(WaPo) The $400K conundrum: Why America’s urban rich don’t feel that way
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Date: January 30th, 2023 2:23 PM Author: Razzle salmon therapy
The $400K conundrum: Why America’s urban rich don’t feel that way
By Megan McArdle
Columnist|
January 29, 2023 at 7:30 a.m. EST
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Periodically, some commentator suggests that in many American cities, someone with a very comfortable income is actually barely getting by. It is a venerable genre, but the first such instance I can remember came from law professor Todd Henderson back in 2010. The most recent is from Bret Stephens, a columnist at the New York Times.
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Last week, in a conversation with colleague Gail Collins, Stephens argued that a couple with a combined income of $400,000 a year doesn’t necessarily have a lifestyle we’d describe as “rich”: “They’re scrimping to send their kids to college, driving a Camry, if they have a car at all, and wondering why eggs have gotten so damned expensive.”
“Granted,” said Collins, which was the most fascinating part of this exchange.
The left side of the internet dragged Henderson mercilessly for days after his remarks 12 years ago. But here was a left-leaning New York Times columnist essentially conceding the point. As for the internet, I saw exactly one right-leaning economist gently joshing Stephens for his remarks. How have liberals gotten so comfortable with the idea that $400,000 a year — more than what 98 percent of the population makes — is really just a middle-class income?
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A recent essay by Ross Douthat, Stephens and Collins’s colleague at the Times, offers one answer: These people are rich by any measure, and they are spending their money on things only rich people can afford, such as living in the best school districts and in or near amenity-rich megacities. However, they are rich in a peculiarly modern way: in the context of a meritocracy where elites are supposed to re-earn their position anew each day.
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Compared with the old establishment that survived on inherited wealth and social position, they are insecure, and many worry that their offspring will be downwardly mobile, which leads them to spend virtually all of their outsize disposable incomes on preparing the children to become star performers in the next round of competition.
(For this is primarily a problem of parents; you almost never hear a childless couple making $400,000 a year claim to really be just ordinary middle-class folks.)
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One way to cope with this insecurity is to try to lean into it, strive to accumulate so-called generational wealth, so your children never have to wake up at 4 a.m. wondering where the next tuition check will come from. Another is to look for a political solution, which might be one reason the highly educated have migrated toward the Democratic Party.
Unfortunately, generational wealth is an impossible dream for even most highly educated people for the very reason that it’s so attractive: the competition for scarce slots at a limited number of highly selective colleges (and the schools that feed into them) that function as the gatekeepers to the 2 percent, or the 3 percent, or the 10 percent. This zero-sum bidding war will consume any amount of extra money a normal professional can earn, because there is always something else you could be doing to give your kid a better shot at a good school and a good life — another tutor, another consultant, another enrichment program.
Through the magic of market competition, the price of that exclusive access will always be set at the maximum that the least-affluent members of the class can just barely afford to pay for private school tuition or a well-located house. Moreover, because the upper income distribution resembles a pyramid with a wide bottom and narrow top, most of the people in this class will be closer in situation to the desperate strivers who have zeroed out their 401(k), crammed the kids into a too-small house and borrowed all they can from family than they are to the lucky few near the pinnacle who can write huge checks without blinking.
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Small wonder that they feel strapped, and not really surprising that people in this group have become increasingly friendly to the party that has historically promised to buffer us from the punishing demands of the market economy. The problem with this particular political solution is that government cannot give them what they crave: a low-effort way to ensure that their kids never fall out of their world.
There’s no shame in wanting this. What self-respecting mammals don’t want their kids to have it at least as good as they did? At the median household income, that’s even a semi-plausible demand, because here all government needs to provide is median-grade public goods. But it cannot give everyone above-average doctors, schools, job satisfaction and earning potential — and in a democracy, it cannot promise to reserve those things for the children of those who already have them.
Thus, the unsolvable dilemma of the broke 2-percenter. If you would be satisfied knowing that your child had a secure but unremarkable life managing a Walmart in some exurb, the government could probably guarantee that. And, with a solid six-figure income, you could probably prepare them for that world without any government assistance. But then, if you could be satisfied with a solid ordinary life, you probably wouldn’t have spent decades working overtime and delaying gratification in order to make it into the 2 percent.
