The all-American working man demeanor of Tim Walz—Kamala Harris’s new running mate—looks like it’s not just an act.
Financial disclosures show Tim Walz barely has any assets to his name. No stocks, bonds, or even property to call his own. Together with his wife, Gwen, his net worth is $330,000, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal citing financial disclosures from 2019, the year after he became Minnesota governor.
With that kind of meager nest egg, he would be more or less in line with the median figure for Americans his age (he’s 60), and even poorer than the average. One in 15 Americans is a millionaire, a recent UBS wealth report discovered.
Meanwhile, the gross annual income of Walz and his wife, Gwen, amounted to $166,719 before tax in 2022, according to their joint return filed that same year. Walz is even entitled to earn more than the $127,629 salary he receives as state governor, but he has elected not to receive the roughly $22,000 difference.
“Walz represents the stable middle class,” tax lawyer Megan Gorman, who authored a book on the personal finances of U.S. presidents, told the paper.
If a poor American with no resources condemns our rigged, crony market capitalist economy, “they should stop complaining because they’re just bitter.”
If a rich American with resources condemns our rigged, crony market capitalist economy, “they should stop complaining or they’re a hypocrite.”
Our oligarchs like the casino they’ve made just fine. Either compliment their work or you’re “free” to shut the hell up and get back to making them money. Of course this will be used against Walz for being a bad capitalist. As if how hard one capitalisms(exploits others) should be celebrated.
It just speaks to our backwards, inhuman, literally cancerous primary cultural value of greed first and only.
The unchecked obsession with profit above all else is bizarre. We’ve elevated basic greed to such a level that it’s considered a virtue, it’s such a blatant perversion of the most basic decency we’re all taught as children.
They should be using median net worth, not average. Median will indicate the actual middle of wealth distribution in the US, while average is skewed high by the wealth of millionaires and billionaires.
According to the Census Bureau’s 2022 The Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP)
Percentile 2021 dollars 10th . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 25th . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16,560 50th . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166,900 75th . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604,900 90th . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,623,000
So he’s firmly upper middle class. Like most normal boomers.
Did you actually read the text? It is using the median.
You also seem to be confusing net worth with income.
Their income is right on the median you posted. Is that upper middle class?
Also, they filed together. Does the data count per household or per person? Where I’m from, we pay tax individually.
I’m just as confused as before…
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https://thehill.com/homenews/4290971-heres-the-average-net-worth-of-americans-by-age-how-do-you-stack-up/
https://www.wsj.com/personal-finance/tim-walz-jd-vance-finances-money-ad08c67d
https://fortune.com/2024/07/29/us-millionaires-population-ubs-global-wealth-report-china-europe-americans/
https://fortune.com/2024/08/08/tim-walz-net-worth/The average net worth is skewed by a rich minority and WAY richer super minority. Let’s see the median.
The median is linked right in the article.
For ages 55-64 it’s $364,500
It literally says in the post that his net worth is roughly equal to the median.
Median for his age
Of course it’s age adjusted. What good does it do to compare accumulated wealth between a 60 year old and an 18 year old?
It’s incongruent with the headline. “The average American” is not the same population as “the average member of the ‘pull up the ladder’ generation.”
Not really. To do a cross generational comparison, you would look at average wealth of 18-25 year olds in the 80’s to compare it to today’s cohort in that age bracket to show age adjusted disparity. But comparing the average 60 year old to an 18 year old doesn’t mean much when one has had 42 more working years and the other has greater future earning potential.
You can’t just bait-and-switch the headline. Don’t say “these things are equivalent” and then turn around and say “it doesn’t make sense to compare these things.”
The defacto standard for economists recording and reporting average and median net worth has been to bucket it by age cohort for at least the last seventy years. Using common meanings of the terms isn’t baiting and switching it intending to deceive or bury the lede.
I get irritated to an irrationally high degree when someone literally only reads the headline and decides right then what their opinion is and that it needs to be shared with the world. Like they wouldn’t even have had to check out the link, it’s right in the post.
Let’s see the median.
The average American family has a $1.063 million net worth, according to Federal Reserve data. But the median net worth is $192,900.Jul 23, 2024
Tim Walz barely has any assets to his name. No stocks, bonds, or even property to call his own. Together with his wife, Gwen, his net worth is $330,000
They need to fucking run with this in their programming. It’s such a powerful contrast to billion dollar baby and Peter Thiel’s plaything. He is demonstrably not in it for the money. He’s just a guy, trying to improve people’s lives and that’s it.
