[rsj_hn]

"Disposable income" is not some vague philosophical term that we have to haggle over. It simply means income minus taxes paid to government.

Please please don't redefine economic terms to suit your intuitive belief about what a word "should" mean because you are wading into an area where you don't know the agreed upon terminology. That impedes communication.

If you want to refer to income after paying necessities, then this is "discretionary income".

[advael]

I wasn't aware this was a technical term, but if we insist on this usage, the post I'm responding to is even less meaningful, because this is drawing a pedantic distinction between money that's tied up in expenses and thus, at any rate, not money that the relevant party is really making decisions about

[0x0nyandesu]

I mean do you really want to compare my disposable income with my great grandparents? They'd hit me up side the head if they knew how much I blow on weed a month and random bullshit like latex Halloween costumes. To them eating out was a luxury they could afford maybe once or twice a year. I eat out like every other day.

Our standards are way higher these days cause the truth is we're all spoiled.

[supermatt]

You keep saying disposable income (money after taxes) when you mean discretionary income (money after necessary expenses such as rent, bills, transportation and food).

[0x0nyandesu]

Laymen versus technical. If I'm talking to a random person on the street I'm gonna say disposable. But yes I mean discretionary. My discretionary income is still huge. Well over 50% of my paycheck. It's also not even fair to say though because it's still my choice to have upgraded my living situation. Sure I'm locked in now but I could sell my house and downgrade at any time and my discretionary will go up.

[supermatt]

Unfortunately, your confusion is endemic of the problem with government statistics using disposable income as an indicator of prosperity, and is even being quoted by others in this thread. Indeed, you likely googled "historical disposable income" to back up your statement - which is exactly the problem with using the incorrect term.

I wont make the comparison to 100 years ago (as you did) because that was a period of time including 2 world wars and the great depression., But adjusted for inflation, people generally have LESS discretionary income now than they did in the 60s. Again, this is hard to corroborate with official poverty statistics due to changes in the cost of living (and conversely, the provision of benefits such as food stamps), which are frequently petitioned to be amended.

Over 12% of americans have such low discretionary income they have to rely on food banks - a figure comparable to the 1970s.

10x more people in the UK are accessing emergency food from food banks than they did 10 years ago.

It is a terrible state of affairs, to be honest. Please dont use disposable income :)

[0x0nyandesu]

I'm not confused lol. In America homes are just bigger now than they used to be. You can still go small though. No one said you had to take on a huge mortgage. That's why discretionary is a bad metric to use.