this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2024
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Microblog Memes

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[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The person who makes the claim should prove it first

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Good point. So, prove your claim, please.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

We asked respondents to describe their current income situation.

You mean 40% of forbes readers live paycheck to paycheck?!

This may surprise you but not everyone reads forbes.

(selection bias)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Where does it say they only surveyed readers?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I mean, forbes did the survey. Do you think they didn’t use their reader base?

As for only surveying readers, lemme look at the survey and see if it said that. My concern is that a magazine performing a survey is going to have some issues with selection bias.

edit:

So, in this case, it suffers from a very small sample size. There may be funding concerns too.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

3000 is not a small sample size. 30 is a small sample size.

Presidential polls are often done with this, or even smaller sample sizes.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This may surprise you to know but America has a little over 3000 people in it. Some estimate the number to be over 1,000,000!

Now, if we estimate the american population to be at 1,000,000, that means 3,000 is a sample size of only 0.3%.

Now, 0.3% may seem like a large number and indeed it is when compared to 30, which would be a sample size of 0.03%.

I wonder how big the working population of america is?

United States Employed Persons was reported at 161,183,000.000 Person in Dec 2023 See the table below for more data.

Hmm, so it seems 161,183,000 is a bit larger than 1,000,000. It’s actually about 161.183 times my original estimate! That would make 3,000 people bout 0.001%.

Now, 0.001% is a very small number.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You might want to look up sampling. If the sample is randomly distributed, you can calculate the chance that the given data is because of sampling error.

You see, it doesn't matter what the total population is for the sampling error. It only matters what your number of samples is and the absolute difference between the groups.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yes, I’m familiar with sampling. This is why I said you have a low sample size.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Sample size doesn't care about the total population size, since it doesn't affect the probability of sampling error

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Sample size is a metric, it doesn’t have emotions.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Lots of articles are saying 60 to 69%. CNBC, Barrons, LendingClub. I can’t find a better source but.. 40% from a rich person’s mag like forbes is just too much man. I would estimate 55% to 70%, so 80% doesn’t seem that far off.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Source?

60% to 80% is literally a jump of 2x, meaning twice as many people who have savings

80% is incredibly far off

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/27/60percent-of-americans-are-still-living-paycheck-to-paycheck.html

Gives lending club as source so basically it's the same source

Where did you get 69%

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Neither you nor I have a decent source yet. All of these sources are from surveys, you just pick your organization. A skimming of the google search results for this gives numbers in the 55% to 69% range, but that’s not a good source. So far what we’ve found is:

Forbes survey: 40% Lending club survey 60%

I don’t have a source for 80% where the meme claimed.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Because 80% is not correct. The median person has $8,000 saved in just their bank accounts, not including retirement (which you can take out paying a penalty) and CoD (which you can take out after paying a few months penalty)

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/savings/average-savings-by-age/

So half of people have more than this amount saved. I personally have less than this in my bank and a lot more in taxable investments which were not measured

How do people save if 80% are living paycheck to paycheck?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

And your number is also not correct! See how this works?

Again my guy. a mag for rich folks isn’t going to be unbiased

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

St Louis Fed is not a mag, it's a federal reserve bank

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Ok but you’ve cited forbes, which is a magazine.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Not their numbers, which you would know if you took the one second to click the link instead of complaining about the URL

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

We’re so deep in this denial bro that I can’t even find the link you’ve sent any more. I click more context and I get the full thread. I searched for your link and can only find the forbes link you keep reposting.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

See? There’s a forbes link again.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Yes, but the numbers are from here

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm

Although the Forbes page may have an error, it lists the median for under 25 as the same as 25-35, but it should be lower