What should an upper-crust bedwetter do when he needs to vent? Of course, he writes a letter to the editor of Wall Street Journal, and of course they print it.
In today's episode, our hero is barely scraping by on $300,000 per year and doesn't like the fact that his taxes will go up...
My family isn't wealthy. I have no funded retirement plan save Social Security. I am paying off school loans for our three children. A number of my friends have lost their jobs, and all [of my other friends] who are still employed have taken significant pay reductions. My brother-in-law has been told to take every Friday off with a 20% cut in pay. Everyone I describe here earned over $250,000 per year.
Oh my... I don't know where to start.
First of all, let's try to figure out exactly what our hero has been up to. His kids are through college, so he's probably in his (late?) 50s. He makes at least a quarter of a million bucks a year and probably has done so for the past ten(?) years, isn't "wealthy" (no significant savings?), doesn't have a "funded retirement plan" (no 401k?), and is paying off his kids' student loans.
So, Captain Hero is within spitting distance of retirement and has nothing in the bank even though he has earned possibly $3million over the past decade. I believe he is correct when he says that he isn't "wealthy", because I believe that he is bone-achingly, mind-numbingly, putrifyingly stupid. Dumb as a bag of hammers. Un-f**king-believable.
Our first take-away from this is that the well-worn meme that "You know how to spend your own money better than the government does" is flat out wrong. Just because you make a bunch of change each year doesn't mean that you have any idea of how to spend it. What did this guy do? Buy $1000 worth of lottery tickets each week?
Second, he's not alone! It seems that all his friends and family are in pretty much the same situation! And I'd like to give Captain Hero a news flash: lots of folks in their late fifties are getting laid off, and it's not due to the recession... it's been going on for quite a while as businesses shed "high-salary" employees for lower-cost employees either here (e.g. recent college grads) or in India.
And doesn't it just yank on your heartstrings to learn that brother-in-law had to take a 20% paycut? He's only making $200K!! He might have to give up one of his boats!!
I'll willing to bet a bundle that our hero believes that our (public) education system is completely broken. He seems to have some first-hand knowledge. What a tool.