We just had to deal with it here in Wisconsin where a state representative (Sean Duffy, R) was talking to a laid off truck driver and explained that he, too, found it tough to make it on his congressional salary ($174,000). The constituent nearly popped his cork.
That's pretty messed up. I make a quarter of that and am very conscious that it would not be tough to make ends meet at all if, for example, I chose to live in cheap housing rather than a nice apartment that's super convenient. I realize until you get past about 7 zeroes you can always find stuff to spend money on (and Elton John can apparently do so past 8), but try to have some awareness of how much of what you buy is actually necessary as opposed to luxury.
In defense of the people in the articles, it does sound like they were specifically asked, "What problems do you have when you have insane amounts of money?"
The constituent nearly popped his cork.
They posted a video of this at some Republican website. Then liberals started linking to it so they took the video down. Then they threatened to sue some liberal blog that still had the video on their site. The blog refused to take the video down.
So at first they thought it was a good idea to make the video available. Weird.
The guy nearly lost it. I just went back and reviewed the video. He's a bus driver (used to be a construction worker). But his wife is a teacher who is facing a pay cut with the recent collective bargaining/benefits battle in WI. Duffy had to explain that he quit his job as a DA to run for congress so he went without a paycheck for six months (and he has six kids).
The man was angry because Duffy's salary is THREE times what the guy and his wife TOGETHER make. It ended up being Duffy explaining how much better the WI public employees have it than most people--including Duffy, who gave up their excellent health insurance when he quit as a DA and has to muddle through on Congressional Healthcare.
He's a douche.
Yeah, the GOP MADE the video and posted it on their website. Then freaked out as they tried to scour it from the internets.
That's right up there with "Oops!" during surgery with local anesthesia.
Tip of the hat to Bill Cosby
Hee!
"Hemostat...clamp...oops..."
"'Oops'? Whaddya ya mean, 'oops'? I know what I'm talking about when I say 'Oops,' what are you talking about?!?"
Wow- Duffy really misread the situation, too. Like, I think he thought it was going to sound wonderful that he "only" made $174,000. He sounded like an idiot.
That's so easy to understand, though -- once you're in Congress, if you're one of the few people actually living off the $174K, it would start to feel very small, very fast. If you think you need two nice houses and etc, especially.
Note: I think it's bonkers, but I get how easy it is to only compare yourself to the people closest around you.
I'm so frustrated. I need to find me a financial advisor to deal with my financial mess. I just tried to see if I could do an early withdrawl of some of my 401k funds to pay off my current debts which would make life SO much easier and apparently I can't touch any of it. I'm willing to pay the crazy tax penalty just to get out from under my current mess, but noooooo.
Frack, frack, frack. Apparently if I left my job, I could get some of it. And for a half a minute I considered the possibility.
