Tag Archives: responsibilities

Delusions of Average

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Some folks think an annual income of a half million dollars leaves them…average…and strapped. The tweeted image of an example of this delusion is below.  CNBC represents this as a real couple.

You can read the CNBC article linked to in the tweet here, but the image and many of the comments in the tweet’s thread are instructive by themselves.

Morgan Housel offered a couple:

@morganhousel
So $36K in 401k contributions should be added to “what’s left over,” along with $18K in charity contributions (not an expense either).

@morganhousel
If you fix that then the headline becomes “This couple that makes $500K and spends too much money still saves more than 20% of their after-tax salary, which is what happens when you make a lot of money.”

Here’s ODS:

‏@brendan_schleen
Average people don’t have the ability to contribute 18k a year to charity either

KP:

@lightsoutonight
Their house is $1.5 million, with $20,000 property tax payment.  So average.

m night…:

‏@HezbollottaLove
Personally I love to be so goddamn deluded that I can save $36k a year for retirement, have a $200/month per person clothing budget, and spend $2000/month on food, and STILL have $7300 leftover as Do Whatever money, and think that’s “average”

And Thomas:

‏@MintyMultimedia
3 6k vacations a year, 12k a year for “lessons” even though the kids are young enough to need 42k a year in childcare.
The dude who deluded himself into thinking this was “average” was high off his own farts.

 

In the end, though, go ahead and read the linked-to article.  Its author, Kathleen Elkins, shows herself to be delusional with remarks like these:

As the example of one New York City couple shows, you and your partner could be making $500,000 a year and still end up with very little besides 401(k) money.

And

…there’s only $7,300 left each year to go towards other savings goals, investment accounts, or retirement funds.

Very little.  Those 401(k)s getting 36 stacks per year aren’t actually retirement funds, apparently.  And the $7,300 that’s left over is just dog food.  Never mind that lots of actually average income households would love to have that much at the end of the year to go towards other savings goals, investment accounts….

 

h/t to ralf.

An Arrogant Pope

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Recall that French (should be ex-)Cardinal Philippe Barbarin was convicted of covering up the child sexual abuses inflicted by his priests.  Pursuant to that conviction, Barbarin tendered his resignation as Cardinal to Pope Francis.

Amazingly, the Pope refused the resignation.

“Monday morning, I handed over my mission to the Holy Father. He spoke of the presumption of innocence and did not accept this resignation,” Barbarin said in a statement.

Being convicted of a crime in a petty secular court apparently doesn’t satisfy the Pope’s definition of guilt.

Of course, the Pope also could have been operating off the French court’s sentence for Barbarin’s barbarity.  The court sentenced Barbarin to all of six months in jail. And then suspended even that. If the French don’t care about Barbarin’s terrible actions, there wouldn’t seem much reason for the Pope to, either.  Maybe not so arrogant.

Work…Works

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Sam Adolphsen, Foundation for Government Accountability’s Vice President of Executive Affairs, writing for Fox Business, commented on that in a piece about Medicaid’s work requirement in Arkansas—about which Progressive-Democrats in Congress are in an uproar.

Those Progressive-Democrats have complained that work requirements

“threaten[]” Americans…work [is] a “restrictive condition.”

These politicians of the Left ignore two things. One is the trivial one: no one is forcing anyone to work; the only “restriction” is that, in order to get any of Arkansas’ OPM, recipients must go to work in Arkansas or make a good faith effort to do so.

The other thing is the critical item in the affair.

Since the requirement was implemented, thousands of adults have left the welfare program.
…
…when people go back to work after work requirements are implemented, their incomes double or triple in just a year or two.

And this fallout from that second thing:

Getting these able-bodied adults back to work also frees up resources for the truly needy—the very people that the Medicaid program was designed to help.

It also increases Arkansas’ tax collections that go to the State’s Medicaid program.

Here’s where Adolphsen missed the mark, though.  He wrote

Why are Democrats so against work?
…
It’s an indication of how out of touch these progressive leaders are with everyday Americans.

No, Progressive-Democrats are the smartest kids on the block—just ask them.  They know what they’re doing with their objections to imposing a measure of personal responsibility on welfare recipients, personal responsibility that brings with it personal prosperity.

