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42 sats \ 2 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic 2 Dec \ on: No, 60% of Americans aren't "living paycheck to paycheck". econ
The claim that “60% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck” comes from a survey by the fintech company LendingClub. The company refuses to release its survey methodology, but we can get a general idea from its website, which says: “For those Americans, [living paycheck to paycheck] means that they need their next paycheck to cover their monthly financial outflows.” So what LendingClub is probably claiming is that around 60% of Americans don’t have enough cash in their bank accounts to live off of for one month.
But LendingClub’s survey is probably just flat-out wrong about this. The Federal Reserve does a very careful annual survey called the Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking, or SHED.1 This survey asks whether people have a “rainy-day fund” sufficient to cover at least three months of expenses. And it pretty consistently finds that over half of Americans do have such a fund. This is from the Fed’s 2024
Why wouldn’t LendingClub make the finding about 60% of the people living paycheck-to-paycheck? That is their business: lending to cash strapped people at probably predatory interest rates. When the Federal Reserve, whom I am not totally trusting for data, gives out with a completely different picture, one has to wonder which is putting out the BS. In this case asking, “Cui bono?” Is a really good way to sort the crap.
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11 sats \ 1 reply \ @tomlaies OP 2 Dec
It's a business with heavy incentives to publish bad data that helps their business instead of the traditional credit card/loan/mortgage landscape. Which is true, the credit cards, loans, mortgages fiat landscape fucking sucks. But their incentives are aligned with creating bad data.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic 2 Dec
Yes, that is the exact reason for all the sh*tty data and erroneous assumptions and crappy policies flying around in society. I can understand that incentives have been misaligned for an awful long time because of THEM and the other banksters.
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