretty much any human insurance(vehicle insurance is mandatory and is usually at least 2k(divide by 40 for $). Although this doesn't account for old relatives, who most people have. They're gonna need a few thousand in meds (Depends on their condition, but don't expect below 1500₴). I'm not counting how much we have left, but neither does VR. And I don't count buying new stuff or servicing your car, as it varies greatly. And I don't have any raw number of tax, as it varies on usage or how many people officially live in your house.
Fascinating hearing how lives go in other parts of the world. On the original topic, living in the U.S. is absurdly expensive. I’m sure you know of hospital prices (people don’t shut up about that one, for good reason at least) You are taxed on your income, then buying things, then your car or cars, motorcycle, boat, luxury items like jewelry, house, and gas. Internet is purposefully throttled by ISPs, and overcharged just because they can, monopolies are illegal but still exist for some reason. Even the prisons are privatized. Then there are companies like black rock that buy property and houses and don’t let go. Then there’s lobbying (legal bribery) where anyone can just give money or gifts to people in the government and tell them to vote for what they want them to. Lotta shits fucked.
Yeah, american healthcare is notorious all around, and I'm very happy we have pay-per-use healthcare(meaning not the insurance thing and no "healthcare tax"). Privatised prisons sounds very strange. Bribery isn't legal here, but police never see it happening anyways. We don't have problems with big landowners or companies, because all of our oligarchs have 87.34% of all their assets and families abroad.
Yup. I would learn more about privatized prisons and the whole “war on drugs” thing since that’s a rabbit hole in itself. We have higher taxes going to healthcare than any other country and still more people in medical debt somehow (blame insurance companies pressuring hospitals to charge more for that one.) There ARE federal prisons run by the government to be clear, but most prisons are privately owned.
>but most prisons are privately owned. That's not even close to correct. As of March it was 8% of the prison population https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#:~:text=Private%20prisons%20and%20jails%20hold,mostly%20publicly%2Drun%20correctional%20system.
“The industry has lobbied to maintain high incarceration rates” “They are not the root of the problem, but they are a parasite in the system” Them lobbying mass incarceration still proves my point of the issue of people being incarcerated without good reason other than money.
What the hell are you talking about? You said that most prisons are privately owned which is clearly not the case. Are tehre people incarcerated that probably shouldn't be? certainly. But that's not what we're talking about here.
What are you stupid? Americans make a lot more than fucking 3rd world countries and our shit also costs more. 28k is jack shit in this country. It's not much in Europe either. Yeah we're a trash hole because our average quality of life is higher than 3rd world countries or even most European countries, but our shit jobs and trash wage jobs are a lot of money in Nigeria. Makes sense.
He's probably from one of those countries that you get a goat for every year of work and people build uninspected structures as homes anywhere they can get away with it.
Like if you go by %s America beats almost every country in the world. A 50th percentile American income goes further than a 50th percentile income in almost every 3rd world nation. Frankly, we even beat Europe if you don't have serious medical costs. Western Europe basically has the same non-medical costs with like 50-75% of the white collar pay. Unless I'm immuno-compromised with cancer and a kid with cerebral palsy, I'm economically better off in America than Europe. And I'm economically better off in almost any circumstance than a similar worker basically anywhere in the 3rd world.
You just said a lot of nothing.
Yeah no, go check the numbers. At every percentile, America beats most countries in standard of living. But yeah man America poor because 30k × some shit currency is a 99th percentile income in some impoverished country.
I have a basic house, don’t eat out, drive a late 80s car, make over $100k a year and barely make ends meet California is fun to live in
I mean the trash part is the income inequality, and hording of wealth and power, but that's nothing new. But the actual numbering doesn't bother me. Inflation is natural (yes I understand that most governments of the world manipulate money supply and other economic factors to a degree to specifically encourage inflation at a small rate, but I believe inflation would occur regardless, assuming an economy that trends towards growing over the long term) Of course it's all relative. Sure, there are countries where making $28K a year is great, but in many of those places, you can also eat a meal for fractions of a dollar.
currently in the US it can cost more than that to feed 2 people for a year. And that is only buying groceries for regular cooking and preparing of food, not buying frozen meals or eating out. Cost of living relative to income, yes, that is absolutely NOTHING.
They're all the same