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Wharton business students asked how much the average American makes annually

IdaCat said:
Oh, I'm not surprised that it's the government definition or that you're satisfied with that standard. A big government leftist has to be happy living in a partitioned/shared crackerbox with their fellow comrades.
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Not everything has to be political. How else would you define household if it's not defined as the definition provided above?

I.E. someone lives in a house with their spouse and 2 kids, that's a household of 4 with 2 wage earners.

I.E. a college graduate living in a studio. That's a household of 1 with 1 wage earner
 
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azurricat2010 said:
Sadly the median household income in the states is around 65k in the USA. MIT did a study years ago saying the average household has 2.2 wage earners which shows how low actual incomes are, i.e. 65k/2.2.
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I don’t think this is correct. Wikipedia says the average household has 1.28 earners per home. They even break it up by income bracket. There are some brackets that have more than 2, but they are in the upper brackets (think folks in their 50’s with teenage kids earning incomes). The average household size is 2.54.
 
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BigBlueFanGA said:
Hey, Corbin isn't that poor.
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Pikeville is where my brother lives

it at least feels like there’s Hope in Pikeville

There’s some modest life in the university and medical center employers - i assume coal is all but shut down there now - not sure

Middlesboro feels very different and not in a good way

Agree that London/Corbin appears much healthier than Mboro or Harlan for example


FWIW
 
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WayneDougan said:
I don’t think this is correct. Wikipedia says the average household has 1.28 earners per home. They even break it up by income bracket. There are some brackets that have more than 2, but they are in the upper brackets (think folks in their 50’s with teenage kids earning incomes). The average household size is 2.54.
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I'd have to find the study as it's something I read 5+ years ago, possibly misremembering.**

Using 1.28 earners would mean 50k/person which is still really low compared to the numbers the Wharton grads guessed.***

Update

**It's likely I only remembered the upper-level bracket and misconstrued it's meaning years after the fact.. Looking at BLS data from 2015 basically confirms what you cited from Wiki. It's highly probably MIT took the same data. I'll look more into it to verify.

***This would be overinflated thanks to the high wages of the highest income group. I think breaking down each quintile to figure out wages/person would provide the best result.

I.E. the mean 3rd quintile has a mean wage of 49,606 with 1.3 earners. 49,606/1.3 is 38,158 in pre-tax income.
 
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CastleRubric said:
Pikeville is where my brother lives

it at least feels like there’s Hope in Pikeville

There’s some modest life in the university and medical center employers - i assume coal is all but shut down there now - not sure

Middlesboro feels very different and not in a good way

Agree that London/Corbin appears much healthier than Mboro or Harlan for example


FWIW
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Corbin is a great town.
 
bigblueinsanity said:
It is but imo it also speaks to the lack of practical knowledge/skills in today's youth. Very few work jobs so there is no concept of money. Social media replaced many parents/educators as the source of information. School/education has no interest in teaching them anything practical.

Add in the fact most of these students probably come from wealthy families, and you have the perfect soup for a group entirely ignorant as to anything related to the "average" American
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Do you think people from Wharton should be running our country?
 
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Even at 350 to 1, if you made it 1 to 1, it would net the average worker like 50 bucks.

The fundamental problem with leftists is that you can't think beyond a very shallow level, and you don't grasp the math. You can't take from the rich to make you rich like they indoctrinated you.

The fault you're broke is your own and no one else's.
 
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Ron Mehico said:
I look at prices of housing and groceries and cars etc etc and wonder how a household even lives under 100k nowadays
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Only buy beef from the 40% mark down section where it’s placed when it reaches its sell by date.

Haven’t bought much in awhile since the freezer is full. Looked at some ribeyes today that were originally $17 a pound. Way up from the last time I checked.
 
Maybe students should be required to go out and do actual 40+ hour a week jobs and experience what it's like in the real world to manage their money before enrolling in college. Then they can see through any full of sh*t professors that have no practical skills besides helping to give out worthless degrees and put students in major debt.
 
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azurricat2010 said:
It's crazy how much the gap has spread since the 1960s. Back then CEO pay was around 20 to 1.
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It's quite obscene. Should be illegal for the pay gap to be that wide.

To highlight how obscenely rich a billionaire is, if you were paid a wage of 10,000 a day since 1748 with no raise or COL adjustment of any sort, you still would not have been paid a billion dollars in wages.
 
azurricat2010 said:
Sadly the median household income in the states is around 65k in the USA. MIT did a study years ago saying the average household has 2.2 wage earners which shows how low actual incomes are, i.e. 65k/2.2.

I know a number of people that went to Wharton and while they're not quite as out of touch as those subjected in this article, they have told me similar stories.
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You really shouldn't do math.
 
Nbacats said:
It's quite obscene. Should be illegal for the pay gap to be that wide.

To highlight how obscenely rich a billionaire is, if you were paid a wage of 10,000 a day since 1748 with no raise or COL adjustment of any sort, you still would not have been paid a billion dollars in wages.
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Billionaires have never been paid a billion in wages either. You're conflating net worth and wages. They're quite different.
 
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Fact_Checker said:
Billionaires have never been paid a billion in wages either. You're conflating net worth and wages. They're quite different.
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Fair point. They largely earn that through the compensation package the company provides though, so point still stands. A guy like Bezos worth, on average, grows more in a minute than the lowest paid full-time workers at Amazon make in a few years.
 
