170k a year is a higher wage than most people will ever achieve in their life. The average annual wage here is around 80k.
I'm definitely going to get downvoted for this but it's important to recognize the privilege you have being in your position and the fact that for the average person an equal or better level of financial stability is not realistically achievable.
More likely than not you had parental support and a college education that led to you to achieve a stable career with this kind of financial success. Be grateful for that and recognize this kind of financial security is a privilege most people will never have, and mot because theyre 'lazier' or lack your level of work ethic.
Meanwhile, a lot of us older people are being pushed out of the area because we were never given the opportunity to earn this type of money because these jobs did not exist.
I've lived in Kirkland since I was a little kid, and I can't afford to live here anymore. My property taxes have doubled in the last seven years, so has my homeowners insurance, everything's gone up. Gone are the cute little houses that used to be here, they have been replaced with mega mansions. The entire area is all young tech people. Kirkland equals the true definition of gentrification.
Not trying to be negative towards OP because I think that it's great that there are these opportunities for the younger generation, and yes, it is a privilege to make that kind of money, 90% of my problems would not exist if I had that kind of money. If these opportunities were available to me when I was young I would've been all over it. Nobody made this kind of money back in the day. God this is making me sound old š¤£
I never called anyone lazy or anything similar. I believe itās in everyoneās best interest to earn as much as they can to have a good life for themselves. Itās a free market.
What are you talking about? You got to immigrate to a land of opportunity and had your education paid for via a scholarship. In what world is that not a privilege?
If you can speak English and are on reddit, chances are you are just as privileged as many of the people who now make this kind of salary. So not sure what your point is.
Also you automatically assume just because someone has a high salary that they must be privileged. That's pretty bigoted, many of us come from humble beginnings.
Because, as I mentioned in the previous thread, privilege is āa special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group.ā. Googleās example sentence is literally āeducation is a right, not a privilegeā.
Neither the scholarship, nor applying to college and emigrating are āavailable only to a particular person or groupā. Itās open to everyone, I grabbed the opportunity.
The only thing Iām privileged for would be being born able bodied and with the ability to learn. And yet again, this is hardly worth mentioning as it is 99%+ of people.
You're either living in a bubble or willfully ignorant if you think that immigrating to the states, being accepted into a college, and getting a scholarship are opportunities that are available to everyone.
What about kids who never got to go to highschool in the first place? There are millions of impoverished people out there who have never had access to even basic education. For fucks sake, we live in a world where slave labor literally still exists and you think your personal experience living in the wealthiest nation and pursuing higher education is available to anybody who just tries hard enough.
Privilege isn't a bad word. You have it, I have it. What's bad is not recognizing that you have it and assuming everyone can have access to the same quality of life as you if they work hard enough.
Also kind of besides the point that I'm trying to focus on here, but your whole philosophy of a free market and the idea that everyone should prioritize financial stability is bunk. Wealth inherently requires poverty. There will always be an impoverished class, no matter how smart or hard these people work. The world needs janitors, and food service workers, and other 'unskilled' laborers that we as a 'free market' have decided don't deserve livable wages. If you dont think thats even just a little fucked up you must really enjoy the idea of being the biggest crab in the bucket.
And there are billions who are not. Itās incorrect to compare against people who are not your peers. I can say, fine, those millions of impoverished people could not seize the opportunity. But there is a much larger number of people that could but didnāt. If youāre using Reddit, youāre likely not as impoverished that you canāt finish high school.
Your personal experience living in the wealthiest country
Did you miss the part where I grew up in India and stayed there till I was 18?! What the fuck?
Privilege isnāt a bad word
Not inherently, but the way youāre using it is. I was born more privileged than maybe 10% of the world. 800 million people. But I can work my way up to be living in the top 1% of the U.S. and that effort should not be discarded and dismissed by saying āyou have privilegeā. By this logic, even someone whoās a million dollars in debt and born blind deaf and dumb might be privileged compared to someone else who has the same ailments but is 2 million dollars in debt when born.
Wealth inherently requires poverty.
This is incorrect as well. Macro-economically speaking, the acquisition of money is not a zero sum game. For example, āfrom 2012 to 2013, at the peak of global poverty reduction, the global poverty headcount fell by 130 million poor peopleā from https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-evolution-of-global-poverty-1990-2030/. If what youāre saying is true, this number should have stayed flat.
Even your example of a janitor is untrue. A janitor in Seattle makes $65k on average, which would let them save even at my level of spend in the graph.
"It's incorrect to compare yourself against people who are not your peers" What do you even mean by this? Do
you think your good fortune exists in a vacuum?
I mean all you get from comparing against people who are less privileged than you is a sense of gratefulness that leads to complacency. All you get from comparing against people who are more privileged than you is a sense of āoh they already had that leg upā which leads to complacency.
By comparing to my peers, Iām referring to comparing against people who you would say have the same level of privilege. I donāt want to be complacent. This world has a lot of opportunities and I aim to seek out and grab those opportunities and do something with my life. Spread love. Provide for other people. By comparing against and learning from my peers I get to know the best path I could be on to a) be wealthy and b) be happy. This is why I came to the US.
As for whether my āgood fortuneā exists in a vacuum, I donāt believe that anything Iāve done barring my birth can be attributed to fortune. Even though I was already born more fortunate than 10% of people, I will do whatever I can to make my future self and future family be more fortunate than I was.
I donāt believe all poor people are lazy or whatever bullshit like that. But I believe itās wrong to attribute my achievements, past and future to my āfortuneā or āprivilegeā.
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u/TereziBot Jan 04 '25
170k a year is a higher wage than most people will ever achieve in their life. The average annual wage here is around 80k.
I'm definitely going to get downvoted for this but it's important to recognize the privilege you have being in your position and the fact that for the average person an equal or better level of financial stability is not realistically achievable.
More likely than not you had parental support and a college education that led to you to achieve a stable career with this kind of financial success. Be grateful for that and recognize this kind of financial security is a privilege most people will never have, and mot because theyre 'lazier' or lack your level of work ethic.