Post: #126

(12-08-2016 03:18 PM)Merenguero Wrote:  

(12-08-2016 02:33 PM)Hell_Is_Like_Newark Wrote:  How many of those birth are covered in one form or another of government assistance? i.e. WIC That is the number I want to know.

That WIC stuff is completely out of control. There is a supermarket I go to just to just to buy green tea and every time I'm in the place, there are no fewer than ten people in every checkout lane (only two lanes are ever open at one time in this particular supermarket) and the vast majority of them are paying with these government issued checks for WIC or whatever the hell it is and have absolutely no shame in doing so. I'd have a bad over my head if I were ever doing that.

Head right outside some low income stores and you will see people selling their benefits for half off. They walk in with you to the registers to pay, they swipe their EBT card, and you pay them 1/2 whatever the bill actually is. It's pretty open in some places.

Best "WTF" welfare moments:
Guy buys 10 pounds of fajitas, charges them to EBT. He had beers in hand but paid them separately.

Lady is at the register line wearing a velvet coat with a bunch of diamond jewelry and Tom Ford shades....pulls out EBT card. As I was walking out with my little cart, her E-Class is parked next to my car. Really bish?

Some neighbor a decade had a welfare program paying half his rent, he was on unemployment, kids on WIC while his wife was working 45+ hours. Dude couldn't hold a job because he was an alcoholic (he got fired for showing up drunk and pissed himself once at my mom's job). What do they do for xmas? Buy the kids Jordans and a Xbox 360 when they just came out. According to my little sister, the kid couldn't read "at grade level" and thought hitting girls was okay.

Post: #127

(12-09-2016 05:11 PM)TravelerKai Wrote:  That's an interesting concept. Looking at RVF for example, we have a underrated wealth of knowledge here. Someday Roosh will want some means to organize it into a better structure, but its all there. The Big Data platforms large companies are using today will be cheaper and easier to use in the future. So Roosh could easily add something like that to his already present platform and create his own data warehouses.

As more places collect knowledge, it is possible for people to give themselves a basic education using the internet, but until doctorate level engineering professors start giving away lectures for free online, I'm skeptical that someone can give themselves an advanced education just using the internet.

But the country does not, and cannot function on doctorate level education. It needs regular guys fresh out of high school able to make a living. The internet is going to boost their effectiveness tremendously.

Quote:I can see where you are going with that. It's not too far fetched. I once had a French professor for engineering that lamented how industry used to come to the university for innovation and ideas, but now it is the opposite. The university has to work hard to keep up with private industry. It's possible that the internet could widen that gap even more.

The university likes to keep all of it's information private. It claims to be holier than everyone else and better informed.

Meanwhile the internet gives out information for free.

Now Donald Trump is the President.

Maybe instead of bitching about how stupid everyone else, the universities could share some of their supposed "knowledge"?

Free > Experts every single time.

Post: #128

I think people are giving the 40-50K a year school too much credit. My sister lives in Manhattan and her children are going to such schools. Other than rubbing elbows with the ultra wealthy elites, it provides no educational benefit. The maths taught there is atrocious, when I looked at my nephew's maths homework and exams (I used to be at International Maths Olympiad level back in my school days). The reading is pretty lame, and they can do much better going to a library or home bookshelves like I did. Or Kindle, much more convenient. Their gym class is shit where no kid is encouraged to do better than the bare minimum. My nephew once told me about his class where every boy did exactly 7 pushups, none giving a go for just one more. A lot of money also go into fluffy stuff like drama or jazz dance class, the latter of which as someone who used to compete and perform in swing dancing, I can teach way better.

My wife and I can do a much better job homeschooling our future children, I reckon. I make enough money to send them to top private schools here, but I'd rather set them up with a trust fund and teach them how to invest.

I don't mind the iPad for kids too much, but they don't cost 40K a year. You can buy one for a few hundred bucks even if your child is homeschooled. Having said that, children using those things are basically using other people's creativity. I do not think they will turn out smarter and more creative than previous generations, necessarily. There is a huge difference between the likes of TravelerKai and me getting those dinosaur computers back in the 80s and 90s, and these kids playing fancy edu games on iPads. Our dinosaur computers were not fun to anyone except the kids who are fascinated by high level of abstract thinking and already predisposed to tech innovation. In order to get anything fun out of them, we had to muck around a lot and come up with new things ourselves. Modern kids don't have to do that with their fancy tablets and computers, and it shows. I work in an area of IT that sees the latest development every other week, and unlike previous decades, we do not see young people in this field anymore. All of us are in our 30s and older. The Millennials who grew up with good computers can't innovate anything, because they never had to. We usually have them do social media work for us for marketing and comms, as that's what they're best at: using apps on phones and typing up short sentences.

