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I remember a politician complaining about having difficulties with a salary of 6000€/mo. Some people live in a bubble so far from the real world that almost se

I remember a politician complaining about having difficulties with a salary of 6000€/mo. Some people live in a bubble so far from the real world that almost seems fantasy.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
It depends on your liabilities and other aspects like age. 6,000 EUR per month is $7,300 USD per month is tough if you’re a new pharmacist in the US and need to repay $300k of student loans and make up for 4 to 6 years of lost income and catch up retirement savings, as an example.
- danaris 5y ago
  Even this shows a basic lack of understanding of what "tough" means for someone who is actually poor. As soon as you put "saving for retirement" as something that's even possible, you're no longer in the realm of what's genuinely "tough". "Oh, those people making three times what I do a month have it so tough! After paying way more than the minimum on their student loans and putting aside a large chunk of money for retirement, they might only have a thousand dollars or so of truly disposable income!" "Tough" is when "disposable income" is a fantasy, and you're regularly having to choose between whether to pay your heating bill or buy enough food for the rest of the week.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    And a poor person in Sudan will say poor person in US will not know what tough is. The comment I responded to was about a politician complaining about a certain payrate. To which I wanted to show that it is possible to have to have to be stretched thin (mentally), and the politician is not thinking about having to cancel their third overseas vacation. Yes, they’re not on the very last rung of the ladder, but slipping off your rung also causes worry.
    - danaris 5y ago
      But you continue to prove the article's point: that the feeling of "slipping off your rung" and having to downsize from 3 yachts to 2 or (shock!) 1, however frustrating, upsetting, and stressful it may be to the person losing both money and status, does not remotely compare to the feeling of not knowing whether you will still have a home or even be alive next year, next quarter, or next month because you don't have enough money to pay for heat, food, and rent.
- azornathogron 5y ago
  I'll grant you the loan repayment, but the other things aren't expenses. "Lost income" is a psychological artefact, not anything concrete. It's a result of comparing against some hypothetical ideal financial situation. The same for "catching up" on retirement savings. The concrete part is that people with that level of income (large, but not so large as to make all problems disappear) know that to be comfortable in the future they need to save a big chunk of their income. The people living with much lower incomes just don't have that luxury at all. Which is kind of the point - it's totally different worlds.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    When currency is being devalued year after year, lost income (up to a certain amount) most certainly is an expense. The longer you sit out of the asset inflation game, the more you fall behind. So whatever the cause for you falling behind has to make up for it. Maybe I’m wrong, but that model has served me well.
    - azornathogron 5y ago
      I agree that currency devaluation and so on means that saving money earlier in life has a larger impact on your lifetime comfort than saving money later. I don't really follow how it's classed as an expense though. And I don't know how you determine how much income you have "lost". I think we probably agree on the situation but disagree on what terms make sense to describe it.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Assuming you need $x by some age due to being unable to earn more money (illness, old age, not wanting to work), then not earning income in your possible working years pushes up the amount of income needed in other working years to reach the same $x. For example, if you get your bachelors in 3 years instead of 4 and spend $30k on tuition and earn $90k by working, then that would result in an extra $120k in compared to spending 4 years in college. I class it as an expense, because everything has an opportunity cost, which is defined as your 2nd best option. It is not always useful, for example thinking about spending time with your kids rather earning $15 driving for uber or something. But it could be, if you need that $15 to feed your kids.
- monsieurbanana 5y ago
  It's in euros though, much less likely that someone on that salary in Europe would be truly struggling, compared to someone living in the USA.
phone8675309 5y ago
I had a coworker at my first programming job complaining how hard it was to make it on a $175,000 a year salary in the Midwest. It was nearly three times what I was making and I thought "I can manage with so much less, wtf is this person’s problem?"
- IggleSniggle 5y ago
  If they were struggling to make it on $175000, maybe they had a $200000 a year in medical bills! This is America we’re talking about after all.
  - serf 5y ago
    I get that it's a tongue-in-cheek comment, but most coding positions i've ran into in the United States offer pretty comprehensive health and dental plans. If someone years ago making 175k a year coding doesn't have healthcare insurance then it's likely of their own doing either through contract renegotiation or taking a pretty damn bad benefits package for the sake of a fairly high salary for such a position.
    - jjav 5y ago
      > I get that it's a tongue-in-cheek comment, but most coding positions i've ran into in the United States offer pretty comprehensive health and dental plans. It's not that simple, given the health care mess in the US. I have a friend with top-shelf insurance and salary at bay area FAANG company who still has >$50K out of pocket medical costs every year.
