You believe the top 60% of the nation skew in the upper income levels? Median pay is $61k a year for the entire country. The top 1% skews to the upper income levels. The rest are charged $30 for a dose of aspirin and can't afford it.
There are numbers on this, and their comment is probably directionally correct; the median household with private insurance earns more than 400% of household FPL (KFF). By subtracting Medicaid and fixed-income seniors from the picture, you are sharply biasing the median upwards.
I would say if you ignore the poorest 40% of the population, you've got quite the slim margin to go before you are no longer talking about "Most" Americans, which the OP was pretty explicitly talking about.
He was saying "Most people in the US" don't make 100-200k more, and that they probably don't even make 100k. This was in response to the generalization that "people from other countries ... underestimate how well paid people in the US often are".
Now there was talk of getting the political motivation to change things, so I guess everyone is assuming Medicaid/Medicare/VA recipients don't want to change the system, but that wasn't really established, nor was that really being refuted.
tptacek|4 months ago
gusgus01|4 months ago
He was saying "Most people in the US" don't make 100-200k more, and that they probably don't even make 100k. This was in response to the generalization that "people from other countries ... underestimate how well paid people in the US often are".
Now there was talk of getting the political motivation to change things, so I guess everyone is assuming Medicaid/Medicare/VA recipients don't want to change the system, but that wasn't really established, nor was that really being refuted.
nxor|4 months ago
sumeno|4 months ago