$1.50 a week EVERY SINGLE WEEK
I saw this tweet before I saw the CNN story and I thought it had to be a parody, despite the blue check.
I mean come on. Even Paul Ryan can’t be so clueless that he thinks $1.50 a week is a meaningful pay increase. $1.50 won’t get you a bus ride, or a half gallon of milk, or a pair of socks. You could probably get an apple with $1.50, or a couple of carrots, or a small tub of Greek yogurt. How can Paul Ryan possibly think anyone would be “pleasantly surprised” to have an additional $1.50 a week? It’s meaningless. $1.50 an hour would be a small raise; a week is just nothing.
And yet – it really was his very own tweet.
House Speaker Paul Ryan deleted a tweet Saturday touting the GOP tax overhaul after critics called him out for appearing out of touch with the reality of low-income individuals’ financial situations.
The tweet shared the story of a secretary who, according to a report by the Associated Press, was “pleasantly surprised her pay went up $1.50 a week.”
“A secretary at a public high school in Lancaster, PA, said she was pleasantly surprised her pay went up $1.50 a week … she said [that] will more than cover her Costco membership for the year,” Ryan tweeted with a link to the full article.
A basic Costco membership costs $60 a year.
And 52 times 1.5 is 78 so wuhay she comes out way ahead – 18 whole spare dollars to buy socks with.
Paul Ryan deleted his embarrassing tweet of a blatant admission because he and Republicans don’t want you to know the truth: the #GOPTaxScam is a gift to corporate America and the top 1% at your expense.
He also doesn’t want you to know he got $500.000.00 from the Koch family. pic.twitter.com/ENXxASfAMP
— Nancy Pelosi (@TeamPelosi) February 3, 2018
As a thank you for passing a $1 trillion corporate tax cut, Paul Ryan received $500,000 in campaign contributions from the Koch brothers, which would probably cover the cost of buying a Costco. https://t.co/piiWqzOEGo
— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) February 3, 2018
A whole six dollars more every month. Thank god for Republicans.
He doesn’t recognise sarcasm, does he? “Oh, look, a peasant’s saying nice things about the tax cuts, wasn’t expecting that but it’ll be great optics [God, I hate seeing that word used in that context]. If I’m the first to tweet it, it might even get me a pat on the head next time I’m licking the master’s shoes.”
Remember this from less than a year ago?
http://people.com/politics/trump-advisor-gary-cohn-americans-new-car-1000-tax-cut/
President Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, is drawing ridicule after he said Americans can buy a new car with a $1,000 tax cut.
The former Goldman Sachs president — who is worth an estimated $266 million, according to the Huffington Post — made the comment during a White House press briefing on Thursday in which he discussed what Republicans’ proposed tax reform plan would mean for middle-class Americans.
Cohn said that “a typical family earning $100,000 with two children … can expect a tax cut of about $1,000.”
“If we allow a family to keep another thousand dollars of their income, what does that mean?” he asked. “They can renovate their kitchen. They can buy a new car. They can take a family vacation. They can increase their lifestyle.”
Seriously? What an idiot. This is worse than Bush 41 not knowing how much a loaf of bread cost.
A $1000 tax cut won’t even pay the co-pay on one of my medicine’s for a year. And while I have bought cars for less than $1000, they could not by any stretch of the imagination be called new. As for vacations, $1000 would get me a family vacation in Lincoln, NE – about 2 hours from where I live.
Renovation of a kitchen is more like 5-10 grand
BKiSA, it cost more than $1000 just to have a small kitchen island put into my kitchen!
The flipside of “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it” would seem to be “If you can afford it you don’t have to know how much it costs. And you probably don’t.”
Maybe these people thought “Monopoly” is just like real life and if “You inherit $100”, you can Buy a Yacht, go on a World Tour, or afford a Rolls Royce.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-frG3C9r7yUk/VP54N4RrsVI/AAAAAAAAAW4/9N5g5Z7YCyE/s1600/youinherit.jpg
(For those leery of links, this is an image of the “Community Chest” card described above.
This is a trap that politicians keep falling into from time to time. One might think they too would have heard of it, but once high enough among the clouds they lose all contact with the harsh reality of ordinary people’s lives. They really don’t know the value of money — except for keeping score in their game of Monopoly.
Some 35 years ago Olof Palme made the same gaffe trying to guess the price of milk (without a clue of course) and was properly lambasted for it by the funniest comedians of the time. Who were probably also Social Democrats, by the way. It is not unlikely that kind of aloofness that lost him his Premiership, after the party had hegemony for decades, to an apparently simple sheep farmer, Thorbjörn Fälldin. Well, that and marginal taxes a bit over 100%, as Astrid Lindgren pilloried in her particular style.
Carl Bildt told of a debate between Palme and Fälldin where one sailed up into very abstract economic theory and Fälldin abruptly brought the debate down to earth by referring to a proposed tax on landowners who had sources of gravel on their property: “Either you have gravel. Or you don’t have gravel.” Palme was totally lost; he had no notion of the reality of the proposal, which could still affect farmers whether they exploited the asset or not.
Sorry for the limited outlook, but can we write it off as being firmly planted in my native soil? :)