{"id":228916,"date":"2025-12-12T08:43:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T08:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/228916\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T08:43:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T08:43:10","slug":"140000-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/228916\/","title":{"rendered":"$140,000 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wall Street portfolio manager Michael Green set the cat among the pigeons recently by claiming the new poverty line for a family of four in the United States<\/a> was $140,000 (\u20ac119,000) a year. <\/p>\n

The figure is a multiple of the official poverty line for a family of four set by the US department of health and human Services ($32,150) and almost 70 per cent higher than the median household income in the US ($83,730). <\/p>\n

Green\u2019s number, contained in a provocative post on Substack, was criticised as ridiculous by statisticians and poverty campaigners who picked holes in his calculations.<\/p>\n

But it struck a chord with many others who held it up as proof of why \u201cmiddle America\u201d is so financially compromised.<\/p>\n

After decades of stagnating wages and rising costs, many middle-class Americans feel the system no longer affords them a fair bite of the cherry in terms of home ownership, healthcare and university access.<\/p>\n

Cost of living was the stick used by US president Donald Trump<\/a> to beat Joe Biden<\/a> when in opposition, now it\u2019s probably the biggest sword hanging over his own presidency. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been told, implicitly, that a family earning $80,000 is doing fine \u2212 safely above poverty, solidly middle class, perhaps comfortable,\u201d Green writes. <\/p>\n

But if you consider what a household actually spends on childcare, housing, healthcare and other essentials in 2025, he says, \u201cthat $80,000 family would be living in deep poverty\u201d.<\/p>\n

The basic premise of his thesis is that the share of income the middle class must spend on non-discretionary items has grown significantly.<\/p>\n

Instead of commanding a third of household income, it now commands a half.<\/p>\n

Green sets out what he describes as a \u201cbasic needs\u201d budget for a family of four, with two jobs and two kids, which, he says, involves \u201cno vacations, no Netflix, no luxury. Just the \u2018Participation Tickets\u2019 required to hold a job and raise kids\u201d.<\/p>\n

His basic expenditure list comprises: childcare ($32,773); housing ($23,267); food ($14,717); transportation ($14,828); healthcare ($10,567) and other essentials ($21,857).<\/p>\n

\"\"Why are apartments in Ireland so much more expensive to build than houses?<\/p>\n

When state and federal taxes are accounted, Green says \u201cyou arrive at a required gross income of $136,500\u2033. <\/p>\n

You\u2019ll notice the single largest item on his list is childcare. \u201cThis is the trap,\u201d Green says. \u201cTo reach the median household income of $80,000, most families require two earners,\u201d he says. \u201cBut the moment you add the second earner to chase that income, you trigger the childcare expense.\u201d <\/p>\n

Green is the chief strategist and portfolio manager at Simplify Asset Management and an unlikely champion of middle America.<\/p>\n

His numbers have been attacked as spurious and many campaigners argue that \u201cpoverty\u201d means going without things such as food, health insurance, a car. <\/p>\n

But Green insists what he is describing is not absolute poverty but \u201cprecarity … that feeling of holding on by your fingernails\u201d.<\/p>\n

One of the more interesting reactions came from the Financial Times\u2019s chief data reporter John Burn-Murdoch, who noted that the squeeze from essentials \u2013 seen in most advanced economies \u2013 has come alongside a fall in the price of mass-produced goods such as clothes, electronics and household appliances which explains why household spending cumulatively across all categories hasn\u2019t changed much. <\/p>\n

In other words, the high cost of essential services has been offset by cheaper consumer goods. <\/p>\n

Burn-Murdoch concludes that the squeeze on middle-class incomes from essential services is \u2013 contrary to appearances \u2013 a reflection of prosperity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy have services like education and healthcare become so expensive across the rich world? Because the people performing these services reside in affluent societies and dynamic economies where they can rightly command a high wage,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe prosperous world\u2019s middle class is absolutely right to feel increasingly squeezed by the rising costs of essential services, but the squeeze and the prosperity are two sides of the same coin,\u201d Burn-Murdoch writes.<\/p>\n

Headlines about Ireland\u2019s squeezed middle or rip-off Ireland feed into the same cost-of-living<\/a> debates here. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to dispel the notion that two incomes are now needed to buy what one bought back in the 1960s and 1970s.<\/p>\n

Access to healthcare and healthcare costs in the US are to a certain extent specific to the US but the relatively high cost of childcare and housing that Green details in his $140,000 thesis are just as evident here. <\/p>\n

The Central Bank<\/a>\u2019s borrowing restrictions here \u2013 three to four times income \u2013 is reflection of where house prices used to be.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to unpack Ireland\u2019s economy at the best of times. But not unlike the US, we have healthy, even supercharged, growth metrics juxtaposed with a conspicuous price squeeze on households.<\/p>\n

Trump insists that \u201cprices are all coming down\u201d but the facts on the ground say otherwise and his move to roll back tariffs <\/a>on several basic food items (he signed an executive order last month allowing a range of food products to avoid tariffs) is an admission of sorts. <\/p>\n

Cost of living is undeniably the chief challenge facing Trump ahead of the 2026 midterms. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wall Street portfolio manager Michael Green set the cat among the pigeons recently by claiming the new poverty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":228917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,2190,356,18,19,17,10233,384,1411],"class_list":{"0":"post-228916","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-cost-of-living","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-joe-biden","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-us-tariffs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115705715930195931","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}