February 10, 2009--Not Getting By On $500K Per
It distressed me to learn from a recent article in the New York Times (linked below) that some folks in Manhattan will have a hard time living on only $500,000 a year, the compensation limit Barack Obama spoke about last week for executives of financial institutions receiving taxpayer subsides. Now I know that New York is expensive, but give me a break.
To be fair, assume you’re a married couple, have two kids, live in a condo with a mortgage, and send your children to private school. What’s your annual nut?
Tuition will run you about $30,000 per kid; if you’re living on the Upper Eastside (west of Third Avenue, which is the only place to be) in a three bedroom apartment your likely mortgage will be $95,000 a year; condo maintenance fees another $95,000; and since you’ll need a nanny that will set you back in the vicinity of $45,000 (if you pay the required taxes!). This brings you to nearly $300K and we haven’t yet gotten to federal, state, and city taxes (not a killer thanks to George Bush, though still for certain at least $150,000) or food or vacations or transportation, shopping, Pilates, hair, nails, or the always-hard-to-calculate “incidentals.”
Now, assuming one of your children is “average,” in spite of the fact that no child living in Lake Wobegon or between Fifth and Madison is ever thus defined, and you want to make sure he has all the advantages, in addition to all the résumé-building you have to subsidize from age three to assure that he gets into a good college (chess lessons, violin lessons, soccer lessons, Latin lessons, etc.) when the time comes you’ll also have to spring for tutors and SAT coaches. The former will run you about $125 an hour while the latter will cost upwards of twice that.
Your “gifted” other child will need to have her Mandarin lessons in addition to her Latin and from at least age 12 will need to spend time during summers, not in the Hamptons with the rest of you, but in Europe polishing up her French and Spanish accents and being immersed in early Italian Renaissance painting and sculpture, which might serve as good matter subject for one of her college application essays.
I do not just mean to mock this, though I haven’t thus far resisted, because being able to provide these kinds of extras for one’s children is a wonderful thing. But it is the disproportionality of how such advantages have been distributed in America that is what is truly distressing and which are being glaringly exposed now that the economy has hit everyone hard, very much including many high-fliers who have been the primary beneficiaries of the various bubbles that have up to this point enriched them.
There is so much frustration and even populist rage out there that many want to see brought down those who have been living at the expense of rest of us. In addition to whatever sense of justice that might provide and how much the gaps between the very rich and the middle class might be reduced, there may also turn out to be some other social benefits.
It wouldn’t be such a terrible thing, would it, if that “average” Upper Eastside high school senior, without being artificially pumped up by expensive tutors and coaches, wound up at a state college (nothing wrong with that) and his place at NYU went to someone more deserving. Or if he had to go to public school in the city, which would help diversify it and help make the place better for everyone. Or if a few of the fancy Greenwich Village and Soho stores went out of business and as a result the rents were to come down so that young entrepreneurs would have a chance to bring back some funky texture to the city. And if the price of housing were to decline, after the Sex and the City crowd were flushed out, perhaps we’d see the return of struggling artists to the Big Apple.
The woman down here who served me coffee yesterday morning has been working seven days a week at three jobs for the past 18 months to keep her house from foreclosure and to pay off her college debts (she was trained to be an EMT at the local community college). Thus far, she has maintained her optimistic spirit and positive energy, but when the guy sitting next to me who runs a small tow truck business began to rail about Bernie Madoff and all those “Wall Street fat cats,” her ears perked up and I could see she was paying attention.
To be fair, assume you’re a married couple, have two kids, live in a condo with a mortgage, and send your children to private school. What’s your annual nut?
Tuition will run you about $30,000 per kid; if you’re living on the Upper Eastside (west of Third Avenue, which is the only place to be) in a three bedroom apartment your likely mortgage will be $95,000 a year; condo maintenance fees another $95,000; and since you’ll need a nanny that will set you back in the vicinity of $45,000 (if you pay the required taxes!). This brings you to nearly $300K and we haven’t yet gotten to federal, state, and city taxes (not a killer thanks to George Bush, though still for certain at least $150,000) or food or vacations or transportation, shopping, Pilates, hair, nails, or the always-hard-to-calculate “incidentals.”
Now, assuming one of your children is “average,” in spite of the fact that no child living in Lake Wobegon or between Fifth and Madison is ever thus defined, and you want to make sure he has all the advantages, in addition to all the résumé-building you have to subsidize from age three to assure that he gets into a good college (chess lessons, violin lessons, soccer lessons, Latin lessons, etc.) when the time comes you’ll also have to spring for tutors and SAT coaches. The former will run you about $125 an hour while the latter will cost upwards of twice that.
Your “gifted” other child will need to have her Mandarin lessons in addition to her Latin and from at least age 12 will need to spend time during summers, not in the Hamptons with the rest of you, but in Europe polishing up her French and Spanish accents and being immersed in early Italian Renaissance painting and sculpture, which might serve as good matter subject for one of her college application essays.
I do not just mean to mock this, though I haven’t thus far resisted, because being able to provide these kinds of extras for one’s children is a wonderful thing. But it is the disproportionality of how such advantages have been distributed in America that is what is truly distressing and which are being glaringly exposed now that the economy has hit everyone hard, very much including many high-fliers who have been the primary beneficiaries of the various bubbles that have up to this point enriched them.
There is so much frustration and even populist rage out there that many want to see brought down those who have been living at the expense of rest of us. In addition to whatever sense of justice that might provide and how much the gaps between the very rich and the middle class might be reduced, there may also turn out to be some other social benefits.
It wouldn’t be such a terrible thing, would it, if that “average” Upper Eastside high school senior, without being artificially pumped up by expensive tutors and coaches, wound up at a state college (nothing wrong with that) and his place at NYU went to someone more deserving. Or if he had to go to public school in the city, which would help diversify it and help make the place better for everyone. Or if a few of the fancy Greenwich Village and Soho stores went out of business and as a result the rents were to come down so that young entrepreneurs would have a chance to bring back some funky texture to the city. And if the price of housing were to decline, after the Sex and the City crowd were flushed out, perhaps we’d see the return of struggling artists to the Big Apple.
The woman down here who served me coffee yesterday morning has been working seven days a week at three jobs for the past 18 months to keep her house from foreclosure and to pay off her college debts (she was trained to be an EMT at the local community college). Thus far, she has maintained her optimistic spirit and positive energy, but when the guy sitting next to me who runs a small tow truck business began to rail about Bernie Madoff and all those “Wall Street fat cats,” her ears perked up and I could see she was paying attention.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
7:12 AM
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