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, $15.82 million horse farm in North Salem, New York. According to Architectural Digest, the lavish estate was a graduation gift from her billionaire parents—and came complete with rolling pastures, three parcels of land, and proximity to New York City for her future studies.
But in case that sounds too much like the plot of “Succession: Equestrian Edition,” Melinda Gates would like to remind everyone: their kids were absolutely raised “middle class.”
Maybe that’s why these 1%ers wealth hoard so hard, maybe they genuinely think they ARE middle class.
They’re either extremely uneducated in current standards of living, or being purposefully deceitful. I’d like to think it’s the former. They should have a class for rich people so they can understand what life is like without family money or high salaries.
In the U.K. there’s a somewhat popular TV series called “Rich House, Poor House”. We still worship the rich.
No class can teach you what it feels like to be a few bucks away from homelessness.
When the class is over the billionaires go back to their worry free lives. The poor worry about ending up on the street.
See now if failure to pass the empathy class results in your forced destitution there might be some incentive to pay attention
Made me think of the Meme: “Who wants to be a millionaire? - but with Billionaires, so it’s more of a threat.”
If we made empathy classes a must with our current governing systems, I cannot imagine them not beeing corrupted and used against the poor within seconds of becoming obligatory.
I remember seeing a clip a long time ago of someone asking Gates how much a banana is and he was like… 5$?
I’d have the same difficulty tbh. I don’t live in the US so no rice-a-roni here anyway, but there are a lot of premade foods available here too, and… I just don’t really buy them very often, even if I’m alone, I just cook or throw like a frozen pizza in the oven, but I don’t experiment a lot with those boxed meals. I also only ever buy stuff like laundry detergents at discount so I never even think about the normal price. I go to the store, see a detergent at the regular price, go “fuck no” and buy something else that’s on discount and half the price per liter or per pod. There’s nearly always something available for a good price, sometimes it’s a local brand that’s already cheaper than the foreign brands.
I can, however, tell you the prices of different pasta brands (the cheaper ones, not the expensive ones) to within 20 cents. Usually half a kilo of dry pasta is like 1.19, or under 1 euro on discount. Frozen french fries - used to be around 1.20 for 750 grams, jumped to something like 1.79 and hell I think in some stores it’s 2.19 now unless there’s a discount. Pack of mince meat - depends on size and whether it’s pork, moo or a mixture of both, somewhere between 2.50 and 5 euros per package.
Warren Buffet keeps around the house he bought in Omaha, Nebraska in 1958 and brags about how little it is worth. The man travels on private jets and sleeps in hotel high rises, surrounded by an army of aides and adjuncts and a smattering of medical staff. But he’s still got the title to that old homestead from sixty years ago, so he’s perpetually middle class according to business talking heads.
Well put yourself in their shoes. They ARE the middle class when they are surrounded by only the top 1%.
We are not existant/irrelevant others. That will stay the same as long as their heads remain attached.