They’ll spin it that he’s so poor that he is incompetent or just going for VP for the paycheck will “billionaire” Trump is a good business man and doesn’t need the paycheck at all. But it will probably backfire cuz that just makes Walz relatable AF, especially to younger or more rural voters.
Would have thought someone his generation owned the house they bought for 50 years ago for $1,000 or something.
He sold the house when he was ejected governor.
ejected governor
I know it’s a typo, but the mental image of him being ejected from a plane and parachuting down into his new office is just badass
I’m going to leave it because you’re right.
This does gloss over the multiple pensions, doesn’t it?
Yeah he and his wife both have a teachers pensions, so what? They earned it working as teachers their whole lives. We should bring real pensions back for every American anyway, not this 401k shlock.
They did and we should.
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That isn’t what the parent comment stated. If I had a pension I’d include it in my net worth. It should be included if it wasn’t. Missing something like a retirement account or pension (most people’s highest value asset) will just allow people to dismiss these figures (regardless of how little the impact would be).
Future pension payments are income, not net worth.
Would that not depend upon the pension? In my experience (albeit limited) some pensions have a cash value and you may take a lump sum upon retirement.
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If he already received the lump sum then it would be part of his current wealth.
Sure. But I guess I’m just thinking that a retirement account (be it a Roth, pension, etc) has a cash value that should be a part of one’s net worth. Just because it hasn’t been cashed out yet doesn’t mean it has no value.
Just as I would include shares of a company that someone owns but hasn’t sold as a part of their net worth.
IRAs and other retirements savings can inherited if the person dies before or after they retire. Pensions can sometime be collected by surviving spouses, but are generally something you only get if you live long enough to receive them and they are not inherited.
The former is something you have (wealth), the latter is something you will get (future income). Kind of like the difference between the value of those shares now and what they could be worth in the future.
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Can you explain?
I realize the point of the article is that he isn’t some wealthy elite like the vast majoring of politicians. I think if one wishes to drive this point to everyone, one should not leave out details that would allow someone to dismiss it entirely no matter how wrong they would be for dismissing it.
I’m not saying it should be dismissed. Perhaps I wasn’t clear about that. I’m looking at it from the perspective of trying to change or win minds. And I think it’s best to include a more complete picture even if the additional details do not change the picture much if at all.
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I’m not upset. The other commentor might be. But I’m not.
I guess I always thought you included retirement accounts in net worth because they carry a cash value even if it hasn’t been cashed out yet. Just like you would include shares in a company in someone’s net worth even if they hadn’t sold the shares.
Perhaps pensions are slightly different. Everyone I work with who opted for the pension over a 401k includes their pension in their net worth and, to my understanding, so do the financial planners that work with the Union.
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But pension typically isn’t included in net worth unless it’s unspent money, and given how small the average public school teacher’s pension is in comparison to their expenses, wouldn’t you agree it makes little sense to say his pension automatically should be added to his net worth?
A couple grand a month is what I expect a retired teacher to get for their pension. And a couple grand a month is what I expect a retired teacher to spend on rent/mortgage + food + other expenses.
My point wasn’t that it makes a big difference (I actually acknowledged that in my comment).
But what was your point, if spent pension money isn’t considered a part of net income? If you’re a retired private sector CEO, you’re probably not spending your entire pension or even most of it. If you’re a retired teacher, you probably are.
My point was that leaving details out gives people an excuse to dismiss the entire point of the article. I was looking at it from the perspective of changing and winning minds. People will look for any way to resist changing their minds.
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The significance is that he doesn’t control how his pension is funded. It’s not like he has a vested interest in one company succeeding by having a bunch of stock there, and he’s been in politics since the aughts. It’s refreshing when compared to other congressmen
Oh I agree completely. The problem is that when talking about this stuff in the scope of changing minds, if you neglect information people too easily dismiss it.
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I agree to your last comment about it being refreshing that he’s not some elite like so many others. Sorry that wasn’t clear.
2 teachers, military and Congress. I’m not saying they’re billionaires, or even that they’re closer to one than normal.
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It’s a different retirement method than the average American that has to save up a shit ton in 401k assets.
