So, after reading this article titled “You Try to Live on 500K in This Town” ( Trying to Live on 500K in New York City - The New York Times )
I’m having difficulty determining if the author is actually serious. If he is serious, what is his point?
If he’s not serious, is he simply being a smartass or subtly urging us to send Wall Street executives to a kolkhoz ?
Is he trolling in the NY Times?
It almost reads like an Onion article to me.
No. Most people don’t believe it, but New York City is very expensive. I know NYC people who make $500K and spend like that.
I’d definitely never succeed in such an environment, because there’s no way I’d be shelling out that kind of money for personal trainers, summer homes, 2 vacations a year, and overpriced hot chocolates… I can’t wrap my mind around such a mentality.
Hard to tell if it’s serious or not. If it is I’d just tell the writer to live within their means. Private schools and personal trainers are not a requierment.
Sure, New York is pricey, but I think it’s the all or nothing nature of the article that really makes it silly. Like if an executive was making $500,000 a year he’d necessarily have to live in the sticks, take the subway, and dress like a hobo.
Most families know how to tighten their belts when the breadwinners job situation changes, these guys could do it too. Take one vacation a year, rent a Hamptons home for a couple weeks a year rather than owning one full time, drive yourself around, cut back the nanny’s hours (presumably the other parent isn’t working, since they are seemingly not contributing to the household income), work out by yourself a couple of times a week. Ta-da, you’re spending an assload less money while still enjoying the same ritzy neighborhood and looking the part of ‘rich banker’.
My heart bleeds for the rich.
Yeah, it’s a dumb article, and no, it’s not trolling- it’s a breakdown of how people in New York might spend this kind of money. It’s true that living in this area is more expensive than living most other places and your money may not go as far even if you have a bunch of it, but a lot of the spending described in that article is clearly non-essential. It does not change my view on tax rates for people making this kind of money.
Won’t someone think of the bankers??
Also, what on earth is a frozen hot chocolate? And would I like it?
I think my next career move will be to move back to New York and become a nanny.
As a New Yorker, I sympathize with their plight, and eagerly await my $500,000 paycheck.
It’s called a chocolate milkshake outside Serendipity’s. 
Cry me a fucking river.
I have a good friend who initially opposed Obama because he was going to raise her taxes. When I pointed out that Obama had said he wouldn’t raise taxes on anyone making over $250,000 per year, she made it clear that she and her husband were above that line. She then told me that they were “barely making ends meet,” arguing that because they lived in a very expensive area (not New York, but similar), it was much, much more difficult for them to live on their income.
I couldn’t really do anything but roll my eyes. It’s clear to me that anyone at that level can “make ends meet” by doing without some of the luxuries listed in the article.
I have precisely zero problem with the fact that my tax dollars support food stamps - whatever kind of food gets bought with them. I have a huuuuge goddamn problem with whiny-ass executives who want gov’t bailout money for their companies but complain that 500,000 a year isn’t enough to pay for their nannies and SAT tutors (raise your own goddamn kids!) or their multiple vacations per year. Pull your company up by its everlovin bootstraps and you won’t have to suck off the public teat, assholes – that way you can set your salaries as high as you want and more power to ya!
Seriously - where the hell are the grocery store nosy-nellies who complain about single moms buying birthday cakes or steak with EBT cards? Hopefully rallying around executive pay caps for welfare corporations…
I remember that article well. You have to appreciate the context. At the time a lot of people were calling for the bonuses for top workers at places like AIG to be cut back substantially because they lost money and almost destroyed the economy. The bankers, those who were willing to say anything, responded that they needed that money for the reasons given in the article. It is an example of a reporter letting his subject hang themselves.
Remember, some at least of those who objected to the poor feeling entitled to having enough money to eat thought this kind of entitlement was just dandy. And bankers wondered why they became so hated.
New York Times has a bunch of great, insightful articles. But their articles about lifestyles (and most especially the ones about parenting–minor hijack) are calculated to fill my heart with a burning rage. I suspect they’re secretly written by Trotskyites trying to hasten the next violent revolution.
Do you remember (and have links to) some other gems like this, whether about lifestyle or parenting?
Is the lifestyle section of the NYT a paper version of Lifestyles of the rich and famous in yuppie form?
I don’t have any specifics (mostly because I stopped reading that kind of article a few years ago), but they’ll write about parents agonizing over how their choice of daycare will affect their child’s chances at an ivy-league school, complete with hiring $10,000 consultants to help them get into the most prestigious daycare, and I see red. Or they’ll write about working moms who are so stressed by the various hot yoga dog-therapy Pilates courses that they’re taking and how their lives are just SO FULL, and I’ll want to slap somebody.
It’s all about the travails of the well-to-do, and when I read about the travails of the well-to-do, I generally want to turn them into hobos for a year. But maybe that’s just me.
I just can’t help but think that the article is just a bit of a put-on, in the same spirit as a Washington Post article about a woman who illegally parked at an event with President Obama, only to find that her car had been towed. Panic ensued until the car was found a half block away from the original spot.
One really has to read the article carefully to understand how much it is making fun of the woman and her heart-wrenching plight… but the photos accompanying the article just give it away totally.
Here’s one. It’s about how some people are taking private planes to drop the kids off at summer camp.
This one is simply an article about a summer camp in rural Pennsylvania, and what’s involved in running such a business. It mentions the $9,700 cost for attendance for seven weeks.
This one is about how tuition at some Manhattan private schools now exceeds $40,000 per annum.