"Barely Squeaking By On $300,000 A Year"

http://www.openleft.com/diary/14655/barely-squeaking-by-on-300000-a-year


"Barely Squeaking By On $300,000 A Year"
by: David Sirota
Mon Aug 17, 2009 at 08:00


In the months following the Wall Street meltdown, we've seen a stealth marketing campaign that is profound for its boldness - a marketing campaign designed to make us believe that very wealthy people are suffering the most.

We've seen this campaign in Wall Street spokespeople insisting that a $500,000-a-year salary isn't very big, in a New York Times style section that asserts that it's impossible to live in the city on a half million dollars; in a punditburo that says millionaires are oppressed and can't afford to pay $9,000 a year more in taxes for universal health care; and in a national press corps that seeks to portray any effort to raise taxes on the richest 1 percent as unfair; and a business press that threatens a class war if President Obama moves forward with his promise to mke the payroll tax more progressive. As I said, this is a marketing campaign, and a fairly well coordinated one.

That's why I wasn't surprised to see this audacious Washington Post piece over the weekend which reports - with a straight face - that those making $300,000 a year are "barely squeaking by" in this economy. I shit you not:



I'm not going to take up text space going off about how absurd this all is, except to say (as I have before) that in a country where the recession is obviously most crushing the middle-class, I'm playing the smallest violin in the world for those making $300,000 a year (ie. the top 5 percent of the country) - especially those who whine about their plight while refusing to cut back on their nannys and gardeners.

What's fascinating here is not how incredibly out of touch with Middle American reality the superwealthy are, but how willing the media are to promote the superwealthy's whines as legitimate and justified. The entire economic narrative on Main Street is about how the average family making $50,000 a year is going to put food on the table - and the entire economic narrative in the elite media is about the top 5 percent's concerns that they might have to cut back on mansion expenses.

This is the real "Two Americas" - the elites and the media outlets they control, and the Rest of Us. And clearly, the former doesn't give a shit about the latter.

That showcased how tragic the crime of music sharing is for the artists?

fuck me running sideways.

Look America, a real economic victim. Have pity. Some day you could be in her shoes. THE mind fuck that passes for the American Dream.

You could live the high life on that money Ohio . .. as in own a decent-sized home, travel and in 10 years, never have to work again.

It's astounding how insufferable some of these people are.

we live in the country, and our house is supposedly worth almost $100k.. (yeah right). our taxes are about $2k a year we could pay off all our debt in no time with that amount of money!!! maybe even do some remodeling!! i think a lot of it has to do with your cost of living. If we lived in the suburbs or closer to the city, the houses vary in cost depending on the development. And we are a one income home... I am a stay at home mom. We don't really eat out much... once a week if we are lucky. Usually we'll eat at home or bring a lunch to the park and then maybe get an ice cream cone or something as a treat. We do not have one of those fancy flat tvs.... Our tvs work fine and I can't see justifying a purchase like that when our tvs work fine. We do have directv which we have had since bob worked installing directv... and we have cable/modem internet, which bob's work pays for. And we did splurge and buy windows this year... and vinyl tiled the kitchen/dining room... but bob used his card with no interest for 12 months and we made sure we would have the money to pay it before we ever considered doing it.

She just doesn't know it, because she never comes in contact with anyone who lives more modestly.

... and she's an idiot, who never learned how to budget her money.

comparing herself to the company she keeps, she's practically pleading poverty....

and i'm not really sure what these 'ivory tower' stories do other than piss the other 99 percent off...what's that? you mean the rich are elitist, have skewed perspectives and are hopelessly out-of-touch with the way the rest of the world works?? who knew?

I think if they put it that way, it would make more sense. Many years ago, when I worked in the NY financial sector, I remember a partner complaining that he was living paycheck to paycheck -- and he was making about $300,000 per year!

I'm not sure whether this is class bias, or an observation about how bad Americans are with money no matter what their income level.

Yet Chinese peasants manage to put away 50% of their income.

This woman needs a reality check.

And I consider that I live quite comfortably on that and manage to put a little into savings almost every month.

I should point out, however, that I have no rent/mortgage payment. If I did, I would need about $1000 more per month.

TG

if not for having a roommate, I'd be in deep trouble.

So I either don't go to college and be told I'm dumb (while jobs go to other countries where it's clear that people far dumber than me can't be bothered to do it correctly either) or get a degree that may or may not be useful but I will continue to be paying for.

