If your dad is Bill Gates, you’re probably not getting a Starbucks gift card for graduating college.
In 2018, Jennifer Gates walked off the Stanford stage and onto a 124-acre, $15.82 million horse farm in North Salem, New York. According to Architectural Digest, the lavish estate was a graduation gift from her billionaire parents—and came complete with rolling pastures, three parcels of land, and proximity to New York City for her future studies.
But in case that sounds too much like the plot of “Succession: Equestrian Edition,” Melinda Gates would like to remind everyone: their kids were absolutely raised “middle class.”
Much like the soon to be german chancellor, who told an interviewer, that he is upper middle class. All that while being a former Blackrock manager and owning (and using regularily) a personal private jet. Thats some kind of chancellor material…
Rich people have literally zero idea what middle class is. I’m middle class and I haven’t been able to afford to go to the dentist is about 20 years. Sometimes the lower class lives better than the mid and lower middle class. We make just barely too much money to receive help. We made a decision to not stay in poverty and take raises that make us lose benefits, and life has only been harder since then.
I’m middle class and I haven’t been able to afford to go to the dentist is about 20 years.
That doesn’t sound right.
That’s because the term “middle class” without context doesn’t mean much.
My wife and I life in the Twin Cities metro in Minnesota and we meet the definition of middle class for this part of the country which ranges for our state from ~$55k to ~$150k if going based on income.
We have almost no retirement savings but we have tens of thousands in the bank, we have a mortgaged home, two cars 6 years or newer with one completely paid off, in the last 3 years we’ve had to replace our AC, furnace, water heater, water softener, stove, refrigerator, dishwasher and garage door. We have also chosen to replace our kitchen counter, front door and front walk/patio as well as add a fence and dog door. All of this we paid for up front in cash.
We carry no debt outside of my student loans which I pay on every month as well as one car loan and our mortgage. We both go to the dentist and get all needed medical care.
Caveats to this are we don’t have kids and I can’t imagine how difficult it would be if we did. We also live pretty simple lives. We’ve always lived in a fashion so that we could afford our basic expenses on one income because my wife and I both lived very poor, check-to-check lives when we were younger.
I don’t think middle class truly exists anymore. You either can afford to live now or you can’t, it’s just by how much and where.
Self employed, nonprofit. Pay lots of taxes, but zero benefits or retirement. My kids are aging out of the child tax credit but they’re still at home. We don’t qualify for Medicaid. We used to but not now, my wife runs a big High School cafeteria only for the health insurance. She gets the privilege of collecting “lunch debt”. Still driving my 17yo daughter to school because there’s no busing, and drivers ed isn’t offered and private driving instruction is closer to $2k than it is to $1k. Hoping to be able to go to the dentist soon but life continuously gets in the way. New roof. New HVAC and ductwork. Foundation repair and waterproofing. Currently taking down a massive half-dead tree that leans over my son’s bedroom. The cost of life is massively outpacing wages.
Man that must be rough. Poor people only have to worry about where their next meal is coming from and whether they can afford rent. I can’t imagine having to deal with repairing my house.
FYI. Not trying to say you don’t have struggles or challenges. But to say that it’s harder to live like that than being even more poor is insane. Just like the rich people this thread is about.
I’ve been poor too, I get it. And my job is to a large part helping under-esourced people get connected with food and other resources. So I still see it firsthand almost every day, and I know there are people who are way worse off than me.
My wife did work three jobs through COVID and I worked two, to try to save up a chunk of money so that we could afford to try to catch up on our dental care. We also saved all of the stimulus money. And we were there, but instead we got foundation repair - oh, and also replaced the water heater. You can be however fucking smug you want to be, but it sucks. I didn’t even mention the car repairs. There are no non-car options here and we can’t afford to move. My wife is now back to three jobs and Im back to two. We’re in our fifties with no retirement savings and just hoping to pay off the house before 70 so we have some hope of a short retirement. It still sucks.
Also, I never said I had it worse than people who are poor, you’re putting words in my mouth. They have it worse no question, but they do get free care I can’t afford.
It’s not. If you can’t afford a dentist you’re not middle class. IDK where dude lives, but I make $100k in a major metro area in the USA and consider myself middle class. My family still qualifies for partial forgiveness from medical bills.
Our household income is just over 100k, The median household income in my area is under $60k. I make $58k but it’s self employed so I pay at least 14% to social security where most only pay,~7%. And zero benefits, but my wife has decent medical, but not dental. We are solidify middle class for our area, lots of people make less but many of them get free medical care.
They seem to think you’re only middle class if you’ve never been to Epstein Island.
I want to be this middle class…
To be fair, out of all the billionaires they at least have made attempts to not make their kids shiteheads which is in stark contrast to most billionaires. At one point in time at least, they were only leaving $10m to each child, with plans to donate everything else.
Is that enough to live better than 99.99% of us? Absolutely. But it’s also not: I can do whatever I want and buy whatever I want and never have to think about money again.
this is not how generational wealth work.
lets say you are 17. having a party in the house with 100k cash in your bank account. you hear dad talk about a big merger “this company will be this company and the stock will go up” you put 50k on that and now you have 300k or something.
I sat with a few upper class once, if I have cache on hand I will be millionaire by now, it doesn’t take much to get rich when you hang out with rich people…
leaving $10m to each child, with plans to donate everything else
The plans were to donate everything else to a tax-advantaged “charity” in which the Gates family retains complete financial control.
This is not philanthropy. It is tax avoidance, greenwashing, and a public relations campaign.
when gates was on reddit, he choose AMA sub, so he wouldnt get criticized, they wouldnt allow you to question him on his charities being used tax evasion or money laundering.
Yeah, it might be public relations, but the malaria nets and polio vaccines and HIV treatments and guinea work eradication did actually save millions of lives.
It’s one thing to argue that doing good doesn’t make up for doing bad, but it’s another thing to refuse to acknowledge the good at all.
the countries have complained about his vaccines as being only sourced from us backed countries, so most of them couldnt afford it. he still pretty much a ruthless business man, like the above comments he is greenwashing his image.
But it’s also not: I can do whatever I want and buy whatever I want and never have to think about money again.
How much can a banana cost, Michael? $10?
Rich people are so goddamn out of touch with reality.
The problem is that the working poor and the billionaires all think they are middle class. Because poor is for non-whites.
$16 Million Horse Farm and middle class income. Can he drop the farm to some random person from middle class so we can compare the outcomes ?
To be fair, by the time you graduate from college, you’ve already been raised.
Melinda fucking Gates doesn’t know what “middle class” means, big shocker there…
middle class to her is being a poor millionaire’s budget.
How do you raise a child “middle class in this house:
Bill Gates designed and owns a 66,000-square-foot (6,100 m2) mansion that is on Lake Washington in Medina, Washington.In 2009, property taxes were reported to be US$1.063 million on a total assessed value of US$147.5 million.
The house features an estate-wide server system, a 60-foot (18 m) swimming pool with an underwater music system, a 2,500-square-foot (230 m2) gym, and a 1,000-square-foot (93 m2) dining room. There are six kitchens and 24 bathrooms, ten of which contain bathtubs.
Why TF would you put in a pool that is 7 m shorter than Olympic sized? There’s a reason they are 25 m. It makes it much easier to determine your daily workout.
Olympic-sized is 50 meters, but your point stands.
But Daaaaaaaad, all the other kids are getting a horse farm!
I thought this was a Philomena Cunk meme at first
They ate cereal for dinner one night per week. Super middle class. /s
Everyone in the US is middle class. You can be upper middle class or lower middle class, but you can never not be middle class.
