Oh, I'm not complaining about how much they make, I'm a little cheesed that they're bitching about not having enough when they earn roughly 5 times my annual income in a year and apparently cannot make a living off of it.
It's more about re-evaluating one's priorities and counting blessings I guess
edit: also, what hippocrass said
Originally Posted by Nermy2k
That's just a narrowsighted view of it. Some law professor didn't have any part in causing the crisis, so regardless of his income level, he is just as "fault-free" as a middle class family that's feeling tight, or a lower class family that's feeling tight. His job security and income are products of his skill and reputation within his field; you can't begrudge him that. Just like many middle-income families, he was living within his means, and now feels a crunch as his means are reduced unexpectedly.
It's easy to say, "Well, make sacrifices: move to a small house in a less expensive neighborhood; get a cheaper car; clean your house yourself; make your wife go back to work." It doesn't make those activities any less difficult to undertake, and some are just financially stupid. The luxuries he describes are the perks of working the way he does; sure, they might not be as modest as "woohoo, we just got a Keurig at the office!" but that doesn't make it easier to give them up. Change is difficult for everyone, especially when you believe, as most everyone does, that you have earned your station and the lifestyle associated with it.
I mean, I'm not saying it was smart to go on the record with a reporter about his specific lifestyle changes (and less so for the banker types, who all have a perceived responsibility for the crisis), because I wouldn't expect Joe Public to look objectively and relate. But as individuals, there's more in common than you expect; the difficulty, stress, and shame of admitting you need to cut back are difficult regardless of the social sphere in which you find yourself.
mutton
RIP hydro
I agree with all of this (it can be summed up as people with higher incomes have higher overheads and that's not particularly unfair) but, come on, his actual complaints are pretty pathetic. $17,000 a year on his two dogs? At least one of the dogs was a rescue, though.
So what makes them so special compared to hundreds of thousands of others who've all been degraded financially, either immediately or through creeping normalcy? Comparing your fictional law professor with my fictional airplane mechanic, which one do you think earns their compensation more? Hypothetically speaking, if you were forced to cut a salary by 25% in order to stay afloat, would you choose the airplane mechanic or the law professor?
I mean, we can argue about training and education, and I'm not saying it isn't significantly more difficult to get to be a law professor who makes 250K/a than it is to be an airplane mechanic who makes 80K/a. The problems are the ones that come afterwards - when unions are busted and minimum wage labourers are called in to replaced skilled labourers to keep profit margins at a specific level. Now we have untrained people where skilled people are needed and, quite literally, lives are up in the air. This has already happened in many skilled trade fields, it's happened in manufacturing, where, since the 80's in Ontario at least, the average wage for being a random temp is around $10/hr. This hasn't really changed much in spite of rising costs of living and inflation. Did they deserve that rate of pay? doubtful. Did hundreds of thousands of people have to suck it up, sell their homes and move somewhere more affordable because they were living on inflated wages? Yep. They lived. And so can these highly trained professionals.
I never said there wasn't any shame, stress or difficulty. It's not easy having to downgrade. Anecdotally, the town I grew up in is like a mini detroit - when the car manufacturing industry flopped around, I know many, many friend's families who had to move from relatively modest homes (with a fewoverpriced paycheque-to-paycheque mini mansions) to something smaller so they could keep putting food on the table. I've seen this kind of thing in a community before. It's not even, necessarily, about being perceived as part of the problem (although that makes it sweeter to rub in). It's about realizing that everyone in this system has a role to play, and sometimes even the guys on top have to make sacrifices that aren't scapegoats. Deal with it. Many people have already, they aren't special. They sound like angsty teenagers (Oh my God! No one has EVER felt the way I do right now!) instead of specialized professionals.
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