Let’s do some math, shall we?

Your hypothetical rich guy has $200k in wage income. He’s married filing jointly and has one kid. He has $60k per year in mortgage payments and $10k per year in property taxes. Assume he has no other deductions or income. Let’s add another $5k for insurance and HOA fees.

After taking the mortgage interest deduction (assume $55k per year – most of his mortgage payment will be interest), the property tax deduction ($10k), three exemptions (himself, his wife, and kid – total $11,100), his taxable income comes to $123,900. That puts him in the 25% marginal bracket, and his total taxes come to $40,850.

So his $60k mortgage, his $40.8k income tax, his $10k property tax and his $5k for insurance and HOA fees leaves him with $84,150.

Now take the guy making $50k/year. He lives in Calaveras County (2011 median household income: $50,475). He lives in a $160k townhouse, giving him annual mortgage costs of $12k (one-fifth the cost of Mr “Rich guy”). His property tax is only $2k/year, and his HOA and insurance is another $2k. After taking the mortgage interest and property tax deductions and three exemptions, his taxable income comes to $24,900, so he pays a hair under $3k in taxes.

And after paying his mortgage, income taxes, property tax, insurance and HOA, he has $31k left.

And all of that research and calculation I did is pointless because his gross income is $34k less than your hypothetical rich guy who is “struggling” has after paying for taxes and housing. Cash in your pocket difference – using your numbers – is over $50k a year.

Please.

It’s just not their reality, it all sounds like lame excuses from rich people.

No, it sounds like lame excuses from individuals privileged to have had the opportunities leading to jobs that pay enough to raise a family and have a single-family dwelling in the Bay Area. How would you feel if some billionaire told you how hard it is to keep fuel in his jet? Might you think, wish I had that problem!

I also truly believe this is all a giant misdirection meant to shine the light away form the Wall Street banks and the gigantic ponzi scheme that is our financial services sector.

Occam’s razor. Why assume a conspiracy? The plutocrats that highjacked the economy are perfectly capable of benefiting from a mob mentality they didn’t create. But to imply it’s all just a witch hunt only contributes to that dynamic. There’s a big difference between a witch hunt and legitimate rebuttals to the well-to-do complaining about money woes resulting from their own carelessness.

You’re quite correct that our society has severe problems with legalized bank fraud. But responsible adults are perfectly capable of rebutting those well-off who choose to throw pity parties for themselves in print and addressing those severe problem.

I agree with you that no one in my socio-economic group has a right to complain about money. However, that is different from not having the right to complain about anything at all, everyone has their problems.

Yet money is exactly what those profiled in the article were complaining about. Who here has said they have no cause for complaint about anything?

Also, anyone anywhere has the right to complain about whatever the hell they want. They just don’t have the right to stop others from calling them out on it. Lots of folks talk about who has what right to say what, but how many are proposing laws against complaining? Maybe I’m being overly pedantic, but it seems to me that the term rights gets bandied about a lot as a substitute for good reasons.

The answer seems to be chromium for 2008 & 2009.

http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-trophies/making-hugos/

How one tastes victory as a comparison remains to be determined.

You also need to consider more then one kid, some of my friends have three, ridiculous luxury I know…

At that level, your mortgage alone is going to be $60,000/year, plus $10,000 in property tax, plus insurance and possibly HOA fees, your hypothetical “rich guy” who makes $200k/year will indeed be struggling with a house like that.

Well – don’t live in a house? Rent a one or two bedroom apartment for $3k-$4k/month? You think that’s living the life of luxury?

I consider being “comfortably well off” as being able to afford:
1) A house
2) Food, electricity, clothing and other necessities
3) A kid
4) …and have a little bit left over each month for emergencies, the occasional vacation, and so forth

If you can’t make the above in San Francisco on $200k/year, then you’re, by my definition, not comfortably well off. I’m not saying you’ll be starving (with $200k/year you have options, like living in Oakland, which has some places that are reasonably nice), but you’re not swimming around in gold coins like all the posts on here seem to say.