It's not different to other toys. My parents were dirt poor and couldn't afford any toy. I had to make my own toys, usually out of clay, or come up with games for myself and my friends, and that's taught me so much about being creative, resourceful and leading a group (of little boys). Now you see kids going through mountains of China-made toys every year costing thousands, and they barely use them for more than 5 mins before getting bored. They're wasting all that at the expense of developing creativity and social interaction skills with other kids. That's why kids up to Millennials these days are so damn awkward, because most of the time they only interact with plastic and electronics, not humans!

Post: #129

Quote:My wife and I can do a much better job homeschooling our future children, I reckon. I make enough money to send them to top private schools here, but I'd rather set them up with a trust fund and teach them how to invest.

Yes! I can't believe I even forgot to mention this. Fuck 100K on a education, imagine what you can buy in the real world? Get some rental properties that will carry you for life. Learn "skills" from other professionals and just pay them directly. Apprenticeships need to make a comeback.

Post: #130

(12-09-2016 05:59 PM)wi30 Wrote:  For the guys who think you have to make six figures to raise a family, here are a couple income statistics (per Wikipedia).

The highest per capita is DC with $45,877, lowest is Mississippi with $21,036.

Highest household income is Maryland with $70,004, lowest is again Mississippi with $36,919.

Nationwide, the median household income is $57,616.

Most people in the U.S. live and raise children on extremely modest incomes.

This is very interesting to me. A working class man used to be able to support his family in the US, with his wife staying home to raise the children. He would own his home, and have one car for the family.

I live in a 2nd tier city in flyover country. In my city, a basic two bedroom without too many shootings in the apt complex costs $1000/month. Add a car payment on a minimum cost used car, plus utilities, smart phone, ins., plus basic spending costs with children, and I don't see how anyone can live on these median incomes.

The math just doesn't work. The absolute cheapest, dirt bag, sacrificial cost of living with rent, running vehicle, food, clothing, diapers, and medical is at least $57k/year. Anyone making less is making some severe compromises, or living in a cheap COL part of the country and still making an income somehow.

Anyone providing the life they want for their children at this income level is in a hard to achieve niche. Anyone not already in this kind of niche will either need to get there, or have somewhere around $70-80K/year income to provide the minimum lifestyle they'd expect for their children.

Just to be clear, by minimum lifestyle, I mean no used needles in the front yard.

Do any of the US members have a different experience?

Post: #131

(12-09-2016 05:59 PM)wi30 Wrote:  

(12-09-2016 12:58 PM)philosophical_recovery Wrote:  

(12-09-2016 12:37 PM)Enigma Wrote:  Damn, people had to cry to the mods instead of just calling John_Galt out for what they didn't like.

Agree. Real trolls and scammers are worth reporting. Not necessarily internet tough guys. They're kind of fun as long as it doesn't turn into a game of Soggy Biscuit.

I only report when obvious trolls are obvious.

For the guys who think you have to make six figures to raise a family, here are a couple income statistics (per Wikipedia).

The highest per capita is DC with $45,877, lowest is Mississippi with $21,036.

Highest household income is Maryland with $70,004, lowest is again Mississippi with $36,919.

Nationwide, the median household income is $57,616.

Most people in the U.S. live and raise children on extremely modest incomes.

What you call modest income is being baller in the developing part of the world. That average household income of 57k is the reason why nearly everyone in the world is trying to immigrate to the US. You have people in Turkey who raise their family on 6-7k/year.. As income rises birth rate falls. This is a simple fact. Only exceptions are non-secular islamic countries.


I'm not even gonna touch on Africa.
It may be a modest amount for people in this forum but probably 90%-95% of the world population lives on far below that amount.

Post: #132

By the age of 18, one should more or less be able to gauge the abilities of their children then, ask yourself a serious question at this crossroad....