The latter, obviously, because I want a better salary (not just to pay back college debt) and because I care in the first place: Something many of my generation or younger don't. (Now add in the "chicken and the egg" analogy because I'm not sure which one started first, the apathy or the conditions that encourage apathy.)

afford to upgrade my stuff...............

Luckily when people give me computers to fix and they become too costly, 99 out of 100 times I inherit them and then they get stripped and sold.

I had a friend who lived at home with her parents and had a car payment. Now, she was very good at keeping track of her money.. She paid all her bills on time and was very fiscally responsible. I will admit I wasn't that good at it. But, I rememmber we would go out to bars and such to hang out... and she would complain about ONLY having $100 for the week.... that hundred dollars was AFTER she paid her $40 to her parents to live there and her car payment. Oh did that make me mad.... ONLY $100!! I had like $50 maybe, and that had to buy food and put gas in my car... her $100 was all hers to piss away if she wanted. I didn't begrudge her having money to burn... I just didn't appreciate her complaining about having that much. She could go buy clothes, shoes, purses... I would go to the mall with her and she would be looking at a $200 purse and saying that it was reasonable amount to pay for a purse!! She never just went and blew all her money on something like that though.... She saved for it. I just couldn't fathom spending that much for a purse.

That barely covers the rent. If you can't live on $300k a year go fuck yourself.

and I am not complaining because at least I have Medicaid to help with my medical needs.

Give me $300,000 a year and I think I would be dancing..okay, I would be dancing seated at the delicious joy of it. ;)

I wish I had to learn how to cope with that *little* money. :eyes:

I am barely making $300 a week right now, less than half what I was making last year. I don't think I can spare much sympathy for folks like Ms Steins.... 8000-10000 in monthly housing costs? I do not resent people making a good living, or being wealthy but people who are so clueless about how hard it is for normal people really piss me off. Do you think that woman has ever had to scrounge all the change in her car and house to go to the grocery store?

K&R

I have absolutely no sympathy for this pitiful excuse of a human being.

Ihave a couple of numbers for her to consider.
1789 and 1917.

are as clueless as the Russian Tsars of 1917 and pre-revolution Cuba. One day they will be taught a lesson they will never forget.

at minimum wage and no social life.

It sounds like she is trying to pay a half decent wage to the Nanny. I have no problem with that and on $300k or even $225k per year (no bonus income plus child support) she can easily afford to keep the nanny if she cut back elsewhere. I don't think she is necessarily 'over paying' the nanny at 40k per year.

That's always a source of trouble with the rich...

even taking into account that part of that is property taxes, that is still a great wage for a nanny. Our child care is about 20% of that -- but we've got family helping.

The Nanny does not earn $75,000 a year...The article says that amount is for the Nanny and Property taxes combined. I'm quite sure this greed monger does NOT pay her Nanny anywhere NEAR $75,000/yr.

My job has many responsibilities that affect thousands of people, incorporates more stress because things have to be done right, we're scapegoats to begin with, and we get paid less.

yet whine and whine endlessly about the poor

she needs to give up the 3 acre house and the nanny, and maybe do the right thing if she makes 300k off the late fees of struggling people and stop pilfering her husband for the 75k "child support" swaddle cash.

I make do for a month on what this joke makes in less than a day.

And it's even worse for those Americans with more bloated incomes - aren't they capable of reigning it in even a little bit?

If he's the father, shouldn't he be helping support the kid? Just sayin'.

I don't understand the attitude some people have (usually men) that if a woman has children living with her and also has a job, she somehow doesn't need any child support from their father and, if she gets it, is only "pilfering" from him to buy trinkets and bonbons for herself.

Obviously, if she does, something's wrong, but in most cases she really does need the money because with the kids in her house, her expenses are greater.

I see no reason why a man shouldn't have to pay for the upkeep of his own children, assuming there's no reason they're in danger from him and thus he gets to see them regularly. If they're wealthy and they have a custody/child support agreement, I see nothing "pilfering" about her getting child support from the father.

The real issue is why this woman can't figure out a way of life for herself that is a lot less expensive. Is it that she'll be the shame of the neighborhood with a house any smaller, a yard any less expansive? My heart bleeds. :sarcasm:

i think the trinkets and bon-bons in this case is the living situation. I know some cities have high living expenses, but it made me angry to read that she essentially won't move in smaller quarters - and that the rest of us (some of whom earned 75k before nafta) could be saving with just that and are supposed to feel sorry for her. Actually she's kind of squandering her kids future by not saving that and keeping up the upper-middle class life style..

i just got teed off, sorry

Yeah he should pay, that's a little much dont ya think?

what is his income?
How much is fair for someone to give to their children?

she could support herself and her child without working. Must be nice.

