Poor Andrew Schiff. The director of communications and marketing at Euro Pacific Capital Inc. is finding that his $350,000 salary just isn't cutting it these days. Without his big bonuses, life is hard.
Paid a lower bonus, he said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country’s top 1 percent by income, doesn’t cover his family’s private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex.
“I can’t imagine what I’m going to do,” Schiff said. “I’m crammed into 1,200 square feet. I don’t have a dishwasher. We do all our dishes by hand.”
Woe betide the family that has to manually wash dishes! We don't have a dishwasher either so now I feel like I'm stuck in some Dickensian nightmare. He can't imagine what he's going to do? Well, maybe instead of paying $32,000 a year for your daughter's education you can send her to a $25,000 a year prep school and buy a dishwasher with the difference.
The article makes a point of showing that suffering because of loss of income is relative. An accountant is quoted as saying:
“If you’re making $50,000 and your salary gets down to $40,000 and you have to cut, it’s very severe to you,” Dlugash said. “But it’s no less severe to these other people with these big numbers.”
In other words, that losing income causes suffering is universal. OK. Schiff and the other 1%ers in the article definitely had their lifestyles altered because they didn't receive big bonuses. But is it really suffering?
The one rich person I've ever known in my life was a great uncle of mine. I don't know how many millions the guy had. But he didn't bitch when business was bad or an investment went south. In fact, none of my relatives of his generation complained about their lot in life and none of the others were rich. Would they have liked to have had more? Probably. But they all were happy with what they had even if it wasn't six figures.
This is because they had perspective that transcended a range of low six figures and high six figures. These people grew up during The Great Depression and were poor. Before that great uncle became wealthy, he grew up in a big family with parents who didn't speak English and a father who busted his ass in a coal mine for who knows how many hours every day. Then it was off to fight in World War II as a tailgunner on a B-17.
Even when things were on the glum side for my great uncle and his brothers and sisters, they could be worse. They still had indoor plumbing and electricity; there were no Jerries in Messerschmidts trying to kill them; there was food on the table, beer in a bottle, and cards for pinochle; the kids were in school; no one was slaving away in a coal mine; and everyone was in good health.
I don't want to romanticize the lives of my grandparents and great aunts/uncles but Schiff and the others like him in the article need to get a perspective that goes beyond a $350,000 lifestyle vs. a $1 million lifestyle or whatever they were leading prior to their bonuses being cut. This narrow view is demonstrated by M. Todd Henderson, a University of Chicago professor who got his fleeting moments of infamy by whining that he was "just getting by" with his $250,000+ a year salary. The article quotes him:
“Yes, terminal diseases are worse than getting the flu,” he said. “But you suffer when you get the flu.”
Having to squeak by on $250,000 or $350,000 is not equivalent to having the flu. It's like getting a paper cut. It's a paper cut because you're still enjoying the fruits of a First World lifestyle and, compared to the vast majority of humanity, you have the riches of Croesus. I don't think that the Hendersons or the Schiffs have to walk outside to a hole out in the street to take a dump. And I'll bet they're not getting by on gruel. Their faucets still give potable water.
Unfortunately I don't think any of these people will see just how incredibly good they have it.
Perhaps we need to throw a benefit concert for them.
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