"Is this 200k cash better off paid for my kids tertiary education, or

Used as a seed capital for his own venture/business, or

Let it sit in the bank because the kid is a f--k up."

I have seen many of my peers parents refusing to ask themselves the third question, thinking expensive tertiary education can turn their kid around, ending up with a wasted "investment" and three years of subsidized partying for the kid.

Post: #133

(12-09-2016 08:07 PM)RoastBeefCurtains4Me Wrote:  This is very interesting to me. A working class man used to be able to support his family in the US, with his wife staying home to raise the children. He would own his home, and have one car for the family.

I live in a 2nd tier city in flyover country. In my city, a basic two bedroom without too many shootings in the apt complex costs $1000/month. Add a car payment on a minimum cost used car, plus utilities, smart phone, ins., plus basic spending costs with children, and I don't see how anyone can live on these median incomes.

The math just doesn't work. The absolute cheapest, dirt bag, sacrificial cost of living with rent, running vehicle, food, clothing, diapers, and medical is at least $57k/year. Anyone making less is making some severe compromises, or living in a cheap COL part of the country and still making an income somehow.

Anyone providing the life they want for their children at this income level is in a hard to achieve niche. Anyone not already in this kind of niche will either need to get there, or have somewhere around $70-80K/year income to provide the minimum lifestyle they'd expect for their children.

Just to be clear, by minimum lifestyle, I mean no used needles in the front yard.

Do any of the US members have a different experience?

Back home in Wisconsin, outside of Madison and the suburbs of Milwaukee, the cost of living is very affordable. My ex and I lived in the top half of a large historic home that had two bedrooms for $350 each per month. If I didn't have student loans, I could live very comfortably on a bartender's salary in places like La Crosse or Eau Claire. There is a correlation between cost of living and job opportunities though. I couldn't find a high paying job so I moved to the Denver area and now pay about $1000 per month for a less than impressive one bedroom. My salary more than offsets the cost of living but not everyone can make those kinds of career and lifestyle moves.

(12-09-2016 08:18 PM)LikeABaller Wrote:  What you call modest income is being baller in the developing part of the world. That average household income of 57k is the reason why nearly everyone in the world is trying to immigrate to the US. You have people in Turkey who raise their family on 6-7k/year.. As income rises birth rate falls. This is a simple fact. Only exceptions are non-secular islamic countries.

I'm not even gonna touch on Africa.
It may be a modest amount for people in this forum but probably 90%-95% of the world population lives on far below that amount.

And what is the cost of living like in those regions? I've never been to Turkey or Africa, but I would bet I could live like a king in many places on $1000 per month.

It's all relative. 10K a year in some countries allows you provide for yourself the same way 100K would in a place like NYC. You'd be pretty wealthy making 100K a year in most regions of the U.S, but that is only going to keep your head above the water in an expensive city.

Edited for clarity

Post: #134

(12-09-2016 10:04 PM)wi30 Wrote:  And what is the cost of living like in those regions? I've never been to Turkey or Africa, but I would bet I could live like a king in many places on $1000 per month.

It's all relative. 10K a year in some countries allows you a similar lifestyle to 100K a year in an expensive city like NYC. You'd be pretty wealthy making 100K a year in most regions of the U.S, but that is only going to keep your head above the water in an expensive city.

Where?

More details.

And have you been there?

Post: #135

Spaniard, I edited my post with better wording. I wasn't trying to say there's a city like NYC out there in Africa where you can live for 10K a year while attending professional sports games or Broadway plays.

I was talking about providing for your basic needs, savings, and having a little left over for fun. You have to make six figures to pay for an apartment that costs $3000 per month.

Post: #136

(12-09-2016 08:07 PM)RoastBeefCurtains4Me Wrote:  

(12-09-2016 05:59 PM)wi30 Wrote:  For the guys who think you have to make six figures to raise a family, here are a couple income statistics (per Wikipedia).

The highest per capita is DC with $45,877, lowest is Mississippi with $21,036.

Highest household income is Maryland with $70,004, lowest is again Mississippi with $36,919.

Nationwide, the median household income is $57,616.

Most people in the U.S. live and raise children on extremely modest incomes.

This is very interesting to me. A working class man used to be able to support his family in the US, with his wife staying home to raise the children. He would own his home, and have one car for the family.

