Gregg links to a the sad lament of a University of Chicago law professor :
Like most working Americans, insurance, doctors' bills, utilities, two cars, daycare, groceries, gasoline, cell phones, and cable TV (no movie channels) round out our monthly expenses. We also have someone who cuts our grass, cleans our house, and watches our new baby so we can both work outside the home. At the end of all this, we have less than a few hundred dollars per month of discretionary income. We occasionally eat out but with a baby sitter, these nights take a toll on our budget. Life in America is wonderful, but expensive.
My first reaction to a guy who whines about his disposable income after sending his kids to private school and paying out the monthly wages of his gardener and nanny resembles Michael O'Hare's, who notes that the professor's income is around $400-500K, which, after student loans, taxes, and mortgage payments, leaves his family $245 a day:
The next time you come upon a Chicago law professor in his scuffed Gucci loafers and tattered Armani on the sidewalk, holding up his libertarian down-with-government sign and shaking his tin cup to get his doctor wife and hollow-eyed waifs through another tough week in their million-dollar hovel, please don't just walk by. Remember, it could be you. Be a mensch: throw a nice shiny 3/8-inch washer and couple of nickel slugs in there, with my blessings.
It's worth mentioning that O'Hare points out the prof's biggest expense is not "financing government," as he claims: his expenditures on "private consumption" outweigh taxes 3-to-1. The professor is also "choosing not to divide his public expenses into, say: education, policing, national defense, fire protection, keeping his street paved, subsidies to corn farmers and oil companies, etc."
Brad Delong takes the more charitable view, noting that the professor probably does feel he's living like "most working Americans," and living from paycheck to paycheck.
But first, a "reality check" from Delong. "The median household income in the United States today is $50,000." Which means that the professor and his doctor wife make nine times that amount. "The Hendersons are solidly in the top 1% of American households," notes Delong, "by any standard, they are really rich." So why does the professor get off on thinking he's entitled to more?
And here is the dirty secret: Professor Henderson thinks that that is the way things should be because he knows people for whom that is the way it is....
...He doesn't say: "Wow! My real income is more than twice the income of somebody in this slot a generation ago! Wow! A generation ago the income of my slot was only twice that of somebody at the bottom of the 10% wealthy, and now it is 3 1/2 times as much!" For he doesn't look down at the 99% of American households who have less income than he does. And he looks up. And when he looks up today he sees as wide a gap yawning above him as the gap between Dives and Lazarus. Mr. Henderson doesn't look down.
Instead, Mr. Henderson looks up. Of the 100 people richer than he is, fully ten have more than four times his income. And he knows of one person with 20 times his income. He knows who the really rich are, and they have ten times his income: They have not $450,000 a year. They have $4.5 million a year. And, to him, they are in a different world.
And so he is sad. He and his wife deserve to be successful. And he knows people who are successful. But he is not one of them--widening income inequality over the past generation has excluded him from the rich who truly have money.
And this makes him sad. And angry. But, curiously enough, not angry at the senior law firm partners who extract surplus value from their associates and their clients, or angry at the financiers, but angry at... Barack Obama, who dares to suggest that the U.S. government's funding gap should be closed partly by taxing him, and angry at the great hordes of the unwashed who will receive the Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security payments that the government will make over the next several generations.
Also note that the professor responded to O'Hare's post on Delong's site, noting that, after his kids' private school tuition, he has far less than $245/day in spending money. It's more like "$80 per day for five people."
Which comes to $31,360 a year.
After taxes, after household expenses, after mortgage payments, loan payments, and retirement savings.
Cry me a river. |
