Sorry, sle, but someone working in NYC does not have to live in NYC. They do not have to spend $1.2mm+ on their home ($5000/month is about a $1mm mortgage) and do not have to send their kids to private school. There are a number of good public schools in northern NJ, Westchester and Nassau counties (or Western CT) where you can buy a 3000 square foot 4 bedroom home and have a commute to Penn station or GCT that is 45 min or less and save the NYC 4% income tax and spend $700K to $1mm. If you make $500K a year, you should be smart enough to have a budget and know what will work for you and your family.
For those that make $500,000+ year and spend all their money, let me play you a sad Song on the World's smallest Violin.
EXACTLY! OMG it makes my blood BOIL when I see these WHINERS go on about how poor they are by having to spend $4,000/month rent living in a shithole on the Upper East Side or wherever, while OWNING A CAR IN MANHATTAN which they don't fucking NEED (Are they afraid the subway ghouls will eat them? Too pussy to venture underground?), all to say they did it? It is not smart. OMM said all that was needed to be said and more tactfully...I just had to chime in because I could not hold it in. I am seething at the thought of all the half-million-dollar-per-year WHINERS who think they are poor. You MADE yourselves poor, you dumbasses! When I was your age, we ate wood and rocks! <----(Bonus cookie to anyone who can recall from where that line came.)
I don't think it's good to have a system where people are discouraged to earn more. So someone is choosing to earn more (presumably by working harder/smarter) and spend more for a certain quality of life, why should they be penalized or looked down upon? I don't have an incentive to work more/harder because, after taxes, I have such a marginal increase that it's just not worth the effort(working for someone else that is). Cannot be healthy for society.