Cooper on SUVs

[Max B. Sawicky]

In terms of income, of course $100K puts you way up
there in percentiles, but . . .
I don't know anything about CC's friends in poverty,
but perhaps the lives of those below $35K in families
with children (i.e., not retired where the house is
paid for and the kids are gone) is as different from
the $100K people as the latter are from those with enough
wealth to afford an expensive lifestyle w/o need of employment.

mbs

Carrol Cox wrote:
> 
> Brad De Long wrote:
> 
> > Wow. That people claim that "those with $100,000 annual incomes...
> > are not themselves rich" shows how astonishingly wealthy this society
> > has become... and how weird our perceptions are...
> 
> Not at all. Consider the Swineherd in the *Odyssey* -- a slave. But
> his position (his relative wealth) was not far from that of someone
> making $100,000.00 today. Moreover, his present was pretty much
> his future -- i.e., his present was not ruled by the future. The only people
> 
> I know making this kind of money are my daughter and her husband --
> and so far as I can determine, the "structure" of their lives bears more
> resemblance to mine (or even to some of my friends who earn below the
> poverty level) than it does to any of those in the Forbes 400. Have you
> read Doug's piece on the distribution of wealth in the U.S.?
> 
> It takes an awful lot of wealth -- probably more than anyone "earns"
> -- to free one's present from the tyranny of the future. And that is the
> tyranny which over 90% of the world's population have most to fear
> from.
> 
> Carrol