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Sure, but when you’re taking about Americans at retirement age, net worth is important because it allows you to retire comfortably. That’s why they tie together in most folks mind instead of focusing on pure income or net worth. He’s got a reason to have a lower net worth and still be comfortable.
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It helps me. I was questioning either the facts or his intelligence, as it doesn’t seem like he has enough money to buy/rent a house when he leaves the governors mansion with no income. I was wondering if he gets his governor pay for life or something… I had forgot about other pensions. Scolding someone for giving information you didn’t want is how we got Donald trump…
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At no point did anyone say the article was deceptive, just that it didn’t dive very deep into the pension. Probably the writer just doesn’t know much about them. Which is sad. Journalists used to be allowed the time to learn up on things for an article. So you are defending the article from a perceived complaint that no one made. You just don’t want to hear anything bad about the article you liked. Just like trump was never told he did anything wrong while growing up. That is the connection. Don’t put you head in the sand, the article missed some useful detail, someone pointed it out. That is all that happened here.
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Only the portion of a pension income that is not spent is included as a part of net worth. Given the average expenses of a 60 year old and the piss poor pension of the average schoolteacher, I imagine there would hardly be any money of his pension that isn’t spent and is considered part of his net worth, no?
If I had an investment account that would give me $10k per year, it would be worth about $125k. If I was entitled to $10k a year through a pension, wouldnt it be fair to say that entitlement is an asset that’s worth (at least a portion of) that same value?
Is that money being spent, or saved? If it’s being spent in a year on regular expenses, how would that contribute to net worth?
Most peoples’ pension is spent, not saved, because it’s meant to replace their working income in order to allow them to pay the bills. In Walz’ case, is it at all similar to the example you gave? Like come on, let’s not enter fluentinfinance levels of hypotheticals.
It’s almost as if the wholesome, good Christians became progressive labor supporters while the degenerate pseudo-Christians became asmondgold, otk and people like mr. beast, and the fucked up christians became maga nazi fascists.
As a recovering Catholic, my experience has been that Lutherans tend to be humble, charitable, and… not weird. Lutheranism puts a heavy emphasis on showing grace to yourself and people around you. I guess without the obsession with sex and shame, you can be a Christian and turn out pretty normal.
There are several sects of Lutheran. Missouri Synod is fucking nuts. My friend grew up in some other sect that found Missouri Synod too liberal.
Ex-catholic here who unknowingly moved deep into WELS Lutheran territory (if u haven’t heard of that one…well, I’m jealous ;)). Sadly, they ain’t all like that. And unlike Catholicism…there’s like a million different Lutheran synods…with rules and culture that vary WIDELY.
Don’t forget the good Christians who deleted reddit for lemmy!
Asmongold has never advocated for anything Christian and his takes are usual very center-left leaning. You mentioning him is kind of out of left field.
I’m definitely out of the loop, but what’s the deal with asmongold and otk? I thought they were just generic twitch streamers
Watch asmongold’s recent video in trumps “Emergency” press conference. He sucks Trumps dick so hard, commending his mental clarity, while Trump is just incoherently ranting on the stage.
Asmongold is a right-wing shill through and through. Big incel energy
Wow, you are 100% dead-on right. Be prepared for downvotes though, because you claimed the existence of good religious people here!
its in to love carter now so not so sure on that.
I’ve met a surprising number of “good religious people”, but it’s not surprising most people think they don’t exist. I think this phenomenon transcends religion though
In the case of good Christians, the one unifying quality all of them have is they aren’t loud, and they aren’t pushy about it. They live their lives with a set of fundamental values and are always willing to go out of their way to help a neighbor. If it weren’t for the symbology in their homes you might never know.
I think it’s the same with anything else. If you’ve never met a trans person who doesn’t make enforcing pronouns their entire identity, it’s easy to have your perspective skewed towards the obnoxious loud ones you see online. If you don’t personally know a cop or a black person, sensationalist stereotypes might be your internal idea of normal about them too. Etc…
Linux users though… we’re all pushy weirdos. Not a normal good one among us :)
Actually now that it’s been mentioned, have you ever tried Linux on the desktop? It’s really good these days. I do not use arch btw, I’m a Debian user myself.
The word for this is fundamentalism. When people believe it’s their way or the highway and all others must conform.
