Bernie Sanders buys a $575,000 vacation home and the Internet cries hypocrisy

[richeiieu]

Bernie Sanders does not like fancy-schmancy things. He isn’t a huge fan of gazillionaires, tuxedos or any of the highfalutin trappings of society’s economic ills. This, of course, made him a hero among the country’s growing socialist movement. So when news came that the former presidential candidate bought a $575,000 vacation home for his family,

Comments

[amw]

I am sorry but having a half mill left over for a cottage is NOT the norm, inheritance or not. Pretending like it ain't no thing for a family to drop that kind of money on a house they are not even going to live in most of the year is so out of touch I can't even

[amw]

Oh I'm not surprised either - I mean, his salary is public and his family is clearly in the income bracket where many of their peers would own a holiday home. I was more reacting to some of the commenters here who seem to think owning a holiday home, period, is a "normal" thing and not a luxury that only the upper middle class are privileged enough to enjoy. Personally, I think families who can afford that kind of luxury are probably not being taxed enough to start with, given how many Americans live in real poverty.

[redstar826]

I did mention it being somewhat normal for the middle class in my area. In Michigan, I know people who are middle class who have a summer cottage "up north", often because it has been in the family for several generations and is often shared by multiple family members. obviously, lots of families dont (mine included) but people dont really think you are rich if you do. But, I think is likely unique to this area.

and, that is actually an illustration of what good, union manufacturing jobs used to buy. The fact that auto workers and the like could save up and buy a small summer cottage is not a bad thing.

[amw]

Your description of Michigan sounds similar to Ontario. It does seem to be a bit of a Great Lakes thing, perhaps because cottages are more easily accessible from the big cities. Or perhaps because the weather is so miserable people value having a summer escape more than people on the West Coast or in the South. Still, i think middle class folks not considering themselves "rich" just because they have a cottage are a little out of touch with what it really means to be "poor

[redstar826]

Honestly, I would stay in Muskegon or somewhere near there. The Lake Michigan beaches are great!

[amw]

Man you and me both. I have had the lowest lows in my life, living with my wife in a single-room flooded basement both jobless and earning six figures living alone in a downtown condo ordering in whenever the hell i felt like. Now i am somewhere in between, but every time one of my friends posts about how they can't afford decent food this week and i realize i don't even think about the price of food (or anything, really - my lifestyle costs are a fraction of my income) i wanna cry. I try to manually tax myself by sending cash to my less well-off friends or directly to people i know who are volunteering, but it's tough to give all my excess cash because i want to have a safety net in case i am some day jobless again

[redstar826]

to be honest, even after years of political organizing, it isn't always clear to me where the line is between "middle" and "working" class. Especially now that even many jobs which require degrees don't pay a living wage. I feel like the lines have been blurred a lot since the great recession. Lots of 'middle class' people in my community lost their jobs and then their homes. I would say they were struggling too.

[amw]

Good point, both of these replies. I guess if you call "middle class" the center of the bell curve around the median wage, then America's actual middle class is definitely not the white picket fence ideal. But if you call the "middle class" the people who can afford a family home and two cars and vacation every year, then that group is already on the upper end of the bell curve. And, i guess, it's those people who can afford all of those things and then call themselves "the struggling middle class" that kind of annoy me. But maybe that's because i work with too many insufferable douches.

[redstar826]

"Middle class" in the US is annoyingly vague. We have folks in a wide range of incomes who consider themselves middle class

[rex_dart]

It's because of the increasing polarization of wealth. idk what to call myself because I'm extremely comfortable and don't have to worry about anything and I can afford a lot of luxuries, but I'm driving a Prius instead of a Tesla, I shop at the Rack instead of Saks, etc. I would feel like an imposter at a benefit dinner. Maybe I could afford to keep a boat (in Chicago, where it is a wealth thing) or have a bunch of Louboutins if I didn't travel so much, so perhaps it's just an issue of priorities. But it's definitely confusing in an age of such particular types of conspicuous consumption that serve as markers of being upper class. And the fact that I don't have wealth and that often seems to be a prerequisite?

tl;dr I think our concept of upper class is fucked because of the ultra-wealthy.

[rex_dart]

Exactly. I see people yell about it if someone who makes more than 250k or so is called upper middle class, and on the one hand I agree that it's a different lifestyle and comfort level from someone fairly solidly middle class who makes 50-75k. On the other hand, we have a WHOLE class of prominent wealthy people who have lifestyles people making 250k - even in the long term - can never even dream of. tbh if I called myself upper class it would almost feel like letting the 1% in wealth off the hook. We aren't accumulating wealth (everything we earn is either spent, going back into stimulating the economy, or put away for retirement in very reasonable amounts), much less sitting on millions of dollars' worth of it in tax havens where it does fuck all for anyone else. There's so much going on with the UPPER upper class that has the ability to actually hoard money that's just fucked up and damaging on a huge scale, and that's a big part of the reason I really don't know what to call myself. It's also why I don't think it's quite fair to