I like to think of myself as a more than ordinarily empathetic guy, but this …
“People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress.”
… smacks the gob in atomic fashion.
Schiff, 46, is facing another kind of jam this year: Paid a lower bonus, he said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country’s top 1 percent by income, doesn’t cover his family’s private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex.
“People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress,” said Alan Dlugash, a partner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP in New York who specializes in financial planning for the wealthy. “Could you imagine what it’s like to say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do that?”
And all across the fucking country, people are thanking their lucky fucking stars that their lives are stress fucking free because they don’t have any fucking money. Pitchforks. Torches. Cleanup on Isle One.
$17,000/year to walk dogs? With that I could afford to get my molars fixed instead of pulled AND get off public transit!
Many people can’t handle money. Maybe Schiffer and his whining ilk should take a good hard look at themselves and yank those kids out of that private school and force them to live in the real world so they don’t grow up to be like them, and so maybe they’ll survive the coming class war.
The dog thing still has me pissed. Why would he even bring that up, to prove he’s an even bigger dick than we had already assumed?
I think the guy with the dogs was 1) messing with the reporter and 2) dissing those wannabes who don’t make enough money to both afford their excesses and sock enough away to get by when the con goes south for a while. Basically he was saying “I had all this stuff before the meltdown and now … I still have all this stuff.” He’s just a happy guy.
The one that struck me most was “We do all our dishes by hand.” The horror … the horror …
My sense of humour is as bent as the next guy, maybe more. I laughed at Ruth Madoff taking the F train which is pretty cold by any metric. BUt this article leaves me feeling a little dizzy and it gets worse the more I re-read it.
Anyway I thought the Isle One reference was very accessible.
There was a guy at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago (that renowned cradle of socially responsible financial folk) who made a similar argument a year or so ago and was nearly, but not quite, laughed out of town. Better that than run out on a rail I suppose.
No argument from me, T. I just thought the one guy stood out because he’s the only one in the story who wasn’t complaining. I thought Isle One might have been a stretch, so thanks.
Jack … better from his perspective, but for me the only persuasive argument against rails or some modern equivalent of tar and feathers is the possibility of mistaken identity. The concept of moral or ethical shame seems to have been disappeared in some circles.
These rich people – are they not made of meat?
Why, yes: yes they are.