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    Their out of pocket maximum was likely no more than $10k, if that.
    - jjav 5y ago
      > Their out of pocket maximum was likely no more than $10k, if that. In the US, medical insurance out of pocket maximums don't mean it's the most you can pay. I've had years where according to the insurance company accounting my out of pocket has been less than $1000, but according to bills I actually had to pay my out of pocket was close to $10K.
fnord77 5y ago
a national politician needs two homes - one in the capital and one in the location they represent. That alone would eat up 6000€ especially if either place is expensive.
- chii 5y ago
  why do they need to own the place in the capital, if they only travel there to work? Can't they rent for the duration of the time they spend there?
  - lacksconfidence 5y ago
    AOC doesn't need to buy it. Simply paying rent in NYC and DC is too much for a bartender with < $30k in family wealth
- pedrosorio 5y ago
  Often politicians in that situation get extra cost of living payments for travel and accommodation (at least in the EU)
dralley 5y ago
I remember when US Reps worth millions were mocking AOC for not being able to simultaneously afford an apartment in DC and NYC prior to receiving her congressional paycheck.
- ta988 5y ago
  It shows you how competent these people are at taking care of the American people...
- prepend 5y ago
  Congress reps make $170k. It’s not super wealthy, but certainly possible to afford two rents outright. Not to mention if you sublet/etc since I wouldn’t need to literally stay in two places at once. I think no matter how much you make, higher salaries always seem so much easier. People can either budget or can’t, I don’t think it matters the actual amount. I’ve met people who were budgeted and running a family on $30k and people paycheck to paycheck on $300k.
  - dralley 5y ago
    "Prior to receiving her congressional paycheck" This was right after she was first elected, before she took office.
wpietri 5y ago
One summer in high school I got a factory job. It was Michigan, so I was running an injection molding press making the rims for side mirrors. (Decades later I still remember that the press took 67 seconds per cycle, and that 1600 rims was the shift target.) I was on second shift, so my crew didn't see the executives much. But one day the CEO held an all-hands, so we shut all the machinery down and went to an area big enough for him to talk with us all. I no longer remember what the meeting was about, but I think it must have been related to why the company couldn't afford a raise people were expecting. Somebody asked him a question that I couldn't hear; he looked a little flush and responded quickly, off the cuff. This guy who was wearing a nice suit, this guy who had clean hands and no burns from the presses, this guy who was easily clearing 10x what his workers made: this guy said, "I live paycheck to paycheck just like you all do!" And implied that he was just helpless in the face of his wife spending to much. Everybody in the room scoffed at him. I'm still scoffing.
- detritus 5y ago
  O/T - How many side mirror rims were in each cycle? If it were just one, then your shifts must have been over a day long, which doesn't make much sense.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    Good question! It was 4. While waiting for the press I'd deflash [1] the set that were cool enough to put to the grinder and stack them for transport to the next station. Those doing the math will note that in theory 67 seconds would allow for 1716 rims per 8-hour shift. But it took time to open it, get them out, and close it again. The machine never stopped; breaks were handled by somebody coming along and taking over for a bit. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_(manufacturing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_(manufacturing)
    - detritus 5y ago
      Crikey! Thanks. That's still a heck of a lot of work in those hours, with very little downtime. I do a lot of 'proceduralised' jobs, but I'm 'lucky' in that I get to define and hone the procedure and then it tends only to be necessary for a few hours or a day or three, before I move onto something else entirely. I get a wee quick out of making things more efficient, then get to move on before my brain calcifies. The thought of acting a mere part of a machine for 8 hours a day, weeks, months and years on end is ... well, it makes me appreciate my job, even at its worst!
TomSwirly 5y ago
> I remember a politician complaining about having difficulties with a salary of 6000€/mo. It depends on where you live. I lived in New York City for years. If you had a family, it would be hard to live there as on 6000€/mo, unless you had been living in the same apartment for decades. The median cost of a 2-bedroom apartment there is 3000€ a month, taxation is high (federal, city and state taxes), food is wildly expensive, etc. I hear London and Tokyo are even worse.
- pedrosorio 5y ago
  It’s reasonable to assume the politician earning 6000 euro a month was not living in NYC, London or Tokyo
- ta988 5y ago
  There are people living with much less according to salaries distributions how do they do it?
- refurb 5y ago
  Hard to live on 3000EUR/month after housing?
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    US salaries are pre-tax, so it wouldn't be 3000 left over.
adolph 5y ago
The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill
slightwinder 5y ago
This only shows that it goes both ways. Everyone does only know little about the live of others. I could easiely see a politican needing to spend more money to build and maintain their career. Similar it could be bullocks and the guy is just greedy. It's hard to understand from the outside.