She is not making $300k a year off 'the late fees of struggling people'. Visa and Mastercard don't pocket those fees. They just operate the payment clearing network; ie when you swipe your card they provide the infrastructure that gets the information about the charge to your bank, the merchant's bank and so on.

For this they basically charge retailers a fee of about 1% of all the transactions that go through their system. Of course that cost is passed on to the consumer, but it's quite reasonable if you ask me - after all that infrastructure is vastly more convenient than dealing with paper checks or cash in most cases (particularly if you order over the phone or the internet) and 1% is not a big amount to start with.

Credit limits, overlimit fees, interest rates, annual fees - those are ALL set by the bank that issues the card. The Visa and Mastercard corporations have no control over that, and they don't make their money that way. They are not the bad guys in the credit card wars.

"if she makes 300k off the late fees of struggling people"
1. She does not make $300K from mastercard. The brakedown given was:
150K + bounus: Her job as a VP
75K: Child Support
50K: From her personal investments
(presumably the bonus is around 25k)
2. Mastercard does not receive any late fees. Those are set by the issuing bank. Mastercard operates the network that makes the card work.
3. 150K (or even 175K) is not IMO an egregious income for a VP at a major company. Sure we can all agree it is a LOT of money and we would love to make that much and on and on. But really when it comes down to it we are not talking about million dollar salaries.

"stop pilfering her husband for the 75k "child support" swaddle cash."
1. I seriously doubt you even know the income of the father, as such it is impossible to say what kind of percentage of his income this might represent and thus how fair it might be.
2. Child support is typically set by a court or attorney brokered agreement. That is hardly 'pilfering' anything.
3. At this income level, given two parents things like private school might be a reasonable expectation, so that figure might be reasonable.

"she needs to give up the... and the nanny"
And use what for child care? Single mother, Mastercard VP, likely long sometimes unpredictable hours or off hours meetings, maybe occasional travel. I wouldn't go starting in on her about the Nanny with whom she is providing a job.

Now I agree on moving to a more manageable house. Obviously she is in a mansion and she is pushing the edge of being able to afford it. A 10 Million dollar house would net her a massive amount to put in the bank and lower her taxes and other home expenses.
And I agree that she is absolutely bitching and moaning about something that she has no right to.
However that does not make her the evil villain you are making her out to be.

i just see mine go up, and when I pay a card off, i still get a fee notice..then you have to call and call..its the banks..

i don't think she's evil, but I do think combined, that we have a (i would call it upper-class) problem with entitlement, and that en masse, it becomes a system that is evil and villainous to people with lower incomes. This is about pr against raising taxes on the wealthy, because they "struggle."

But it's in part because they won't give up an opulent lifestyle. The poor are vilified in this country and blamed and perceived as hogging "entitlements" but through tax cuts etc. the rich end up paying much less than before and many of them still can't seem to save any money. The poor can't save because of low wages and no health care. The poor sacrifice (or are forced to .."right-to-work" laws,etc.) but if Obama asks for a modest reagan-era tax increase then out come the woe-is-us PR campaign.

she can to move, give up the nanny, send the kids to public school, etc...the poor and former middle class have few or no choices.

those fees suck. And they are highly unfair.

As for her situation, I doubt a little extra in taxes would come anywhere close to sinking her.
As for this though: "she can to move, give up the nanny, send the kids to public school, etc..."
As someone pointed out the market for 25 million dollar houses isn't all that great.
The nanny is likely a requirement for a VP at a major corporation, and she can afford that just on her child support.
Private school could be dropped but it might not be where I would start.

Fuck them

:nopity:

"Two Americas" indeed! :argh:

Kind of obvious. We all wish we had "problems" like paying for gardeners, pool people, and nannies.
My gardener is my husband, we have a little $20 kiddie pool from Toys R Us for the kids, and I am the nanny. I get that she works full time...its called Daycare. Loser.

I imagine that being a VP at Mastercard likely requires long hours and the nanny may indeed be a necessity, but that is hardly something she can't afford.
$300,000 - $40,000 for the nanny leaves a shitload left over.

