That’s what most people spend on their phone and Internet connections per month in the US. That’s what the average American family spends on just five days of food.

You can afford five days of food, so that must mean you can also afford a Claude Max plan? What kind of logic is this?

Fwiw your comments here read to me as “I’m super rich and everyone I know is super rich too, and I can’t imagine that anyone isn’t”.

People spend much more than that on just commuting to work if you can spend $200 a month to supercharge what you do at work and 1000x your productivity it’s a no-brainer.

From what money? Just pause the health insurance for a while? Stop paying the rent? No diapers for the kid?

Your entire story only makes sense if you have many hundreds of dollars/euros of entirely disposable income every month left, after all unavoidable expenses have been paid for. I understand that this holds for you and everyone you know but I’d like you to appreciate that for very many people it doesn’t.

So, should they stop commuting to work to afford their AI subscription? Or perhaps just don't eat anything for 5 days a month?

Yes and? That's money that is already allocated. It cannot be spent on something else.

No you don't get it. If the family just starved for 5 days then they could increase revenue for these AI companies.

37% of Americans would be unable to cover a 400 usd unexpected expense* without using one or more credit cards. 13% would flat out be unable to cover it. [1]

Are you honestly saying most families would be able to justify 200 usd a month for ChatGPT?

https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2025-economic-we...