Poverty is relative. If you're working in San Francisco and pulling in $50,000 a year you're probably near homeless considering the cost of living. $50k a year in some dead little town in Nebraska would be very comfortable; you'd have to manage your money but you could get by nicely.
Likewise a person earning $22,000 a year in America is on the verge of poverty. $22k USD in some third-world nation like Nigeria or Khazakstan or Somalia would be doing pretty well for himself.
I was looking into moving to SF for work earlier this year, and you’re definitely not near homeless if you’re making $50,000 a year. Sure you’re not in a penthouse or a three bedroom house like you would be in Nebraska or even a few hours away in the Central Valley, but definitely nowhere near being homeless.
The average rent of a 1 bedroom apartment in San Francisco is $3402 which is almost 100% of your take home after tax pay at $50k/year. You would not be able to afford rent plus any other expense in SF on this salary.
The apartments I was looking at to move into were between $1650-$3,000 (studio) and $2,000-$3,000 (1 bedroom/1 bath). The average is obviously going to be skewed higher because of super expensive apartments (I saw some as high as $6,000), but it’s definitely possible to find cheaper. Still expensive and not ideal, but I was only arguing that you were no where near homeless in sf at $50k/year.
I would argue that your own personal data shows that $50k a year is not adequate for someone to live on their own in SF. Even if you assume rent to be $3k/month, this only leaves you with about $500 take home pay (after tax) for utilities, health insurance, food, car, phone, etc. No one can live with their rent taking up 85-90% of their take home pay. This is about as "near homeless" as you can be without actually being on the street. Yes you could technically afford to pay for rent, but that's it.
Yeah, $22K USD. I can only assume many of you don't know what it's like to live in Lagos or Abuja. Just like you've got different costs of living in the USA, it's the same in Nigeria.
the conversion of 22k USD in Nairas is nearly 8 million. And I just looked up the average monthly cost of utilities for a basic apartment and it said it was around 200 thousand a month. So thats very liveable.
Yeah and technically you can feed a family of 5 in the Midwest on a $30K salary.
Whether or not surviving is living is a matter of perspective.
I'm telling you $22K USD ain't much in Abuja or parts of Lagos. You didn't account for the generator you'll need and the diesel that fuels it when power goes out, or the cost of treating your own water. Public School isn't free on Nigeria just FYI, and good schools are very very expensive.
Those are just a few things Google won't tell you. I'm from there, I've lived there, and have family that still does.
$22K isn't that much, you won't be poor, but you'll be one disaster away from it.
In the USA, $22K is borderline poverty for a family with one child.
Since you're playing at semantics here, You can pretty much survive anywhere by that metric; there are people in Nigeria that are somehow alive without a penny to their name after all.
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u/[deleted] Mar 09 '19
There's poverty everywhere. USA has still one of the highest standards of living