I live in a 2nd tier city in flyover country. In my city, a basic two bedroom without too many shootings in the apt complex costs $1000/month. Add a car payment on a minimum cost used car, plus utilities, smart phone, ins., plus basic spending costs with children, and I don't see how anyone can live on these median incomes.

The math just doesn't work. The absolute cheapest, dirt bag, sacrificial cost of living with rent, running vehicle, food, clothing, diapers, and medical is at least $57k/year. Anyone making less is making some severe compromises, or living in a cheap COL part of the country and still making an income somehow.

Anyone providing the life they want for their children at this income level is in a hard to achieve niche. Anyone not already in this kind of niche will either need to get there, or have somewhere around $70-80K/year income to provide the minimum lifestyle they'd expect for their children.

Just to be clear, by minimum lifestyle, I mean no used needles in the front yard.

Do any of the US members have a different experience?

Yes.

Life at $30k/year is vastly different with a family than it is when you are single. In MN for example, making that $30k qualifies you for free health insurance, free daycare, foodstamps, EITC tax credits of about $3k. You get zero of those freebies if you are single. A poor family has access to a subsidy gravy train.

I've lived in the midwest, and the deep south at incomes ranging from 24k/yr to $200k/yr Living in the south is immensely cheaper than the midwest.

We rented a house in west TN built in 2009, 1200 sq ft for $800/month in the south. TN has no state income tax and property tax is nothing. $600/yr property tax on the above 1200 sq ft home.

If you create and stick to a budget, don't try to 'keep up with joneses' and have a stay at home wife you can raise a family on a very modest income.

Post: #137

(12-09-2016 07:13 PM)StrikeBack Wrote:  I think people are giving the 40-50K a year school too much credit. My sister lives in Manhattan and her children are going to such schools. Other than rubbing elbows with the ultra wealthy elites, it provides no educational benefit. The maths taught there is atrocious, when I looked at my nephew's maths homework and exams (I used to be at International Maths Olympiad level back in my school days). The reading is pretty lame, and they can do much better going to a library or home bookshelves like I did. Or Kindle, much more convenient. Their gym class is shit where no kid is encouraged to do better than the bare minimum. My nephew once told me about his class where every boy did exactly 7 pushups, none giving a go for just one more. A lot of money also go into fluffy stuff like drama or jazz dance class, the latter of which as someone who used to compete and perform in swing dancing, I can teach way better.

See the bolded bit?

That's why they're really paying 40-50K per year. None of those ultra wealthy assholes are actually going to be designing the next interplanetary rocket; they aren't smart enough. They will be occupying the empty suits that manage Wall Street funds and companies that do nothing of social value. That is, they will be manipulating the financial system by insider trading and sweetheart deals for each other, the way the Clintons did business. The 40-50K is an entry ticket to the highly lucrative world of nepotism ... if they can penetrate the ultra wealthy's social circles, which is not as easy as it sounds.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #138

Yeah I know exactly why my sister and her husband send their kids to those schools: the social connections to the elites. Both of them come from poor background and they have this deep seated need for their children to be among the wealthy, at any cost unfortunately. The class mates of my niece and nephew are the children of celebrities and the wealthy with 9 or 10 digits net worth.

However, like I said, the quality of education itself is pretty poor for what they're paying for.

My wife and I are from similarly poor backgrounds but we don't have that kind of insecurity. We are comfortable now and we will be rich, but we don't need to sacrifice our mental and physical well beings or kiss some pinko progressive elite's arse to get there.

Post: #139

i think people miss the point about 'better schools'. It's partly the education and facilities but it's more about paying for them to be in an environment which cultivates a culture of hard work, excellence and allows them to makes friends with people who have hire aspirations then becoming drunk bums of drugdealers

Post: #140

(12-10-2016 01:01 AM)MANic Wrote:  i think people miss the point about 'better schools'. It's partly the education and facilities but it's more about paying for them to be in an environment which cultivates a culture of hard work, excellence and allows them to makes friends with people who have hire aspirations then becoming drunk bums of drugdealers

Yes, guys don't seem to get this. It's not about sending your kids to some super-elite private school that costs $50k a year to make sure they become the next captains of industry. No one is saying that is a necessity (or even desirable). The focus is not as much on trying to maximize every last bit of opportunity and potential available, but rather to avoid the pitfalls and downside risk as much as you possibly can. Even kids with good genetics and innate intelligence easily fall prey to peer pressure and conformity. Think back to when you were a kid, especially the crucial years of 10-16 or so. There was nothing more important than fitting in with your peers (this is central to how human beings are wired, these are the prime years when we learn to socialize as adults and how we as individuals fit into larger social structures).