Those folks getting work and raising their standard of living aren’t actual human beings; they’re just votes spilling out of the Progressive-Democrats’ welfare box.

Forgive, Certainly

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“We Gave Him a Chance”: Mercy for Abusive Priests Divides Church reads the headline of an article in a recent Wall Street Journal.  And the division exists; although IMNSHO, it need not; it stems from a misunderstanding of a basic concept.

Recall last fall’s American Bishop conclave in which the group’s decision was to hold all abusers—priests, bishops, cardinals—absolutely accountable with all of them defrocked for a single occurrence—a zero-tolerance position.  Also common, though, is an opposing position, exemplified by a Polish priest:

You have to exonerate the human being[.]

This after his congregation had rallied behind a colleague convicted of distributing child pornography.

The American bishops come closer to the mark, but they miss, too. Forgive, of course—but that, in no way, requires, or even suggests, forgetting the sin or the sinner, nor does it even hint at leaving the man in the same place or function within which he committed such grievous sins.

Forgetting, or taking no sanction—which not removing the abuser would be, no matter the pretty words of scold that might be uttered—cannot be.

Full stop.

False and Dangerous

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The New York Times published a hit piece on President Donald Trump, a piece in which the news outlet’s authors—Mark Mazzetti, Maggie Haberman, Nicholas Fandos, and Michael  Schmidt—cited only “several American officials” and other such, but not a single on-the-record source to underlie their central thesis or otherwise corroborate claims of their carefully hidden “sources.”  Indeed, here is their methodology, proudly proclaimed in the middle of their piece,

How The Times Reported This Story
To write this story, New York Times reporters reviewed documents and conducted several dozen interviews with current and former government officials, members of Congress, legal experts and more[]

but even here, they identified no one and nothing—not even the “reporters” who did the claimed reviews and interviews, much less any of the persons or documents the authors claimed were consulted.  We’re just supposed to meekly take the authors’ word for this.

Of course, Trump demurred, and in his usual blunt, seemingly inflammatory way.  As do I; the NYT‘s bit is a long one, and it cites “sources” that, for all we know, are only made-up.

Now to the heart of my post.  Quoting Howard Kurtz’ citing of NYT Publisher AG Sulzberger from Kurtz’ own piece on Trump’s objection, Sulzberger (see that? An actual on-the-record source) said

in demonizing the free press as the enemy, simply for performing its role of asking difficult questions and bringing uncomfortable information to light, President Trump is retreating from a distinctly American principle…The phrase “enemy of the people” is not just false, it’s dangerous.

No.  What’s false and dangerous is Sulzberger’s blatant, deliberate lie about what Trump said.  Here’s Trump’s actual claim:

Notice that.  As Sulzberger knows full well—both with words and grammar being his stock in trade, and from what he learned in his third grade grammar lessons—words that modify nouns limit the class of nouns to a clear subset of that class.  Trump has never called the media, or the news media, an enemy of the American people.  He has said only that that subset of the news media that is fake news is that enemy.

It’s true enough that Trump has made no bones about his contention that many, if not most, journalists are purveyors of fake news, nor has he hidden his view that many, if not most, news outlets are such purveyors.  He’s used no euphemisms in expressing his views of CNN as a routine such purveyor.  He also called the NYT a true enemy of the people.

Notice that, though: even in the latter two instances, he’s addressed particular outlets, not “the news.”

On the other hand, Trump has, often, commented favorably on other journalists and news outlets as being quality reporters, “fair” journalists and outlets, including journalists at outlets Trump otherwise disdains.  Plainly, not all news media, or individuals within it, are enemies of the people in Trump’s view or commentary.

This is the false and dangerous lie that Sulzberger—one of the influential MFWICs of one of the influential printers of what it’s pleased to call “fit news”—is spreading.  Sulzberger deliberately and carefully censored the key part of what Trump said—that modifying phrase, which Trump even emphasized in his tweet—and thereby changed utterly what Sulzberger claims Trump said to fit Sulzberger’s own narrative.

And guys like Howard Kurtz, who claims to know better as a critic of the news media, uncritically repeat the lie.