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CastleRubric said:
Pikeville is where my brother lives

it at least feels like there’s Hope in Pikeville

There’s some modest life in the university and medical center employers - i assume coal is all but shut down there now - not sure

Middlesboro feels very different and not in a good way

Agree that London/Corbin appears much healthier than Mboro or Harlan for example


FWIW
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Middlesboro also isolated from main transit arteries. Tunnel and 25E helps, but negligible. Tremendous potential. I've analyzed housing prospects there numerous times over the years. Between Claiborne County, TN and Bell County KY, dwelling costs appear miles apart. Digitally speaking, Crater City seems an outstanding MSA for expansion. Major ISPs (AT&T + Spectrum) infrastructure already exist.
 
Nbacats said:
Fair point. They largely earn that through the compensation package the company provides though, so point still stands. A guy like Bezos worth, on average, grows more in a minute than the lowest paid full-time workers at Amazon make in a few years.
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Its a numbers game. If your net worth is $100 million, even a slight gain in one yearwill be more than most people make in a career. Most of the billionaires became that way by creating a company that became wildly successful. How many millionaires have Bezos, Buffet, Gates, Musk, et al made with their willingness to put capital at risk and create jobs and fortunes for others? A lot of these fabulously wealthy people don't take a salary or a very low one anymore.
 
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gamecockcat said:
Its a numbers game. If your net worth is $100 million, even a slight gain in one yearwill be more than most people make in a career. Most of the billionaires became that way by creating a company that became wildly successful. How many millionaires have Bezos, Buffet, Gates, Musk, et al made with their willingness to put capital at risk and create jobs and fortunes for others? A lot of these fabulously wealthy people don't take a salary or a very low one anymore.
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And how many people are they paying poverty wages to when they could easily afford to pay more?
 
Nbacats said:
And how many people are they paying poverty wages to when they could easily afford to pay more?
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I have no idea what they pay but Amazon is hiring here for their warehouse and I think they start at $16/hour. For someone with limited high-value skills and no college degree, I don't think that's poverty wages.
 
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gamecockcat said:
Wharton, one of the best business schools in America, is obviously populated with students who haven't lived in the real world for a while, if ever. Over 25% guessed >$100,000 and one student guessed $800k. The real number: ~$53k. (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/n...ot-make-800-000-11642680985?mod=mw_latestnews)

I'd be really interested to know if any of these 'elite' students who represent the best and brightest of business students in America have ever held a job (outside a work/study)? They may have discovered that not everyone goes to the country club every weekend, the Hamptons for holiday, owns multiple homes, drive a new $50+k car, etc.

And then we wonder why our political leaders (of both stripes) who've gone to private schools and elite universities, have so little perception of how their constituents live and the most important issues to them. I guess if everyone you know all live like royalty, you come to believe that that is the norm.
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Who's to blame? (Not trying to be smart.)
 
KyCatFan said:
Maybe students should be required to go out and do actual 40+ hour a week jobs and experience what it's like in the real world to manage their money before enrolling in college. Then they can see through any full of sh*t professors that have no practical skills besides helping to give out worthless degrees and put students in major debt.
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People who go to Wharton have on average around 5 years of post college work experience. It’s referring to the graduate business program.
 
WayneDougan said:
People who go to Wharton have on average around 5 years of post college work experience. It’s referring to the graduate business program.
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I'm more talking about all college students. See how the real world works before jumping into major debt and then decide when you actually attend college if what you want to go there for is a waste of time and money. To many think they can jump into some big cushy job making like a $100k straight out of school before they realize there is no use for their Philosophy degree.
 
KyCatFan said:
I'm more talking about all college students. See how the real world works before jumping into major debt and then decide when you actually attend college if what you want to go there for is a waste of time and money. To many think they can jump into some big cushy job making like a $100k straight out of school before they realize there is no use for their Philosophy degree.
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I've thought for a while that one way of reining in runaway college debt, especially for what I would deem BS degrees, is allow the lender to underwrite.

You want an accounting degree? Fine, you can borrow $X. You want an education degree? Great, but your prospects for income are less than the accounting degree so you can only borrow $.75X. You want a chemical engineering degree? You can borrow #1.6X. You want a gender studies degree? Sorry, that's a bad investment and you won't be able to pay back the loan. Or, $.25X.

If we need more teachers, we can sweeten the loan terms. Or more engineers. Or more GP doctors. OTOH, spending >$100k for a 4-year degree that doesnt prepare you for any career, is a waste of money. You don't think Amazon and the public library aren't full of books you can read on your own to learn about gender issues or philosophy? Why borrow money you can't pay back to learn some subject that you can learn on your own?
 
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PanzakGunky said:
I agree with this point. All of us know that the best businessmen are from regular or poor families. They know the needs of middle-income people. They know how to create a successful business plan because they have more points in mind because of more life experience. They know how to make their constituents happier not in words. They're not robots grown in hothouse conditions.
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Plenty of kids from wealthy families grow up to be very good business people. Elon Musk, Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, etc. are examples. To me its more about a person's work ethic, drive, intelligence, opportunity, entrepreneurial risk taking, etc.
 
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DSmith21 said:
Plenty of kids from wealthy families grow up to be very good business people. Elon Musk, Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, etc. are examples.
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Yep, the absence of debt is the key. To build wealth you need to control/ manage debt wisely. Except for a few, building wealth is a process. I know millionaires who live in very meager accommodations. They never changed their habits that got them where they are... Not a bad thing...
 
Larry Skaggs said:
What is the point of being a millionaire if you can’t enjoy it?
I would get me a self driving truck with air and a CD player
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Not sure if pointed at me but if so, they are very content and have relatively few worries. Their statement to me was that they are free of stress. They have children that are in good shape family-wise and financially. (As a parent of older children and a grandfather to grandchildren there is a lot to be said for that...) Take care...
 
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