Friday was the last day of work for some of my colleagues in the press room. They weren't laid off — they hit the Pick Six jackpot at the end of last month.
Office scuttlebutt says the $10 million payout, split three ways, works out to about $95,000 a year for the next 26 years. For all but a handful of people in the building, this was perceived as More Than Enough to live on while still setting much of it aside for the future. The youngest of the lucky winners, I've heard, is staying at his job for a while longer to lock in the benefits that come after 20 years. (He works hard, but he's good at his job and he doesn't hate it, so why not?)
I mention this because, for these three men, and for almost all of us who work with them, $10 million is a life-changing sum, even split three ways and spread out over 26 years. Yes, $95,000 a year is regarded by most Americans as a life-altering fortune. It is, after all, more than twice the median income for American households ($44,389 for a household of four in 2004).
But some American households aren't impressed by such a sum. Around 16 percent of American households are already making more than $100,000 a year, so for them $95,000 doesn't sound like a quit-your-job-and-go-fishing kind of number. And for the 2.3 million or so American millionaires, $95,000 a year probably sounds like a horrifically austere lifestyle.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden stumbled across a discussion among such folk in a New York magazine article extolling the addictively voyeuristic pleasures of the chat rooms at UrbanBaby.com. This excerpt caught Teresa's eye:
One night, a woman posts this seemingly non-rhetorical question: “If your [husband] had a 5mil trust fund would you stay home? 2 kids and [husband] does not work.” Responses range from a deadpan “uh, yeah” to “someone has to work … 5 mil is not enough for forever.” A long thread branching off examines the premise that a trust fund providing interest of $350,000 to $500,000 is not enough to live on. “Not enough for whom?” asked one poster incredulously. Another poster replies, “Me. We currently live a 15k/month lifestyle, net, with 1 [child] and no school costs” — and then promptly summarizes her expenses for an invisible audience: “7k rent, 1k PT sitter, eating out 1.5–2k, utilities 500, travelling 2k, clothing 1k, out and about ‘cash’ 1k.”
Here we have a group of people convinced that $500,000 a year is "not enough to live on." They would not understand the grateful joy of my fortunate colleagues in the press room. They wouldn't consider $95,000 a year as "striking it rich," but as "striking it poor."
I don't begrudge those millionaires their millions any more than I begrudge the lucky guys in the pressroom their tens of thousands. The trouble comes when these extraordinary people cease to realize they're extraordinary — when elites fail to realize that they are elites.
These UrbanMommies who think that $500,000 a year is "not enough to live on" may be living in a deluded fantasy world, but they have the resources — culturally, economically, politically — to make that fantasy more real, to create a world in which it's harder than it was before to live on $500,000, or $95,000, or $44,389 a year.
It's clear from the New York article that this delusion isn't working out very well for them. It's not working out very well for the rest of us either.
Addendum:
Median household income for New York City (2004): $60,765
Median household income for San Francisco (2004): $60,031
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