The USA usually reports household income as you do, which contains about 2.5 people.
So per-capita income is far less than the $67k figure you picked, and 5% is about right.
In addition, using the mean (average) is deceptive, because it is skewed by the few people that earn a lot (Jeff Bezos walks into a bar). Using the median would make more sense (although the person you replied to hasn’t, probably because it is harder to find).
The mean on HN is possibly higher, making the point moot? There are a lot of international commenters that could swing the number down.
Side note: if you want to compare how well you are personally doing you need to compare by other factors. Age cohort especially matters for income and wealth comparisons - even for software dev?
> In addition, using the mean (average) is deceptive, because it is skewed by the few people that earn a lot (Jeff Bezos walks into a bar). Using the median would make more sense
Confused by this comment -- the source I linked IS using median, not mean. I guess that does mean (heh) that the number isn't skewed as much by higher numbers, but can still be skewed by the larger number of part-time high school kids too.
So per-capita income is far less than the $67k figure you picked, and 5% is about right.
In addition, using the mean (average) is deceptive, because it is skewed by the few people that earn a lot (Jeff Bezos walks into a bar). Using the median would make more sense (although the person you replied to hasn’t, probably because it is harder to find).
The mean on HN is possibly higher, making the point moot? There are a lot of international commenters that could swing the number down.
Side note: if you want to compare how well you are personally doing you need to compare by other factors. Age cohort especially matters for income and wealth comparisons - even for software dev?