However, in the case of trans folk, I think it’s a bit different. They’re not forcing pronouns on others, just asking that they be shown basic human respect. If you were a straight man, I’m sure you’d get pretty annoyed if someone insisted on calling you a woman nonstop. Sometimes, people need to be louder when they’re facing an existential crisis as they are in the USA among other places.
This feels like a “yes, but actually…”. That is kinda missing the point.
Not seeing many downvotes. I think people understand nuance more than you expected. :)
I’m loving being wrong!
Socialistic polices get a bad rap because of the cold war-era communist=atheist association. Theoretically, you can reframe vast social safety nets by the government as citizens (read: also Christians) coordinating charity to be distributed more effectively. This is a bottom-up approach that has the common person’s buy-in. The reasonable criticism of the same policies lies in the top-down, legislation by fiat enactment of policy. No different than, let’s say, Netflix arbitrarily raising their prices without your input.
To be fair the reason most eastern european socialist movements were atheist is that they had to deal with the Russian Orthodox church as it functioned in the late Russian Empire (a willing tool completely subservient to the czar that helped him oppress the people and opposed literally any form of progress). It was real bad
Patriarch Kirill has entered the chat.
I mean yeah it’s incidentally also how it functions in the modern Russian federation (quelle surprise). But that’s not relevant to 20th century US anticommunism
I don’t follow YouTube shit but what happened with Mr Beast why is he so hated now?
A bunch of allegedly this and that that has not been proven. Allegedly putting people in dangerous situations and then refusing to provide medical support. Having someone on the channel that is an alleged sex offender (charges are being dropped on that one), among other things. Looks really bad, but I would advise coming to your own conclusions as information comes out.
Legal Eagle just did a video about the whole thing as well. I’m inclined to believe his views on the whole mess.
Mr Beast went through four controversies in a short amount of time:
Content warning: Sexualization of minors
(1) Ava Kris Tyson (former Mr. Beast member) was shown to be a fan of an artist called Shadman that is known for drawing cartoon porn including “Loli” (drawings of sexualized children), and who drew the 8-year old daughter of a Youtuber. Ava bought some of Shadman’s art (a non-pornographic piece is seen on a Mr. Beast video), and also made some loli-related comments in the past. It is not clear whether Mr. Beast was aware of this and whether he was also a fan of this content.
(2) There was evidence of the group running a discord with minors in which sexual topics were discussed. Ava was accused of “grooming”. Discord chats were leaked and they confirmed the claims about Ava making a lot sexual jokes with a group of minors, but whether this is “grooming” is up for debate, as some consider adults being “edgy” with children not to meet the threshold for “grooming”.
In response to both of these, Mr. Beast cut Ava out of Mr. Beast.
(3) There is a “Beast Games” show being produced by Mr. Beast for Amazon Prime. It turns out that putting 2,000 people to compete for 5 million dollars in Las Vegas was a recipe for organizational disaster. People had issues getting their medicines and underwear. People were fed low-calorie meals like a small amount of cold oatmeal and an egg spread at irregular intervals. Some people had seizures and the local hospital reported several injured visitors from the games. It was reported that the team invited people of all ages and then made them compete in physical games for which young men had a very significant advantage over the old players that were also cast. You can see an article about this here, and in the comments you can see many players sharing their bad experiences: https://www.casino.org/vitalvegas/mrbeast-shoots-beast-games-in-las-vegas/
(4) A person who has an employee for a short amount of time released a video in which he claimed a lot of Mr. Beast videos are faked/rigged. He also mentions multiple examples in which Mr. Beast broke lottery laws.
TIL my net worth is higher than that of a candidate for the vice-presidency.
Well, it was before the correction this week. 🤪
Huh, hadn’t thought about that. Let’s see… 401k + stock grants + savings + home value - debts… Nope, I’m still well ahead of Walz, even accounting for the correction. I mean, he benefits from living in the governor’s mansion, so his bills are probably a lot lower, but still… If I liquidated everything, I’d come out with more than his net worth, by a fair bit.
One in 15 Americans is a millionaire, a recent UBS wealth report discovered.
That’s why America doesn’t have healthcare?
The argument I’ve heard from my parents is why should I pay for public healthcare when I can afford my own private healthcare.
Which is so incredibly tone deaf
Not just tone deaf, dumb as fuck.
