This is a popular topic. And not to disclose incomes. I am way down on that scale and still live perfectly fine within my means. My only debt is (half of value of house) and some student loans. Mistakes were made or I would not have those.
90% of americans problems are complete lack of financial responsibility.
I deal with it on a daily basis. I sell cars and make money of these leaches on the system. I interact with them on a daily basis and I see there mistakes.
Example 1: 2 adults with 2 kids renting apartment. Working low wage job. Makes enough money to pay bills but nothing more. Something happens, usually kid number 3 on way. Has to take 7 weeks off work or whatever it is they can legally get away with. Has no income for 7 weeks. Gets behind on bills. I then repo the car. Look in side full of trash. (just the other day I cleaned 72 Large tim hortons cups out of a car.) I don't know what the current price is but lets just say 2 bucks. Prolly 100 bags of taco bell. Average visit prolly 5 bucks. 30 empty packs of cigarettes another 5 bucks each. I mean 600-700 bucks a month would pay for some pretty decent health care. (I know for a fact these people receive food stamps and other government aid cause all there kids are under 5)
Your hand outs for these low end are so these people can continue to live like this.
I repo about 3 out of every 10 cars I sell. So just to keep a nice round number. 30%. I have several hundred customers. Just about every car I repo is the same way. Full of trash and wasted money on pure junk.
I don't feel sorry for this people and some would say I am severely jaded. But I am interacting with them on a daily basis. These people make horrible decisions and we pay for it.