It's incredibly easy for good kids to "break bad" during their adolescence due to negative peer influence. If you send your kids to some shitty public school where they're surrounded by future dropouts, criminals and welfare queens, what sort of peer pressure do you think they're going to experience? Are their peers going to make them better by encouraging athletic and academic competition? Or are they going to pressure them to skip class and smoke weed behind the gym?

I watched it happen to good, smart kids that I knew while growing up. They just sort of go off the rails at some point in adolescence and never seem to recover. It usually starts with drugs and petty crime for guys, and early sexual encounters with bad boys for girls. The story always ends the same: drug addiction, criminal records, illegitimate children (usually cared for by the grandparents, that would be you in this case) and difficulty holding a job, much less establishing a successful career.

You simply have to limit your kids' exposure to that kind of negative peer influence. I've seen it ruin lives. And these were good kids, from good families, not generational ghetto dwellers or white trash. If your kids stumble that bad right out the gate, they usually won't recover, and you as a parent will be left to deal with the consequences for the rest of your life.

Post: #141

^ On the flip side I've known kids whose parents busted their asses to get them into wealthy private schools only for them to be bullied into suicidal levels of depression because they were "poor kids".

And the school of course did nothing because "fuck the poor kids", and I'm not even kidding.

I'm raising my kids in the country where people are civilised. The hell if I know how parents manage in the cities. God knows it's a miracle I'm not doing 25 to life right now.

Post: #142

Instead of sending to those elite schools Let's say you set aside 50k for your kids future every year and you invest it in dividend stocks. Let's assume it will have a very modest return of 6% every year. And lets assume you begin setting it aside from the age of 6 until he is 21.



By the time your kid is 21, his investment portfolio will be worth 1.2 million $

That will put him probably in the top 1% of the world wealth wise.

And in these 21 years if you ingrain red pill and investment knowledge into his mind there is no reason why he/she shouldn't be worth 10 million $ by the age of 30.

Post: #143

(12-10-2016 01:01 AM)MANic Wrote:  i think people miss the point about 'better schools'. It's partly the education and facilities but it's more about paying for them to be in an environment which cultivates a culture of hard work, excellence and allows them to makes friends with people who have hire aspirations then becoming drunk bums of drugdealers

This is my primary concern for the first few years of schooling. I am really not worrying about hardcore academics until after the second grade.

An example of what you can run into at Grade 2 and lower:

My wife's friends kids are in public school. They have an issue with kids in kindergarten who are STILL in diapers. These kids who are behind developmentally suck the life out of the classroom. The teacher spend almost the entire time trying to manage these kids whilst the rest of the class pretty much gets ignored.

Post: #144

(12-10-2016 12:43 PM)Hell_Is_Like_Newark Wrote:  

(12-10-2016 01:01 AM)MANic Wrote:  i think people miss the point about 'better schools'. It's partly the education and facilities but it's more about paying for them to be in an environment which cultivates a culture of hard work, excellence and allows them to makes friends with people who have hire aspirations then becoming drunk bums of drugdealers

This is my primary concern for the first few years of schooling. I am really not worrying about hardcore academics until after the second grade.

An example of what you can run into at Grade 2 and lower:

My wife's friends kids are in public school. They have an issue with kids in kindergarten who are STILL in diapers. These kids who are behind developmentally suck the life out of the classroom. The teacher spend almost the entire time trying to manage these kids whilst the rest of the class pretty much gets ignored.

I can't wait for federal funding to be pulled from these zoos so that locals have more control over what actually happens and where their kids go to school. I.e. not being stuck with an underperforming classroom.

Here, in the granola crunching, rich tech-family western U.S., there are wars being fought constantly on which million dollar house to buy because it puts your kids in the "right" school district. I hear about it all the time.

It's insanity. Everyone else has to pay for their great school districting experience instead of just keeping their money for their own families.

