incomes

It also has one of the highest median incomes, and among the highest disposable incomes.

The difference is the power law chart of the incomes.

Relative to housing costs, they enjoyed incomes that today would be in the range of a $300k+ base salary.

You can't, mathematically, spend 17% of your GDP on healthcare without US level incomes and still pay for everything else.

But all that better stuff Americans can buy is largely due to bigger household incomes from women entering the workforce.

And yes, 50% down payment is untenable for the majority of people in the US, even those with upper middle class incomes.

In the areas with cheap real estate, this is because incomes are low.

So, we had higher incomes, but not by a huge margin, certainly less than the spread would be in the US.

My in-laws, who lived 2/3rds of their lives under communism, have already retired simply because they spent less than they made (of their paltry incomes) and invested it conservatively.

Meanwhile, my own parents who have had solid upper middle incomes in the US, always lived above their means, have an oversized new house and financed cars, don't even have $10k in the bank.

I'm not saying it wasn't tough, but housing prices were much lower relative to incomes in the 50s and 60s, even in a place like San Francisco.

Some companies have incomes comparable with nation states, I'd have no reason to suspect they'd be any less capable of building military technology that rivalled those from a country.

And these are the "perma renters" who have been forced out or closed to forced out due to their lower incomes.

Define "regressive" because when I google it I get "(of a tax) taking a proportionally greater amount from those on lower incomes".

There is an expanding mass of rank-and-file “outsiders” ready to forgo income for future wealth, and a small core of “insiders” securing incomes largely at the expense of the mass.

"People with diverse incomes" satisfies his argument.