I agree on the smaller house. Even if she lost 5 MILLION in the sale and moved into a 10 MILLION dollar home she would net 10 million dollars. Enough to pay her $9,000 tax increase for public health care for the next 1,000 years AND leave a cool million to blow on pool cleaning services.

From what I read, it's a $2.5 milllion house - how will sell it and lose $5 million?

Looks like I misplaced a decimal point in my head when I read the article.
Sorry about that.

She could still downsize the house. And I imagine it would be much easier to sell a 2.5 Million dollar house.
So my calculations are off. Sorry again for the error.

is just barely getting by on $300,000 a year, a sum most of us here on DU would consider huge, but that she is spending all she takes in and honestly cannot see any way to economize. You see this all up and down the income spectrum. I'm constantly amazed at what some people consider essential. A recent divorce and relocation has gotten me to reconsider what I consider essential, and I'm quite pleased with how little I've learned to get by on. And at that, there are many out there who manage on much less than I have.

those who make names for themselves also make huge salaries with plenty of perks. They travel in the orbit of the rich and famous and live the lifestyle too.

There's also just a lot more story to be told about someone like that than someone making $35,000 per year who is barely getting by.

how completely "let them eat cake" they are now.

amazing

"Does she hear herself speaking?"

Is she not aware that there is a significant number of parents that can't feed their children and can't fathom being concerned about whether their kids cell phone i the latest and greatest.

The fact that she could consider complaining about her affluent lifestyle (not being "enough") is very troubling.

Greed.

that there is no recognition of the fact that $300K is more than most people will make in a decade.

I wasn't surprised to see this audacious Washington Post piece over the weekend which reports - with a straight face - that those making $300,000 a year are "barely squeaking by" in this economy. I shit you not:


He's highlighting the absurdness of this woman and her 'squeaking by'.

wasn't that much and how hard it was to live on that amount.
I was astounded.

she should have no problem.

It honestly isn't unreasonably high for that level job (IMO, $125,000 is not from MC from the looks of it) but if she thinks it is 'barely squeaking by' she and her coworkers need a reality check.

Your threads are so refreshing.

She's trying to keep her married lifestyle financed by two incomes as a divorcee. Honey, I'm sorry, but you are going to have to sell off the mansion and live within your new income.

It read like some kind of false flag propaganda. Admittedly, I can't figure the angle. But it's hard to believe that the writer, the editors, the publisher et al. didn't think that a story lamenting the hard times of a person in the top 1% would be anything but a self-parody. :shrug:

The classic example was a woman who wrote into the (Portland)Oregonian a few years ago in favor of the latest tax reduction initiative. Her letter included the statement, "I pay over $100,000 a year in income taxes, and I'm not even rich."

Yup, actual letter.

So you may be right, but the cynic in me is still very suspicious.

Rent out a couple of rooms in that big house. Give the renters reduced rent if they pick up some of the slack around the house, cleaning, yardwork, etc. Teach the kids to help out around the house - kitchen chores, cleaning, yard work etc. Hire older teenagers or college kids to babysit when needed. Buy the kid's clothes at discount stores. Trade both cars in on a good used Scion xb or something similar- roomy enough to haul the kids but still gets good fuel mileage. Put the house on the market now and start looking for something more modest in the same area.

...she doesn't make enough money on her own to keep up the lifestyle she had when she was married.

As I pointed out elsewhere, credit card PROCESSING companies do not make money off outrageous interest rates, fees etc. - those are imposed by banks, and collected by banks. Visa and Mastercard just operate the wires, computers and software systems that enable credit and debit cards to function, for which they take a pretty modest fee of 1%.

I think this is a poorly written article, but I actually have no problem with this lady making ~$225k a year because she probably works damn hard for it, and the company provides a useful service that most people take for granted. Maybe she should consider moving to a smaller house which will cost less in property taxes, but I'm fine with her providing employment and custom to local small businesses.

take care of her kids, her yard, her pool, etc. I do have a problem with her complaining about her taxes on a 2.5 million dollar house when she apparently has no interest in cutting costs where she could with a little imagination. Why should her neighbors subsidize her chosen lifestyle - which is essentially what they would be doing if her taxes were lowered?

If she wants to bitch about it, throw her sorry ass into a private for-profit prison where she can make 25 cents an hour.

Has she done anything illegal? Or even unethical?

You sound like a party nark right out of Dr. Zhivago.

