I don't think bankruptcies go to 0 at 400k and fine, they are financial idiots. That's what the article was largely about, with fairer (prob more accurate) terminology.

Great. I'll write an article about a hypothetical family that makes $1 million per and goes broke. Important and newsworthy stuff.

Its totally fine for random article on wsj.com of which there are hundreds written everyday. It wasn't featured on the front page, nobody is calling for Obama to make a statement about it etc.

More just giving the base red meat...

I mean they went to Northern Trust and pretty much said make a 400k household have no money left over and make it look as "normal" as possible...only ironic thing to me is that if we cut the income down to the median minority household income and kept the expenditures constant as a percentage of the couple's income, commentators would be in an uproar that those minorities aren't smart enough (implying low-IQ or other social darwinist garbage) to defer their consumption to the future...taking out loans they can't afford etc...

This 1000x. That is the point Max, Jaash et al. Not whether or not the scenario is possible but what propaganda point they're trying to push.

LOL the old "don't say mean things about this article, of course it's ****" defense

Maxy tried as HARD AS HE COULD to figure it out, but he couldn't! That **** was beyond his intellectual capacity.

What propaganda point? Nobody is reading that and thinking "man, its totally normal to have a tough time getting by on 400k" they are thinking "wow, thats utterly horrific budgeting and anybody who is living paycheck to paycheck off 400k needs professional help."

I never said it was ****, it's totally adequate for what it is trying to be.

go home max you aren't helping

LOL dude tried AS HARD AS HE COULD to understand that article and people's responses. Even had this thread for context. Still wasn't up to the task. He read it so carefully!

Hey maybe your company, as it has not and will never contribute to society in any meaningful way, can send an intern over, walk you through suzzer's not-tremendously-complicated post.

"Guys I read it very very closely and I myself am wealthy enough to have the proper perspective and I'm pretty sure that was just an article about how if you subtract ~400 from ~400 you end up with ~zero, not sure what the fuss is about."

jesus max. this is embarrassing even for you

Can't argue with mindless populism i guess.

Who the hell is max

WHY ON EARTH WOULD A PAPER THAT PANDERS TO UPPER MIDDLE CLASS AMERICANS WRITE AN ARTICLE SYMPATHIZING WITH UPPER MIDDLE CLASS AMERICANS WHO ABSOLUTELY LOVE HEARING THAT THEY ARE NOT UPPER MIDDLE CLASS AMERICANS

WHO COULD POSSIBLY SOLVE THIS PUZZLE

APPARENTLY NOT A HIGHLY PAID HEDGE FUND DUMMY

Well, yeah, thats obv what you guys are POPULIST RAGING about, but nonsensically. And people don't have a strong desire to understate their class.....25% think they are in the top 5% etc.

That plus fly's quotes and many other things I've seen you say. You clearly do, and just so you know, this comes off exactly the same as the black friend defense:

Yeah, you're so self-aware.

I think the way the article was spun, it was to show that a.) taxes are too high and b.)the libruls class warfare is ridiculous, because see we made hypothetical family (that makes double what the WSJ household earns) live paycheck to paycheck (though not really right they were putting away a good amount to their 401k...). Also I still believe that if the story were about less well-off minorities the sentiment would be not that taxes are too high on the middle class, but that the sentiment would be more lol poors over levering your balance sheet.

Like if this hypothetical family were to have their house foreclosed on because Chi-town's RE market collapses and one of the parents loses his job/ gets an illness, I feel that the WSJ readership would blame it on Gov't policies/ taxes not blame their lack of personal responsibility (which I feel like many would do if the family was an average income minority family.)

So in short I think people like my family relative who is a GS-15 (step 10), former O-6 retired who complains that because of Obama/liberals taxes he has to live paycheck to paycheck...the kind of guy who is smart about computers but still doesn't put the thought in and thinks that people will stop working harder to not have to move up in tax brackets (confusing marginal rates with effective rates)(if there is any dropoff in work because their earnings yield drops due to the tax hike it is minor)

LOL from the guy who wanted other people not to talk about their definitions of "rich" out of respect for Maxy-poos feelings, and who then wanted people not to say mean stuff about that ****ing awful WSJ article because it wasn't on the front page.

Maybe your company needs to hire a nanny for you.

LOL no wonder you couldn't get a real job. Dude you're posting in a thread about that, talking about an article specifically about that. That Gawker article I posted was from 2012, just to establish this thing where people making six figures+ complain about how they aren't well off/live paycheck to paycheck/etc. is not new or unique. There's clearly an intense emotional desire for people to defend themselves against the accusation of being upper middle class. "Upper middle class? But I live in a universe of finite deposits of lithium! Gosh why do you hate rich people so much"

dessin, sn change

I'll see if we can get an adult literacy teacher for you. I said that I don't really care what the entrenched middle class thinks rich is and that caused a sea of hurt feelings.

So you have 1 guy writing a terrible blog post that was made fun of by people at all income levels? People routinely overestimate their wealth/status relative to the population at large.

So it has nothing to do with what is in the article, but with a ton of stuff your just kinda making up? The article never recommended lowering taxes, specifically pointed out that lower income families are often in much dire situations and said that rich people spending too much is often a psychological issue, not because of lack of money/over taxation etc.

I can't speak for wsj readership, but another example in the article was about how high income folks realized they could lose their job and needed to start saving money. The specific example of high powered attorneys having to file for bankruptcy makes the exact opposite point.