Post: #145

(12-09-2016 08:07 PM)RoastBeefCurtains4Me Wrote:  I live in a 2nd tier city in flyover country. In my city, a basic two bedroom without too many shootings in the apt complex costs $1000/month. Add a car payment on a minimum cost used car, plus utilities, smart phone, ins., plus basic spending costs with children, and I don't see how anyone can live on these median incomes.

The math just doesn't work. The absolute cheapest, dirt bag, sacrificial cost of living with rent, running vehicle, food, clothing, diapers, and medical is at least $57k/year. Anyone making less is making some severe compromises, or living in a cheap COL part of the country and still making an income somehow.

Anyone providing the life they want for their children at this income level is in a hard to achieve niche. Anyone not already in this kind of niche will either need to get there, or have somewhere around $70-80K/year income to provide the minimum lifestyle they'd expect for their children.

Just to be clear, by minimum lifestyle, I mean no used needles in the front yard.

$1000/month for rent
+
$150/month utilities
+
$250/month car payment
+
$100/month car ins.
+
$100/month cell phone
=
1600
*
12 months in a year
=
19,200

57,000
-
19,200
=
37,800

Adjusted for income tax that still leaves you with approximately $25k - $30k extra a year. You could spend another $1000/month on gas, cable/internet/netflix, overpriced groceries and diapers, and plenty of takeout and still have around $15k left at the end of the year.

I also would like to point this out:

(12-09-2016 10:04 PM)wi30 Wrote:  I moved to the Denver area and now pay about $1000 per month for a less than impressive one bedroom.

(12-09-2016 08:07 PM)RoastBeefCurtains4Me Wrote:  I live in a 2nd tier city in flyover country. In my city, a basic two bedroom without too many shootings in the apt complex costs $1000/month.

You both live in Denver as do I. the difference is you both chose to live in the city where living cost is always going to be exponentially higher. In my opinion there is no reason to live in a metropolitan area unless it's 100% personal preference.

I live in a suburb just outside of Denver proper and I have a 2-bedroom 1000 sq. foot house in a nice quet neighboorhood with my own garage and front and back yard for $1200/month. I can still get downtown by car in 20 minutes and there is busses and trains right by my house if I want to take public transit and avoid paying for parking.

Also keep in mind with that national median income - most of the country does not live in a major city. Most of the country lives in suburbs where cost of living is far far lower than metro areas. $57k goes a real long way if you aren't paying $2500/month to live in a 500sq ft. filing cabinet in some downtown city center where you have to pay extra just to have a parking space and auto insurance rates are through the roof because you live in a city and the prices of everything are inflated.

Post: #146

I'm in the suburbs too. My apartment would be probably be around $1600-$2000 if I chose to live right in Denver.

Post: #147

I'm right on the outer edge of the metro area. Some good friends had their rent jacked up several times in the past two years for a very plain two bedroom in a very modest neighborhood. They are married with two small children and had to move. That's what I'm basing my numbers on. Also, for a couple with two small children, I think some of your numbers are a little conservative. Over time, you need furniture, clothes, car repairs, visits back home to see family, new TV, microwave, washing machine, etc. Also, one car can be difficult for a married couple. Then there are student loans.

Now you get into the question, should the wife work? $57k is pretty high for an average young father to bring home. If he's the lone breadwinner, the family is probably getting by on much less than $57k. If the wife works, now you need daycare, which can take half her income. You have to have a second car. She also probably needs work clothes, and you will start eating out more.

It's a stressful rat race to actually make ends meet for average families with children. If you decide to live in a cheaper small town, you might be able to get an apt for half the cost, but now wages are lower too, and jobs might be outright scarce.

Finally, we are all red pill men here. We would figure out a way to hustle a higher paying job skill. We would wait to marry until our finances are on point. However, this thread is about the general population. How many people here have friends, family, and acquaintances that are young, married with children, and living comfortably on $57k or less? Not many, is my guess.

Society ought to be structured so a couple can marry and have several kids in their 20s, and be able to budget comfortably for a modest lifestyle, with at least a little money for family fun activities and holidays.

I'm hoping Trump will make things better, but he can't do magic.