Well, if they weren't so stringy, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea.

:rofl:

When the obscenely wealthy whine, moan, and complain, they expect anything but a "STFU" from the other 95% of America? And if we tell them that, then we're suddenly to blame. If someone got on the news saying they were barely making it on $300 a year, Rush and Fox would be the first to tell them how lazy and incompetent they are. Anyone who has the nerve to say they're "struggling" when they make $300,000 should be deported to North Korea to scrub toilets for the rest of their pathetic life, IMHO. If they want remorse from me, they need to show it for someone other than themselves first.

She makes an order of magnitude more than I do, and she dares to whine about tight finances???



This attitude is exactly why revolutionaries (communist and otherwise) have been able to get a foothold in the poor.



Here's a nickel's worth of free advice for the rich fucks in this country... if you don't want "socialism" or "communism" or some other kind of revolution, DON'T FUCK THE PEOPLE OVER SO HARD IT HAPPENS!!!


Sadly, the intense competitiveness and greed of the wealthy and above makes this impossible to do. And they wonder why, periodically, they're an uprising with all the violence and disorder that such an uprising entails.

They don't have the mental, psychological ability to say "I have enough".

Lines such as "As tight as money is, she has decided that living in a 4,000-square-foot house on three acres is the practical thing to do." hardly bespeak a desire at the WaPo to paint the rich as oppressed.

in Westchester County, NY, these expenses are not, in fact, unreasonable. Take into account the fact that this woman probably couldn't sell her fancy house for even a quarter of what she paid for it...she probably really is in a bind.

I live in Putnam County--the one just north of Westchester. When my relationship ended earlier this year, my income was essentially halved, yet I have many more expenses--I can't shovel my long driveway or cut my own grass, at least not without help. If my daughter were younger, I'd have to pay for child care. And there's "for sale" signs up and down my street. Nobody's buying.

Don't get me wrong. I'm no advocate of conspicuous consumption. But where you live has an awful lot to do with how much it costs to live. If this woman is a top exec, she's probably also expected to dress well, keep her hands manicured, etc. These are not optional expenses when you are at that level of management.

Likewise, the upkeep of your dwelling is mandatory, especially if you have any hope of maintaining its value.

I'm no judge. If someone says they're struggling on $300k, I'd look at the circumstances and be inclined to believe them.

but I bet at least some of her expenses may in fact be excessive.
It is a good point about having trouble selling the house. That would be the top of the list of things she could cut back on without endangering her job etc.
And we could talk about her keeping it after the divorce being just as irresponsible financially as people who bought houses they could not afford in the mortgage mess.

the US hoi polloi are going to dust off the guillotines from the French Revolution?

A nanny, a pool man, a gardener, a snow plow guy, and someone mentioned a maid. And she's paying a boatload of taxes to help support the local government.

OK, say she has two children - that make eight people being supported by that $300,000. $300,000 divided by 8 = $37,500 per person. That means the $75,000 for the (theorectical two) kids is in scale with the cost per person .

If the nanny does make $40,000, she is overpaid according to this measure, but then that cost should be at least partly paid out of the child support. Part of the nanny's pay may be in the form of room and board, which would change the balance.

The size of the house may be justified if she uses it for a lot of entertaining for her job

When you think about it that way, it does not seem as extreme. Sure, the $37,500 per person is not evenly distributed, but the house owner has expenses that the employees do not - taxes, maintenance (other than the regular maintenance done by the employees), and energy costs.

But she is redistributing most of her wealth - and dipping into her investments to continue to redistribute her wealth.



As an aside - my parents had a business that did not support itself. Long story on why they bought it, but once they owned it, they kept it running for over twenty years while having to add money every year to keep it open. They did that for two reasons - first because of the nature of the business, they could get health insurance through a group plan. That saved them a lot of money, nearly as much as they were spending on the business, and let them get health insurance from when my Dad retired until he was eligible for Medicare.

Second, the business provided five and a half jobs in a small town in the middle of a period of industry cut backs. It was those jobs that led my parents to keep the business open for ten years after they did not need the health insurance anymore. When all but one of the employees were eligible for Social Security and Medicare, my parents closed the business. The last employee was the part time one and she had other part time jobs lined up.

Sure, my parents could have cut back, closed the business, paid out of pocket for private health insurance, and put those people out of work. But they felt a responsibility to the people who needed those jobs and the benefits they provided.


