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He actually makes Mitt Romney seem self-aware - a stunt that I did not think possible.
“I don’t consider myself a wealthy man,” Chris Christie said Friday in New Hampshire. That would be the same Chris Christie who, according to his tax returns, made $698,838 in 2013—$160,054 of which he earned as governor of New Jersey, and $475,854 of which came from his wife, Mary Pat Christie, who works at a New York investment bank.
Christie isn’t rich if you’re comparing him to his friends and donors, and he certainly may not feel rich in New Jersey, where his own policies have made living more expensive.
But it turns out that feeling just makes Christie exactly like many other technically rich people: not very self-aware.
Christie’s income is nearly 10 times New Jersey’s median, which in 2013 was $71,692; and well over $539,000, the amount necessary to qualify as one of the top 1% of earners there.
So why does Christie feel so poor?
He offered his own explanation on Friday: “Listen, wealth is defined in a whole bunch of different ways, and in the end, Mary Pat and I have worked really hard, we’ve done well over the course of our lives—um, but, you know, we have four children to raise and a lot of things to do, so, no, I don’t, I don’t consider myself and I don’t think most people think of me that way.”
Perhaps Christie doesn’t feel rich because compared to his friends and the lifestyle he enjoys in their company, he’s not.
The economic class with the greatest income inequality is the upper class, because it encompasses everyone earning $250,000 or more. Were Christie to look around, he might feel very poor indeed.
He has flown on private planes provided by Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets, Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino owner and Republican donor, and Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys. And he has been the guest of King Abdullah of Jordan—“a friend,” an aide told The New York Times—who put him and his family up for a weekend in a hotel with rooms costing $30,000 a night.
And compared to the perks Christie can enjoy when the government is footing the bill, he must not feel very rich at all when trying to live on his own income.
As the United States Attorney, a 2010 Justice Department report found, Christie exceeded his travel budget on 14 out of 23 trips he took. He preferred to stay at the Four Seasons while in Washington, and the Nine Zero Hotel in Boston—both costing several hundred dollars per night.
Christie also shunned normal methods of transportation like cabs or the subway, according to the same Justice Department report, once taking a private car from the Boston airport four miles to his hotel, at a cost of $263.
“I try to squeeze all the juice out of the orange that I can,” Christie told The New York Times in 2014. “I really relish these experiences and exposures, especially for my kids.” In other words, Christie would like to scale back government spending—except on himself.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/20/why-does-chris-christie-feel-so-poor.html
“I don’t consider myself a wealthy man,” Chris Christie said Friday in New Hampshire. That would be the same Chris Christie who, according to his tax returns, made $698,838 in 2013—$160,054 of which he earned as governor of New Jersey, and $475,854 of which came from his wife, Mary Pat Christie, who works at a New York investment bank.
Christie isn’t rich if you’re comparing him to his friends and donors, and he certainly may not feel rich in New Jersey, where his own policies have made living more expensive.
But it turns out that feeling just makes Christie exactly like many other technically rich people: not very self-aware.
Christie’s income is nearly 10 times New Jersey’s median, which in 2013 was $71,692; and well over $539,000, the amount necessary to qualify as one of the top 1% of earners there.
So why does Christie feel so poor?
He offered his own explanation on Friday: “Listen, wealth is defined in a whole bunch of different ways, and in the end, Mary Pat and I have worked really hard, we’ve done well over the course of our lives—um, but, you know, we have four children to raise and a lot of things to do, so, no, I don’t, I don’t consider myself and I don’t think most people think of me that way.”
Perhaps Christie doesn’t feel rich because compared to his friends and the lifestyle he enjoys in their company, he’s not.
The economic class with the greatest income inequality is the upper class, because it encompasses everyone earning $250,000 or more. Were Christie to look around, he might feel very poor indeed.
He has flown on private planes provided by Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets, Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino owner and Republican donor, and Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys. And he has been the guest of King Abdullah of Jordan—“a friend,” an aide told The New York Times—who put him and his family up for a weekend in a hotel with rooms costing $30,000 a night.
And compared to the perks Christie can enjoy when the government is footing the bill, he must not feel very rich at all when trying to live on his own income.
As the United States Attorney, a 2010 Justice Department report found, Christie exceeded his travel budget on 14 out of 23 trips he took. He preferred to stay at the Four Seasons while in Washington, and the Nine Zero Hotel in Boston—both costing several hundred dollars per night.
Christie also shunned normal methods of transportation like cabs or the subway, according to the same Justice Department report, once taking a private car from the Boston airport four miles to his hotel, at a cost of $263.
“I try to squeeze all the juice out of the orange that I can,” Christie told The New York Times in 2014. “I really relish these experiences and exposures, especially for my kids.” In other words, Christie would like to scale back government spending—except on himself.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/20/why-does-chris-christie-feel-so-poor.html