That's true, but I still consider 3-6mos emergency fund to be a basic necessity, since living in the startup world you never know when you may need to use it.

A while back I interviewed for a startup that was asking me to work from 6am to 8pm for about 75% of what I make right now working regular 9-5 at a different startup. It was super early stage so that level of commitment was understandable but I can't imagine very many engineers with families willing to take that much of a paycut. But that's the name of the game, right? When you're early stage you can't afford to pay much but you need your product done yesterday. Thats probably why most startups fail. Cheap quality talent is hard to come by, at least stateside. Offshore developers can be cheap and amazing (someone living in India making $100k USD would probably be considered royalty) but if you don't have someone from that part of the world to vet the devs it could end up being more expensive in the long run.

That's fair. I think what I'm trying to get at is that the typical suggested middle class American budget is exactly that — save a bit for emergency fund, save a bit for buying a house / home repairs, save a bit for an annual vacation. Maybe not giving money to family, but charity in general. Considering that a middle class family in CA would not be able to do all of these. I don't think I'm commenting on the salary itself; rather, the cost of maintaining status quo is rapidly outpacing middle class. A teacher on a middle class salary would be able to do all of these on a single income just a few decades ago. I shouldn't need to earn triple the median income to do that.