I remember a politician complaining about having difficulties with a salary of 6000€/mo. Some people live in a bubble so far from the real world that almost seems fantasy.

lotsofpulp 5y ago

It depends on your liabilities and other aspects like age. 6,000 EUR per month is $7,300 USD per month is tough if you’re a new pharmacist in the US and need to repay $300k of student loans and make up for 4 to 6 years of lost income and catch up retirement savings, as an example.

danaris 5y ago
Even this shows a basic lack of understanding of what "tough" means for someone who is actually poor. As soon as you put "saving for retirement" as something that's even possible, you're no longer in the realm of what's genuinely "tough". "Oh, those people making three times what I do a month have it so tough! After paying way more than the minimum on their student loans and putting aside a large chunk of money for retirement, they might only have a thousand dollars or so of truly disposable income!" "Tough" is when "disposable income" is a fantasy, and you're regularly having to choose between whether to pay your heating bill or buy enough food for the rest of the week.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  And a poor person in Sudan will say poor person in US will not know what tough is. The comment I responded to was about a politician complaining about a certain payrate. To which I wanted to show that it is possible to have to have to be stretched thin (mentally), and the politician is not thinking about having to cancel their third overseas vacation. Yes, they’re not on the very last rung of the ladder, but slipping off your rung also causes worry.
  - danaris 5y ago
    But you continue to prove the article's point: that the feeling of "slipping off your rung" and having to downsize from 3 yachts to 2 or (shock!) 1, however frustrating, upsetting, and stressful it may be to the person losing both money and status, does not remotely compare to the feeling of not knowing whether you will still have a home or even be alive next year, next quarter, or next month because you don't have enough money to pay for heat, food, and rent.
azornathogron 5y ago
I'll grant you the loan repayment, but the other things aren't expenses. "Lost income" is a psychological artefact, not anything concrete. It's a result of comparing against some hypothetical ideal financial situation. The same for "catching up" on retirement savings. The concrete part is that people with that level of income (large, but not so large as to make all problems disappear) know that to be comfortable in the future they need to save a big chunk of their income. The people living with much lower incomes just don't have that luxury at all. Which is kind of the point - it's totally different worlds.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  When currency is being devalued year after year, lost income (up to a certain amount) most certainly is an expense. The longer you sit out of the asset inflation game, the more you fall behind. So whatever the cause for you falling behind has to make up for it. Maybe I’m wrong, but that model has served me well.
  - azornathogron 5y ago
    I agree that currency devaluation and so on means that saving money earlier in life has a larger impact on your lifetime comfort than saving money later. I don't really follow how it's classed as an expense though. And I don't know how you determine how much income you have "lost". I think we probably agree on the situation but disagree on what terms make sense to describe it.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Assuming you need $x by some age due to being unable to earn more money (illness, old age, not wanting to work), then not earning income in your possible working years pushes up the amount of income needed in other working years to reach the same $x. For example, if you get your bachelors in 3 years instead of 4 and spend $30k on tuition and earn $90k by working, then that would result in an extra $120k in compared to spending 4 years in college. I class it as an expense, because everything has an opportunity cost, which is defined as your 2nd best option. It is not always useful, for example thinking about spending time with your kids rather earning $15 driving for uber or something. But it could be, if you need that $15 to feed your kids.
monsieurbanana 5y ago
It's in euros though, much less likely that someone on that salary in Europe would be truly struggling, compared to someone living in the USA.

phone8675309 5y ago

I had a coworker at my first programming job complaining how hard it was to make it on a $175,000 a year salary in the Midwest. It was nearly three times what I was making and I thought "I can manage with so much less, wtf is this person’s problem?"

IggleSniggle 5y ago
If they were struggling to make it on $175000, maybe they had a $200000 a year in medical bills! This is America we’re talking about after all.
- serf 5y ago
  I get that it's a tongue-in-cheek comment, but most coding positions i've ran into in the United States offer pretty comprehensive health and dental plans. If someone years ago making 175k a year coding doesn't have healthcare insurance then it's likely of their own doing either through contract renegotiation or taking a pretty damn bad benefits package for the sake of a fairly high salary for such a position.
  - jjav 5y ago
    > I get that it's a tongue-in-cheek comment, but most coding positions i've ran into in the United States offer pretty comprehensive health and dental plans. It's not that simple, given the health care mess in the US. I have a friend with top-shelf insurance and salary at bay area FAANG company who still has >$50K out of pocket medical costs every year.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  Their out of pocket maximum was likely no more than $10k, if that.
  - jjav 5y ago
    > Their out of pocket maximum was likely no more than $10k, if that. In the US, medical insurance out of pocket maximums don't mean it's the most you can pay. I've had years where according to the insurance company accounting my out of pocket has been less than $1000, but according to bills I actually had to pay my out of pocket was close to $10K.

