Is Barack Obama rich?

[Crocodiles_And_Boulevards]

@gazpacho

My personal definition of rich is having enough money to do what you please and not have to work. 1.3 million in the bank is not enough to do that. You cannot get nice cars travel a few times a year eat at nice restaurants frequently with the income from 1.3 million.

That would depend entirely on where you live and decide to travel. You’re saying on a 1 mil income I couldn’t buy 3 or 4 new $50,000+ cars a year (especially with trade-in value) and travel to exotic locales? A plane ticket to Boracay costs less than $800 if you know when to get them. And you can live like a king there for under a thousand bucks a week.

In Arkansas, the median income is $23,000 a year. 1 mil a year is RICH, unless you live in the alien world of California

[Lamar_Mundane]

@Crocodiles And Boulevards

That would depend entirely on where you live and decide to travel. You’re saying on a 1 mil income I couldn’t buy 3 or 4 new $50,000+ cars a year (especially with trade-in value) and travel to exotic locales? A plane ticket to Boracay costs less than $800 if you know when to get them. And you can live like a king there for under a thousand bucks a week.

In Arkansas, the median income is $23,000 a year. 1 mil a year is RICH, unless you live in the alien world of California

Not $1M a year - $1.3M is his family’s net worth. Two entirely different things.

[Crocodiles_And_Boulevards]

@Lamar Mundane

Not $1M a year - $1.3M is his family’s net worth. Two entirely different things.

SpartyDog said this:

The term “rich” is a difficult term to define these days, especially for a politician.

Probably the best way to make a judgment on you own definition is to look at his 2006 tax return.

Obama 2006 tax return

It looks like his wife is the primary breadwinner aside from book royalties. This is no secret. There isn’t a lot of investment income which would indicate a huge safety net unless he has everything in tax free bonds.

While $1 million in income in a year might make some people think he is rich, that isn’t enough at this point to throw him into the realm of the “rich”.

That being said, there is no doubt that he will end up rich.

[Richard_Parker]

@even sven

The high school he attended is the THE old money high school on Hawaii (Hawaiians feel free to correct me- I’m going off a Punahou alum’s word). He went to school with people who’s last names you recognize because their families own major corporations. According to Wikipedia, tuition is currently over $16,000 a year. My friend tells me stories of how they had high school assemblies along the lines of “how to invest your trust funds in mortgage futures.” Only a handful of people fail to go to top universities. They actually have a school tie.

Even if his family income isn’t astronomical, he grew up in a privledged class, not simply among the working wealthy.

He was on a scholarship. Link.

[SparrowHawk]

Obama went to Punahou on a scholarship. Punahou is the “old money” school, but they are serious about giving scholarships and having economic and racial diversity. There are literally hundreds of endowed scholarships available (currently disbursing ~$3 million in needs-based financial aid), as well as 97% of the income from the annual carnival (about $400K).

School tie? My kid didn’t even have to wear shoes till fifth grade. I guess the boys do wear one when they graduate since they don’t do cap and gown. I don’t know what tuition was in '79 when Obama graduated, but we were paying just under $10K when my daughter graduated in '04. We are not rich; we made sacrifices to send her there, just like a lot of other people here do. As far as I know, she never attended an assembly on investing a trust fund. The cross-section of the student body is not all “privileged class”, if by that is meant people whose families own major corporations.

There was a bit of a flap here recently when Senator Dan Inouye, supporting Clinton, made some comments deemed disparaging to Obama’s “local” cred because he went to Punahou “and that was not a school for the impoverished.” Punahou’s president received a letter of apology shortly thereafter. (On preview, I see the story has been linked to already.)

[A.R.Cane]

You have to consider his lifestyle too. As a Senator he has to maintain two households, dress well, attend many social functions, travel extensively, etc., etc.
Rich is a very relative term. When I was in the moving business I handled most corporate accts., execs. primarily in the oil business. I often learned a lot about my customers in a very short time. They had very nice houses, luxury cars, nice wardrobes, all the trappings of well to do people, but most of them pretty much lived pretty close to the edge. The more you’ve got, the more you spend, often as a part of being in that economic class.

[Jurph]

@even sven

The high school he attended is the THE old money high school on Hawaii (Hawaiians feel free to correct me- I’m going off a Punahou alum’s word). He went to school with people who’s last names you recognize because their families own major corporations. According to Wikipedia, tuition is currently over $16,000 a year. My friend tells me stories of how they had high school assemblies along the lines of “how to invest your trust funds in mortgage futures.” Only a handful of people fail to go to top universities. They actually have a school tie.

My parents were both schoolteachers, and I doubt that their combined annual income was over $100,000 when I was a teenager. Nonetheless, they were able to spend my college fund to send me to a boarding school with

• $16k annual tuition
• lots of “old money” names as schoolmates (DuPont, Parker, Forbes)
• 95% or higher college enrollment annually
• and a school necktie which I still proudly wear.

There were two ways to get in: being rich and being able to keep up academically with rich kids. I’m fairly sure I got in on the second track, because I had to take a ROTC scholarship to attend the university I ended up choosing. There were dozens of kids at my school in the same position – their families bet big on the high school paving the way to college scholarships. Obama’s attendance at such a school does not (by itself) allow you to deduce that he was rich, or that he is rich.

It’s possible, however, that he owes some of his success to his enrollment there; going to a big-name school doubtless paved the way for him to attend Harvard, which in turn got him noticed when he chaired the Law Review, which etc. etc.

[Richard_Parker]

@Jurph

It’s possible, however, that he owes some of his success to his enrollment there; going to a big-name school doubtless paved the way for him to attend Harvard, which in turn got him noticed when he chaired the Law Review, which etc. etc.

He started at Occidental College, and transferred to Columbia as an undergraduate. He went to Harvard for law school. If anything paved the way, it would probably be the transfer to Columbia. I’ll get they are represented in HLS alums by a factor of 100 over Occidental grads.

[SparrowHawk]

@Jurph

It’s possible, however, that he owes some of his success to his enrollment there; going to a big-name school doubtless paved the way for him to attend Harvard, which in turn got him noticed when he chaired the Law Review, which etc. etc.

And he owes his enrollment there to being smart, not rich. They don’t give scholarships to dummies. And they don’t let the “privileged” in unless they meet academic standards, no matter how much money they have. That is one reason most go on to highly rated schools; the kids are smart and the education is a good one.

[Otto]

@Dinsdale

What does a senator make - $150K or so?

$165,200 as of 2006. Plus health insurance, pension benefits and other perks and benefits of the office. They do of course have to maintain two homes, one in/near DC and one in their home state, so that’s probably a bigger expense than most people have for housing.

[gazpacho]

@Otto

$165,200 as of 2006. Plus health insurance, pension benefits and other perks and benefits of the office. They do of course have to maintain two homes, one in/near DC and one in their home state, so that’s probably a bigger expense than most people have for housing.

Don’t the states give them a budget to maintain the DC residence? Much like the President gets a budget to maintain the white house?