Basically, it’s a problem with comprehension. People that make $50k/year think that if they made $200k/year, that they’d be swimming in free money, but they fundamentally fail to understand that in order to get a job that pays $200k/year in places like San Francisco, your costs will explode exponentially, and your taxes will skyrocket as well. Cash in your pocket difference? Maybe $10k – $20k/year.

I myself was born lower class and went to state college on financial aid and loans.

However, you are correct, socio-econometric bias still apply. We do our best out here to level the playing field but it is not possible to level it anywhere near completely. The only thing that can take a bite out of that problem is good government programs.

Working in an industry like this is not something anyone can do either, I know that, like you said it has only something to do with working hard and a lot to do with being born with a certain innate ability coupled with the drive to make it happen and the circumstances to take advantage of opportunity. That innate ability + drive + circumstances is what you are calling “luck”. it’s actually not “luck” though, I would call it “a health and well functioning society”.

If we had ten or twelve sectors of the economy like silicon valley, but all servicing different innate skill sets and located in different parts of the country, coupled with the appropriate government programs to try to ease the socio-economic dysfunctions (provide the circumstances), then we would be in business I think. No one knows how to make that happen though, but it is one of the things we should all be focusing on, it is the real long term solution to the economic problems we now face

Many people out here knows these things. Most of us don’t come from money, many people are all about helping to fix society and giving the less fortunate a leg up.

@Kat, I agree with you that no one in my socio-economic group has a right to complain about money. However, that is different from not having the right to complain about anything at all, everyone has their problems.

I also understand there are a lot of rich people behaving badly. What I object to is the stereotyping that is this whole “1%” bullshit, that just because I fit into that arbitrary financial category, it must mean I and others like me share all these traits with the Wall Street crowd when in actuality many of us on on the forefront of fighting them.

In fact, the world is quite a bit more complicated then “the 1% iz bad” and in order to effect any meaningful change in anything, you and others like you need to abandon the sterotypes and the general outrage take some time to understand the actual dynamics of what is going on., the people that make up that subset of the population and yes, even have some empathy for them, especially the ones that are trying to do the right thing and are being swept up in the witch hunts.

I also truly believe this is all a giant misdirection meant to shine the light away form the Wall Street banks and the gigantic ponzi scheme that is our financial services sector.

cross posted with you. Just clicked through the link and gave it a read.

I think the 99% use the word “luck” to describe their situation because they get that some luck was involved in getting where they are, and also some bad luck got in their way in other areas.

The thing about the 1%, especially the ones screaming that they’re paying too much in taxes, that they they are the job creators, that they are the John Galt’s of the world, that they are the economic engines that drive this country… the thing about those types is they don’t think they were lucky. Or if they do acknowledge it, they simultaneously dismiss it as irrelevent or insignificant.

I think what it is, is a problem of worldview and whether it gets challenged or not.

The two different worldviews at play are (1) “the world is a level playing field” and (2) “the world is not a level playing field”. If you think the world is a level playing field, and then you work hard and make a bajillion dollars, then nothing you did and none of your outcomes will challenge that worldview. But if you start out thinking the world is a level playing field, and then you work your ass off for years adn get nowhere, you start to realize that worldview is full of shit. You start to realize that luck has a lot to say in how your life turns out. At which point you acknowledge it. You acknowledge that luck had something to do with the things you have, the job you have, the spouse you have, the family you have, and so on.

The linked article seems to suggest that acknowledging luck was dismissing your opinion as invalid. But I don’t see it that way. I think the natural world is inherently unfair, not a level playing field, and that people naturally get where they get through hard work, study, perseverance, plus a large chunk of good luck and bad luck. And part of teh role of society is to make the playing field more level. Give everyone a little luck.

Uh, no. The median wage is $70k (higher than the $58k average for California), but the average house price is $751k, versus $384k statewide.

This is why I grit my teeth when I see people like Scalzi saying things like “When in public, please shut the fuck up about how difficult your life is, economically.”

Our tax code is set up to *screw* people in high income, high expense situations.