Someone retweeted this a couple of months ago and it perfectly demonstrates income inequality for you:
To break it down, this ridiculous tweet says this guy has no debts and saved money to retire at age 40--and you can too!
Except as the article tells you, this tool went to work for his hedge fund manager father, making $250K a year as his first job. My first job out of college I made like maybe $12/hour back in 2000. I didn't have a lot of debt but because I went to SVSU on scholarship/financial aid while this guy's rich parents probably paid for him to go to an Ivy.
Instead of paying rent, he lived in his grandpa's empty vacation home. I had to live in a tiny apartment in Grand Blanc for like $400/month. And when he wanted to buy a home, he used $500K his uncle gave him as a gift. My one uncle gave me $20 on holidays when I was a kid and that was a big deal. Most of my uncles gave me jack shit. And if my nieces ever read this...check's in the mail, lol.
And he ONLY vacationed domestically. I didn't take a vacation until 2005 and that was just to Maine. The farthest I've gone outside the country is Canada!
It's ridiculous but this is how the rich (and their media enablers) see us poors. There is that strain of "let them eat cake" like when Mitt Romney suggested that people in debt should just get a loan from their parents. Because we all have rich hedge fund manager parents. Donald Trump and his enablers consider him a "self-made man" when in reality he got started with a $1 million loan from his daddy. My parents could barely loan me a couple bucks for gas.
Stuff like this is definite media enabling by making it sound like this is some simple man we can all emulate. Sure, if we all have millionaire daddies, grandpas with fancy vacation homes, and uncles who give us half-a-million dollar gifts. Whoever wrote this should really be ashamed--from his/her crappy studio apartment that probably costs $15,000 a year where he/she is struggling to pay off hundreds of thousands in student loan debt.
As long as tools like this are held up as "self-reliant" we'll never really be equal.
1 comment:
I remember this one. Maybe you shared it on Facebook. It is rather ridiculous. For one to retire before age 65, you have to be able to afford health insurance or risk having to pay your own medical bills. That limits it for most people right there. On the other hand, it seems a lot of people who win the Lotto blow the money because they don't really know how to manage it. They didn't grow up in a family of rich people or get the education of the guy in the Tweet.
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