I’m agreeing with your point, but just want to help with your numbers… The federal tax for the average American family is 25%, not 7. The average state tax is 5%. The average spent on health care is 13,000. So, with your 50k median(which, considering there’s people making hundreds of millions every year, the status quo income vs. actual median income is a bit skewed) 50k, less 30% for taxes = 35,000. Now take away 13k for health insurance and you’ve got 22,000. Subtract another 8,400 for rent (national average of 700/mo) and you now only have 13600 (or 1133 a month) a year for cars, bills, expenses etc. Now, just starting with the cars, 1000 a month leaves a little over 30 dollars a week for a family of four to buy food, pay the bills, purchase clothing, and heaven forbid there’s any want for entertainment. So, no… there’s no way they can afford 1360/mo on food, but I really don’t think that they don’t mind the credit card/ loan/ other debt, but instead have just accepted it as a necessary evil to survive. Now, that all said, there are some families in this 50k bracket that get benefits from work, which eases the brunt of that 13k, and some just forgo insurance all together, so my numbers are a bit extreme as well.