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(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5280866&forum_id=2#45862946) |
Date: January 30th, 2023 2:27 PM Author: Heady dopamine
*ctrl+f 'blacks'*
*no results*
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5280866&forum_id=2#45862968) |
Date: January 30th, 2023 3:59 PM Author: 180 Immigrant National
Shitlibs: $400k is rich. It's more than what 98% of Americans earn.
Random person in the world: $7/hr is rich. It's more than what 98% of the world earns.
Shitlibs: reeeeeee
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5280866&forum_id=2#45863412) |
Date: January 30th, 2023 9:50 PM Author: pontificating fighting incel background story
Perhaps the biggest part of the problem is the insane cost of daycare. It’s at least $2,000 per month in nice urban areas, and can go as high as $4K. (I paid $3,700 for my oldest, pre-pandemic.) You only need it for 3-4.5 years in places with UPK, but fuck is it expensive. And it is discouraging the UMC from having kids, buying homes, etc. IMO it’s a way bigger issue than student loans (which can be deferred, refinanced, etc.) You need cash money, and people won’t have kids if they don’t think they can afford to do so maintaining their current lifestyle.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5280866&forum_id=2#45865046) |
Date: January 30th, 2023 10:35 PM Author: swashbuckling self-absorbed people who are hurt coffee pot
i know this sort of article is xo catnip. surprised no one picked up on this line yet:
"However, they are rich in a peculiarly modern way: in the context of a meritocracy where elites are supposed to re-earn their position anew each day."
Oh how my heart breaks for such a struggle
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5280866&forum_id=2#45865232) |
Date: January 31st, 2023 10:34 AM Author: curious theater stage puppy
I was recently talking to a husband and wife who are state employees in New Jersey. White collar, managerial types probably making high five/low six figures. They were talking about how they still rented a house despite being fairly advanced in their careers. The cost of buying would be way too high. It seemed pretty sad, but then I realized, when your middle class job is absolutely, completely secure, you don't necessarily need the security of owning a house. If your lease gets cancelled, you can just rent somewhere else.
By contrast, lots of UMC people with 400k HHI have traded that kind of rock solid stability of working for the government or a university or having a trade, for a somewhat but not massively higher income. Not always a good deal.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5280866&forum_id=2#45866775) |
Date: January 31st, 2023 3:02 PM Author: big citrine senate karate
Gee, it's almost like this is the predictable (INTENDED) result of a parasitic ruling class.
"The United States will have Weimar conditions" -- Ernst Zundel, 1996
"The problem is and has always been the Jew. The Jew has a predisposition to burrow into a people and then weaken them to the point of their destruction. I already see Jewish names being predominant again with bankers, head of large companies, lawyers, politicians, and so forth. With this trend they will acquire great wealth and power over the Western world. Morals and Christianity will be attacked; women will be the primary targets as they are the vessels of reproduction of their peoples. They will bring in the darker races in an effort to pollute Europe, all while holding weak politicians in the hands who will support such endeavors." -- Karl Wolff, 1981
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5280866&forum_id=2#45868327) |
Date: February 1st, 2023 5:11 PM Author: Judgmental bright gas station telephone
Michael Douglas addressed this in 1987:
Wake up, will ya pal? If you're not inside, you're outside, OK? And I'm not talking a $400,000 a year working Wall Street stiff flying first class and being comfortable, I'm talking about liquid. Rich enough to have your own jet. Rich enough not to waste time. Fifty, a hundred million dollars buddy. A player, or nothing.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5280866&forum_id=2#45873799) |
Date: February 1st, 2023 5:21 PM Author: Harsh fat ankles degenerate
this is a load of kike nonsense. 400k is MORE than enough HHI to feel fine in any east coast major city. the reason these white and asian niggers don't feel rich is because they're always comparing themselves to the next slave a step or 2 higher on the ladder.
You can live in a nice place, go out to nice restaurants, take nice vacations, AND put money toward retirement. What more do you need to feel "rich".
edit: what I will say is that at 400k you sure as fuck should not be buying unnecessary luxury items like watches/purses that are more than 5k. you don't have fuck you money so don't waste $ pretending like you do
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5280866&forum_id=2#45873820) |
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