Post: #148

(12-10-2016 08:02 PM)RoastBeefCurtains4Me Wrote:  I'm right on the outer edge of the metro area. Some good friends had their rent jacked up several times in the past two years for a very plain two bedroom in a very modest neighborhood. They are married with two small children and had to move. That's what I'm basing my numbers on. Also, for a couple with two small children, I think some of your numbers are a little conservative. Over time, you need furniture, clothes, car repairs, visits back home to see family, new TV, microwave, washing machine, etc. Also, one car can be difficult for a married couple. Then there are student loans.

Now you get into the question, should the wife work? $57k is pretty high for an average young father to bring home. If he's the lone breadwinner, the family is probably getting by on much less than $57k. If the wife works, now you need daycare, which can take half her income. You have to have a second car. She also probably needs work clothes, and you will start eating out more.

It's a stressful rat race to actually make ends meet for average families with children. If you decide to live in a cheaper small town, you might be able to get an apt for half the cost, but now wages are lower too, and jobs might be outright scarce.

Finally, we are all red pill men here. We would figure out a way to hustle a higher paying job skill. We would wait to marry until our finances are on point. However, this thread is about the general population. How many people here have friends, family, and acquaintances that are young, married with children, and living comfortably on $57k or less? Not many, is my guess.

Society ought to be structured so a couple can marry and have several kids in their 20s, and be able to budget comfortably for a modest lifestyle, with at least a little money for family fun activities and holidays.

I'm hoping Trump will make things better, but he can't do magic.

You're bringing a lot of hypothetical assumptions into the first two paragraphs here. Regardless, keep in mind that $57k figure that wi30 brought up is the median income. This means the middle of the road American household income. Not people living in Denver, CO. Not people living in Los Angeles, CA. Not people living in Hope, AR.

The fact of the matter is that the median household income is what it is and the USA is an extremely prosperous country. People in fact are living on those wages and raising children on them with few issues. The only reason why many young adults don't is for the reasons myself and many others have mentioned earlier in this thread: the myth that having children requires you to make above average household wages, and that children are "icky" and get in the way of a fun and successful life.

Post: #149

Its not comfort, but more to do with safety of laziness and boredom. The market for action holidays, tough mudder, gun hobbies, hunting, racing etc. The bad guys are no longer at your door and you feel safe behind a door and some glass windows.

If the West was a savage land I would bet the population wouldn't have such hobbies.

Post: #150

(12-09-2016 06:31 PM)Cattle Rustler Wrote:  

(12-08-2016 03:18 PM)Merenguero Wrote:  

(12-08-2016 02:33 PM)Hell_Is_Like_Newark Wrote:  How many of those birth are covered in one form or another of government assistance? i.e. WIC That is the number I want to know.

That WIC stuff is completely out of control. There is a supermarket I go to just to just to buy green tea and every time I'm in the place, there are no fewer than ten people in every checkout lane (only two lanes are ever open at one time in this particular supermarket) and the vast majority of them are paying with these government issued checks for WIC or whatever the hell it is and have absolutely no shame in doing so. I'd have a bad over my head if I were ever doing that.

Head right outside some low income stores and you will see people selling their benefits for half off. They walk in with you to the registers to pay, they swipe their EBT card, and you pay them 1/2 whatever the bill actually is. It's pretty open in some places.

Best "WTF" welfare moments:
Guy buys 10 pounds of fajitas, charges them to EBT. He had beers in hand but paid them separately.

Lady is at the register line wearing a velvet coat with a bunch of diamond jewelry and Tom Ford shades....pulls out EBT card. As I was walking out with my little cart, her E-Class is parked next to my car. Really bish?

Some neighbor a decade had a welfare program paying half his rent, he was on unemployment, kids on WIC while his wife was working 45+ hours. Dude couldn't hold a job because he was an alcoholic (he got fired for showing up drunk and pissed himself once at my mom's job). What do they do for xmas? Buy the kids Jordans and a Xbox 360 when they just came out. According to my little sister, the kid couldn't read "at grade level" and thought hitting girls was okay.

Yeah there's a lot of people messing it up for everyone else. I remember this guy who had 3 kids. He paid $500 dollars a month for rent but actually had an ok job making 9.50 an hour with lots of overtime. But he cut a deal with his landlord to write his receipts as if he was paying $1000 a month so he can show the EBT people that he was struggling, thus granting him an EBT card.

This one time a saw a guy at the grocery store buy 10 pounds of carne asada steak for a party with an EBT card for a party.

Crazy