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With recent wage growth, the median wage for a worker in the United States is ~ $41,000 a year.

That is ~$2,300 a month post-tax.

Let’s look at some costs.

• The average renter paid $1,300 a month.
• The average food costs are $300 a month. That’s $1,600 a month.
• The average utility charges are $320 a month. That’s $1,920 a month.
• The average car payment is $500 for a used car per month. That’s $2,420 a month.
• The average car insurance is $148 a month. That’s $2,568 a month.

$2,568 > $2,300

Based on personal experience, being $270 in the hole despite what I think is a pretty conservative list of costs is poor.

It does not include any money for cell phone plan. It does not include any money for new clothes or for household necessities like toilet paper. It does not account for co-pays for medical costs. It does not account for any childcare, educational, or work-related expenses. It does not account for a single penny for entertainment- not even a Netflix subscription. Nothing for car maintenance.

In addition, we’re not accounting for any possible reduction in income- if a person needs to take an unpaid sick day, if they’re injured, if their hours are cut, or, heaven forbid, they’re laid off…

To answer the OP’s question, what’s going on here is that our nation’s ‘liberals’ are center-right on an actual political spectrum. Things like universal healthcare and closing income inequality gaps are radical in the U.S. In this country, we’d rather a thousand people die than one person get over on us.

Jack, who advocates excluding the poor to juice the stats, either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that the life expectancy gap also exists along racial lines. He likely also doesn’t know or care that being ill can cause poverty- it is in fact a leading cause of people falling out of the middle class. Regardless of any of this, my message to Jack is pretty simple: Being poor is not a moral failing, nor is it a valid reason for losing upwards of 20% of one’s lifespan.

A TikTok comment:

This is among the worst takes imaginable for a hundred different reasons, but I’ll cover two here.

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First, Joe Biden identified an all-timer of a market inefficiency:

The Supreme Court has never, in the two-hundred and thirty-two years of its existence, had a Black woman as Justice.

For perspective: There have been 108 white male Supreme Court Justices- that works out to 95%. There have been, counting Justice Jackson, 5 women ever, and 4 non-white Justices. There are more Catholic Justices on the current court than there have been non-white Justices over the entire history of the Court.

Put simply, the value of her lived experiences and perspective bring clear value in addition to her having perhaps the most complete legal resume of a sitting Justice.

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Second, let’s look at why this person has an issue with Biden declaring his intention to pick a specific demographic as a nominee.

I would like to start by addressing the most common refrain from a racist when talking about a minority filling a position of importance:

“I just think we should pick the most qualified person!”

We almost never pick the most qualified person for anything. If we picked the most qualified person for every position, mediocre white men would have valid complaints as they became universally unemployable. Brett Kavanaugh wouldn’t be able to score a role as a guest judge on The People’s Court. Hell, we describe our spouses as our ‘soulmates’, but in a world with 7,000,000,000 people, it’s statistically unlikely there isn’t a better match out there.

Imagine job searches in general if hiring managers held out for the very most qualified person for every role…

The real criteria, when we’re being honest with ourselves, is a reasonably qualified person who meets our ideological and superficial demands.

Joe Biden set out to nominate a Black woman for the Supreme Court, and reasonable people should have no issue with that, because we, as reasonable people, should be able to acknowledge that there are hundreds- if not thousands- of Black women who are more than qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice.

The only way you could have a problem with Candidate Biden declaring his support for nominating a Black woman for the Supreme Court is if you fundamentally believe that there are no qualified Black women available for the position, or if you believe that Black women have been over-represented historically as Supreme Court Justices. The first option makes you a racist, and the second makes you an idiot. Actually, both of them make you an idiot.

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In conclusion, I’d like to wrap up this very first post with a quote from the departed Ruth Bader Ginsburg:

When I'm sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court] and I say, 'When there are nine,' people are shocked. But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that.

So…. When is the right time to complain about Biden ‘limiting’ himself to nominating a Black woman for the Supreme Court? How about in the year 2315 when the last 104 consecutive Justices to be confirmed were all Black women?