▪️This meme makes it seem like 60% of Americans are destitute, but that’s not what lies beneath the headline. This comes from an analysis from the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP), which is an activist group for low and middle income families. Their reason for existence is to be a perennial Debbie Downer on the plight of the middle class, so keep that in mind, although they do make some fair points.
▪️LISEP has a metric they call Minimal Quality of Life Index (MQL) which imo is misleading. I’d call it the decent quality of life index. It’s the income they consider necessary to afford a reasonable standard of living in America, beyond just essentials.
▪️For a couple with 2 kids, the MQL is $120,302, which doesn’t appear to include taxes, so would equate to a salary of ~$130-150K. Now, that’s probably what it takes for a family to have a decent QOL today, but it’s certainly not a poverty line or minimum standard.
▪️For example, this allots $27,875 ($2,322 per month) for transportation. One could certainly eclipse this with a few family airline trips, but this budget should easily provide for 2 decent cars with gas, insurance and maintenance. The MQL also budgets for college savings. This is comfortable middle class territory.
▪️LISEP likes to highlight that the MQL has declined since 2001, but it’s also risen considerably from the lows in 2011-13. So one could spin this to say things are considerably better than a decade ago.
▪️Basically, the MQL got steadily better from 2013 until peaking around 2018-19. Then there was a downturn in 2022-23, where the data ends. This was during the high inflation in the early-to mid part of the Biden years so not surprising. However, inflation moderated in the last Biden year and through Trump’s first months so it’s likely the MQL has leveled or reversed trend since.
▪️This headline should read, “A majority of Americans unable to afford a comfortable middle class lifestyle.” Which has always been the case here, and everywhere else in the world.
Link to the MQL, graphs in comments:
https://www.lisep.org/mql
It’s just so wild to see these movements see saw, it feels like just yesterday that conservatives were boycotting Disney and the left was gloating.
Just incredible. After posting a meme blaming Charlie Kirk for his own murder, they post another a few hours later applauding Democrats for their civility.
Also, if you look at the Occupy Democrats timeline, their posts “denouncing political violence” were variations on “no one should be shot…BUT here’s a quote from Kirk showing he’s a terrible person.” Or sometimes they’d leave the first part out altogether and just attack him. There are no posts denouncing violence without qualifiers trying to gin up their base.
