61% of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck

my wife is on the board of trustees of two colleges that cater to “first generation” students. From our personal experience and her experience on the boards I would agree whole heartedly with the article.

and I bet it’s not even at the extremes. A smart kid who goes to Rutgers because he can’t afford Cornell vs a kid who goes to Cornell because financial aid isn’t an issue will statistically have vastly different outcomes in life (another real personal example).

I believe that America is the land of opportunity in that anyone can improve their socioeconomic standing but where you start has a huge determining factor on the distribution of your possible future states.

 

And many do not.

 

This is likely the case in all countries in the world. I will repeat again and again that the worth of education is not necessarily to make more money. There are many professions that benefit from educated individuals yet don't pay particularly well. The problem with America is that it's the only country in the world that charges dearly for its population to get educated so that often the only option is to focus on income generating careers to pay off loans, while in Europe, for example, where education is free, there is less need to be concerned with high paying jobs and instead more on the work that one wants to do, and it's far more rewarding.
We Americans compensate our lack of life satisfaction by consuming more to give us a sense of worth.

 

I agree with you except that that mentality made America a greater country than all of Europe combined in less than 200 years.

 

I don't understand; what do you mean?

 

It's not actually true though.

These stupid surveys are designed to be misleading and alarmist.

 

Completely false. If you read enough financial news, you'll know a lot of corporate profits have been squeezed by inflation. Also look at the market crumble under the weight of inflation. You trade any SPY or QQQ?

 

When 85% of the common American people do not have $250,000 stock portfolio to watch on their phone or computer screen, what do you expect them to do to enjoy? For this reason, I do not have any sympathy when Mark Zuckerberg loses $20BB or $40BB fortune in his stocks. That money can save many people's lives. Same with Warren Buffet, Carl Icahn and a lot more.

 

inflation tends to benefit the wealthy class in that they hold all of the physical assets...which increase in value from inflation.

 

It could also be that America's population is 50% larger than all of Western Europe combined.