fnord77 5y ago

a national politician needs two homes - one in the capital and one in the location they represent. That alone would eat up 6000€ especially if either place is expensive.

chii 5y ago
why do they need to own the place in the capital, if they only travel there to work? Can't they rent for the duration of the time they spend there?
- lacksconfidence 5y ago
  AOC doesn't need to buy it. Simply paying rent in NYC and DC is too much for a bartender with < $30k in family wealth
pedrosorio 5y ago
Often politicians in that situation get extra cost of living payments for travel and accommodation (at least in the EU)

dralley 5y ago

I remember when US Reps worth millions were mocking AOC for not being able to simultaneously afford an apartment in DC and NYC prior to receiving her congressional paycheck.

ta988 5y ago
It shows you how competent these people are at taking care of the American people...
prepend 5y ago
Congress reps make $170k. It’s not super wealthy, but certainly possible to afford two rents outright. Not to mention if you sublet/etc since I wouldn’t need to literally stay in two places at once. I think no matter how much you make, higher salaries always seem so much easier. People can either budget or can’t, I don’t think it matters the actual amount. I’ve met people who were budgeted and running a family on $30k and people paycheck to paycheck on $300k.
- dralley 5y ago
  "Prior to receiving her congressional paycheck" This was right after she was first elected, before she took office.

wpietri 5y ago

One summer in high school I got a factory job. It was Michigan, so I was running an injection molding press making the rims for side mirrors. (Decades later I still remember that the press took 67 seconds per cycle, and that 1600 rims was the shift target.) I was on second shift, so my crew didn't see the executives much. But one day the CEO held an all-hands, so we shut all the machinery down and went to an area big enough for him to talk with us all. I no longer remember what the meeting was about, but I think it must have been related to why the company couldn't afford a raise people were expecting. Somebody asked him a question that I couldn't hear; he looked a little flush and responded quickly, off the cuff. This guy who was wearing a nice suit, this guy who had clean hands and no burns from the presses, this guy who was easily clearing 10x what his workers made: this guy said, "I live paycheck to paycheck just like you all do!" And implied that he was just helpless in the face of his wife spending to much. Everybody in the room scoffed at him. I'm still scoffing.

detritus 5y ago
O/T - How many side mirror rims were in each cycle? If it were just one, then your shifts must have been over a day long, which doesn't make much sense.
- wpietri 5y ago
  Good question! It was 4. While waiting for the press I'd deflash [1] the set that were cool enough to put to the grinder and stack them for transport to the next station. Those doing the math will note that in theory 67 seconds would allow for 1716 rims per 8-hour shift. But it took time to open it, get them out, and close it again. The machine never stopped; breaks were handled by somebody coming along and taking over for a bit. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_(manufacturing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_(manufacturing)
  - detritus 5y ago
    Crikey! Thanks. That's still a heck of a lot of work in those hours, with very little downtime. I do a lot of 'proceduralised' jobs, but I'm 'lucky' in that I get to define and hone the procedure and then it tends only to be necessary for a few hours or a day or three, before I move onto something else entirely. I get a wee quick out of making things more efficient, then get to move on before my brain calcifies. The thought of acting a mere part of a machine for 8 hours a day, weeks, months and years on end is ... well, it makes me appreciate my job, even at its worst!

TomSwirly 5y ago

> I remember a politician complaining about having difficulties with a salary of 6000€/mo. It depends on where you live. I lived in New York City for years. If you had a family, it would be hard to live there as on 6000€/mo, unless you had been living in the same apartment for decades. The median cost of a 2-bedroom apartment there is 3000€ a month, taxation is high (federal, city and state taxes), food is wildly expensive, etc. I hear London and Tokyo are even worse.

pedrosorio 5y ago
It’s reasonable to assume the politician earning 6000 euro a month was not living in NYC, London or Tokyo
ta988 5y ago
There are people living with much less according to salaries distributions how do they do it?
refurb 5y ago
Hard to live on 3000EUR/month after housing?
- nitrogen 5y ago
  US salaries are pre-tax, so it wouldn't be 3000 left over.

adolph 5y ago

The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

slightwinder 5y ago

This only shows that it goes both ways. Everyone does only know little about the live of others. I could easiely see a politican needing to spend more money to build and maintain their career. Similar it could be bullocks and the guy is just greedy. It's hard to understand from the outside.