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The GM thread and the society fails this man thread prompts this question.

In today's America an average (GED, working class, family man with two kids and a household income of $50K) person is more likely to become rich or file for bankruptcy?

Is this an important question or a who cares?

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I always love discussions about money and how difficult it is for the ‘average’ household with X kids to get by. This is usually followed by discussions about how bad the economy is, how companies are greedy corporate whores, how politicians are corrupt ect… Many of these points do contain some merit.

Here we are talking about the average working class family man with 2 kids making 50k in a big city environment. Is he going to go bankrupt?

Replace the work ‘kids’ with the word ‘Porches.’ How much sympathy does a guy who is making $50k and having trouble paying the bill garner if he has 2 Porches in the garage?

Not much. Why? Because if he can’t pay his bills he shouldn’t have two Porches. Everyone understands that. Yet nobody balks at the fact that the person has two children (which are more expensive than Porches!) Kids are just like any other possession. It’s not your God given right to have as many as you want, just like you don’t have a right to own more cars than you can afford. Heck, parents are already being subsidized (tax breaks, school tax being paid for by non-child owning property owners…) yet never think about that when they complain about their bills.

So, I think the important question here is not if the ‘average person’ described in this post is more likely to go bankrupt or become rich. I think the more interesting issue revolves around why this average person feels the need/right to have children he can’t afford, and why society accepts this belief.