Maybe the woman in the story feels the same way. Sure, she could cut back, get a smaller house, and cut her own expenses. But she'd put a number of people out of work. Maybe she does not want to do that. Maybe she wants to keep them working in an economy where they probably would not be able to find jobs.

Something to think about.

Pull yourself up by your goddamn bootstraps and move. Morons.

invited as friends of our friends who make over $300,000.00, no kids. The woman said because of Obama she had quit giving any money to charity. They own a large house that they have cut into apartments for two renters. They have no children. And yet she was using Obama's rescinding of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy as a reason not to give to charity. She wanted to make sure they we knew, people she had never met before, that their combined income was over $300,00.00 (ours is not). Yet she also wanted our hosts, who had just emailed their friends for contributions to their pet charity, why they wouldn't be giving any money. It wasn't them. It was Obama, see? Meanwhile, we had mailed our annual check to the charity (which is worthwhile).
Any excuse to be greedy.
That was one long weekend.
(the woman makes her money as a lawyer representing pharmaceutical companies in court. I'm guessing she's not a John Grisham fan. Of course, I was reading "The Associate" that weekend.)

It has been my observation that this pattern is not uncommon with people. We tend to view our own glass as half empty. Noticing what we don't have and forget to count what we do have. We joke about it with shows like Desperate Housewives, and how tough it is to keep up appearances etc.

We can joke about how ridiculous this woman seems to us. While the same could be said by the 50k/yr family about the 100k/yr, or the 20K about the 50k, or the child in Bangladesh about the American with 20k/yr. Seems it's as much human nature as anything that this becomes people's view of themselves.

and yet, somehow he manages to survive on far, far less than $300,000.

(I don't know exactly how much he makes, but I believe it's less than 6 figures).

Somehow, I survive on less than one-tenth of $300,000.

These people disgust me.

I'm against the DP, but by golly, it almost makes me want to start oiling guilllotines.

For half a mil, I'd live like a king

How do they think the people who clean their office buildings or drive their taxis/limos live?

The little people cannot possibly understand
what it's like...

They have no TASTE, no SENSIBILITY.

When do we start tearing down their houses and showing them how the other class lives? :grr:

Staunch republiclowns who live in Chicago and can't explain how their values match the republiclown party.
They have a membership to the upscale Eastbank club, a personal trainer, a housekeeper, and a nanny (despite the fact that sister in law has no job and is in perfect health). They're whining idiots who begin every sentence with "I" or "We".
Vacuous douche-bags to have a conversation with.

Seriously though, the historical parallels to the French revolution are pretty striking.

that kind of implication is inappropriate. Maybe people on other boards advocate violence as a means to their end but most progressives don't find it humorous or desirable.

Just pointing something out, unless you want to omit all discussion on mankind's violent past.

The French revolution is considered a -bad- thing, you know, but still a consequence.

I encourage it.

Of course, we'll get arrested, yet the Rethug gun slingers don't raise an eyebrow in the MSM or with the cops.

19% pay cut so far this year, and a new group insurance in January. That means higher premiums and more out of pocket.

Yeah, I'm really sad for this woman.

:puke:

That's fucking nuts.

These hand-wringing exposes about how the upper middle class, or the upper class have been "riding out" these tough times. The New York Times--also a Yuppie paper if there ever was one--has done this before on more than one occasion.

Look, I'm sure some (though certainly not all) people in the above story's income bracket have had to cut back on their expenses and their lifestyles. But big whoop. Plenty of kids get by just fine without ballet lessons, tennis lessons And I can't say I really approve of having a nanny do a parents' busy work either.

There are people in this country who are fighting everyday just to survive--not to maintain their lavish lifestyles--but to survive. To eat, to have a roof over their heads, to even just be able to go to the doctor. That's who we need to be hearing about in the papers, not the trials and tribulations of some Stepford Wife.

I don't even know how anyone can rationalize her behavior and the article itself.

to avoid subsidizing the indolent, self-indulgent lifestyle of these rich asshole parasites.
her job contributes NOTHING to human welfare or advancement but is based entirely on the SCAM of extending "credit" and receiving "fees" and "interest" in return (then of course also making and breaking individuals on the basis of how well they keep up with the system of fees and interest--legalized kneecapping, in other words). Just another despicable capitalist asshole worshipping at the altar of money and greed.


EAT THE RICH.

It is time to bring this shit to an end. Pitch forks in hand everyone!