As thousands of people remain unable to leave the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert after heavy rains inundated their campsites with ankle-deep mud Saturday, authorities say they are investigating a death at the event.
Attendees were told to shelter in place in the Black Rock Desert and conserve food, water and fuel after a rainstorm swamped the area, forcing officials to halt any entering or leaving of the festival.
The remote area in northwest Nevada was hit with 2 to 3 months worth of rain – up to 0.8 inches – in just 24 hours between Friday and Saturday mornings. The heavy rainfall fell on dry desert grounds, whipping up thick, clay-like mud that festivalgoers say is too difficult to walk or bike through.
The other takeaway is that more than half the attendees make more than 100k a year so not exactly a minority.
100k salary is a decent amount of money but it’s far as fuck from being “rich”.
It might be a perspective thing, and how you both define “rich”.
If someone gets by every week on ramen, a salary of $100k/year would seem like a crap ton of money. Doubly so if most of their community is also living off of ramen. One year on that salary alone would be life changing for this person.
If someone lives in a pricy area and maybe has a few kids, a salary of $100k wouldn’t seem like nearly as much. Doubly so if most of their community makes that much. One year on that salary is just another year for this person.
For some people, “rich” is not having to worry about starving and knowing that they have a roof over their head. It’s about finally being able to buy non-necessities, and it’s about being able to have things just for enjoyment. Some people are very month to month in terms of costs and bills.
To others, “rich” is being able to buy expensive boats and cars. It’s about having excess wealth and never having to worry about any monetary problems. These people might think of millionaires and billionaires when they hear the word “rich”.
Of course some people would consider $100k/year rich. I’m certain that MANY people would take that salary boost in a heartbeat.
I’m not saying that $100k would set you up anywhere near as much as $1m would, but it’s a hell of a lot more money than many people can make.
In 10 years, that salary is $1,000,000. For someone making $50k/year, it would take 20 years for them to make that much. For someone making $25k/year, it would take 40 years for them to earn that much. I would feel disingenuous telling someone who makes $25k/year that making $100k wouldn’t be becoming “rich” to them.
Maybe that’s their monetary sweet spot, and they rely on other things to finish fulfilling their personal definition of “rich”. Family, friends, hobbies, etc.
If 100k isn’t rich to you then you have lived an exceptionally blessed life. Also “more than” doesn’t mean all of them are making exactly 100k
How rich you are on 100k really depends on where you live.
Tell that to people making less than 30k and describe the look they give you
100k in a place like NYC is literally living like someone making 30-45k in some rural town.
Then just move to the suburbs where your 100k is worth more… and where the 100k jobs don’t exist… or the commute to the 100k jobs is over an hour each way… dummy
What about the people in NYC making 30k then?
For the most part: they’re doing better than you’d expect (ie homeless) given that they’ll generally be living somewhere rent controlled.
They’re still in abject poverty by comparison. It’s like somebody living in a trailer park on 5k a year.
But no matter how you shake it out and keep whataboutisming people the fact is that 100k a year is the new 50k in a lot of US cities where average rents are well above 2.5k/mo.
The national median rent is 24k/yr.
In 2016 that was 11k/yr
100k doesn’t mean what you think it does anymore. In nyc 100k means you can maybe live alone in a 1br (2.7k/mo) without a car, but not downtown (4.1k/mo). You’ll be commuting 45ish minutes and be able to have a rainy day fund. You’ll pocket about 60k/yr after taxes, after rent you’ll have 24k/yr to spend on food in the most expensive city in the USA. You’ll be able to shop at discount stores to make that money go a bit further. You’ll go to dive bars to try and get $5 drinks instead of $15. You’ll make your own coffee. You’ll do your laundry at a laundromat because it’s too pricey to rent a place with a washing machine.
It’s a nice life. If that sounds like rich to you then the billionaires have brainwashed you. It’s a middle class lifestyle.
The brainwashing is real. So many people are so poor that they don’t believe you can be poor unless you’re absolutely destitute and on the edge of homelessness each month. This 100k/year lifestyle should be afforded by minimum wage, tbh.
You guys keep bringing up cost of living like it’s some cool trick that lets you claim poverty while making nearly three times the local average salary.
If Bill Gates spent most of his fortune to live like a college freshman in a space station would you be calling him middle class? It would cost him several times an average Americans yearly salary just to eat puréed meats and shit in a closet, so clearly he couldn’t be considered rich anymore.
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The average salary in NYC is 36k
As one of those people you are presuming to speak for, no, I wouldn’t consider 100k rich. I find that to be an absurd statement.
Bro, median household income in the US is almost $80k. It’s not 1998 anymore.
It’s 70k and median means that half of households make less than that, not that its the most common salary.
True for one person but this is household income. A married couple both making $50k would fall into this. While that is definitely not poor by any means. I think it is fair to say that it would be a bit of a stretch to call a person in the us today making $50k “rich.”
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What do you mean? The article that was pulling the data used “household income” as the data set… It is exclusively talking about household income.
Yeah I went back and checked. Wrong about that, but I’d like to reiterate that 100k is simply the lower bound of the range provided. It does not mean that any or even a majority of them were making exactly 100k per household. In fact, 15% are listed as 300k which is more than the amount of people attending making less than 30k. Then you also have to consider that households that do make 100k are far more likely to have single-income earners than households only making 50k.