I’ve had the same argument with my parents and they still won’t admit that they’re still “paying for everyone else’s healthcare” via insurance but also paying insurance CEO’s paychecks on top of that.
“Dad, can you afford to burn $100? Why don’t you go it then?”
Not the same of curse, they would probably save more than $100 dollars a month with public healthcare.
That’s THE Boomer take of all Boomer takes. Big “fuck you, I got mine” energy. And it’s everything that’s wrong with this country.
“Why should I take care of my aging parents when I can take care of myself” is the appropriate response to that.
Because it’s cheaper than paying for your own private healthcare
EVERY argument I have heard against public healthcare has been tone deaf, statistically incorrect, and driven by gut feelings over kindergarten levels of economic understanding.
In a world of perfect understanding, public healthcare would be a given.
Society is objectively better when everyone is happy and healthy.
Society is objectively better when the needs of the most struggling are addressed first.
Also: regressives have no platform when everything right now is good.
How can they call back to a mythical past when their needs are met better in the present?
You make a funny joke but the answer is ridiculously nuanced.
Yes, corporate greed has led to unprecedented profits for the ultra rich, those ultra rich have birthed a new generation of trust fund millionaires.
Yes some of this profit was from raping the health care system into an endless money farm, but not all of it.
That doesn’t sound ridiculously nuanced to me, that sounds straightforwardly like what OP said.
that sounds straightforwardly like what OP said.
No it doesn’t except to the most ridiculous degree of dissembly, and the full examination takes more time and space than I am willing to give away for free. Only a portion of the trust fund elite are powered by the medical industry, though all industries touched by the same degree of greed produce the same trust fund elite offspring.
Not all cars are toyotas, not all toyotas are cars, but some toyotas are cars. That is nuance, learn it.
It’s you who has the logic the wrong way around. The rich profiting from the healthcare system is why the healthcare system is bad, that doesn’t exclude them from profiting from other things too. In your analogy OP’s statement equates to “this Toyota is a car” (or “this car is a Toyota” depending on which thing is the rich and which thing is ruining a societal good).
Go away sealion…
How do I have a higher (barely) net worth than Tim Walz? I smoke weed all day and write okay-ish python code. This guy is probably about to be one heartbeat away from the presidency. I am a faceless nobody in a corporation.
I’m not complaining. Working class people should run this fucking country. It’s actually nice to be surprised about this.
Perhaps it’s because our society values certain professions much more than others, particularly those in the social/educational sector, which are particularly undervalued. IMO, we need to put everything on the table and reconsider what we want to be considered as useful work for society.
If you know 14 Americans who are not millionaires, congratulations!
… with working for a millionaire? Most millionaires won’t be big friends with the lower class
Yeah, but he does have that baby blue 1979 International Harvester Scout. That thing is a collector’s item.
Can’t put a pricetag on that!
#ScoutLife
For once a guy when the average voter says ‘they’re just like me!’ It’s actually true.
I know a lot of people, I’m inclined to believe the “1 in 15” thing is flagrantly untrue or working off of leveraged assets.
Google Schelling’s model of segregation.
I’m guessing that is based on savings + asset value (house and car) + retirement funds + individual stock investments.
1 in 15 people with a half million dollar house and a half million dollar 401k? That’s what? 25 million Americans? There’s over 100 million people in the US over the age of 50. Seems pretty reasonable for 1 in 4 in that age range to have own their house and have a nice retirement fund.
I think that figure is because of people in NYC, LA, San Francisco, Chicago, et cetera, where they are absolutely not, like, independently wealthy or anything, but are technically millionaires because rent is 35 thousand dollars a week for 3 square foot apartment with no pets, no windows, and a communal bathroom where the landlord spits in your mouth instead of providing a sink.
Got off the rails there at the end. Rent prices are pissing me off lately. Point remains largely unchanged, though. Lol
Luxury. We would live in a cardboard box, all fifteen of us and only be able to wash if it was raining, have to eat poison with our ramen and pay eighty thousand a day. You’ve had it easy.
Oh that was an example of others. We had it really tough. Lived in a septic tank, covered by tarpoline. Every morning dad would wake us up at 2am to go down mill and work for a quarter a day, and when we got home he’d feed us cold poison and beat us to sleep
Do you think you know an unbiased sample of people?
Y’all have positive net worths?
