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.
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.
“He’s just a guy doing work for MONEY!!! He doesn’t care about the JOB!!! He just shows up for a paycheck!!! He hates the American people, because as vice-president they’re his BOSS!!! He hates his BOSSES!!! Not like Donald Trump! Trump only hates people who aren’t white! But he hates people equally, regardless of their job!”
“Whoa! This Walz guy sounds just like me! I only do my job for the money too! And I hate my boss! My company used to be so much bigger until my bosses fucked everything up! Blockbuster used to be HUGE!”
“You work at a Blockbuster Video? Like the video tape rental place???”
“Yeah!”
“Where even IS a Blockbuster anymore??? I thought they all went out of business…”
“In Alaska. We don’t have internet up here, so nobodys heard of Netflix.”
“You live in Alaska? I’m not sure you even CAN vote in a USA election. That’s part of Russia, man!”
“What? No it’s not.”
“It used to be! And that means Russia can take it back anytime Putin wants.”
“That’s…not how that works…”
“Tell that to Ukraine! They’re invading Russia right now.”
“I mean…yeah, ok, they are, but only in self defense of a war that’s been going on for 2 years prior.”
“And that war started because Ukraine didn’t just hand themselves over back to Russia. As they’d previously been.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“And you work for Blockbuster.”
Would have thought someone his generation owned the house they bought for 50 years ago for $1,000 or something.
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
Military retirement benefits and teachers pensions mean you don’t have to save a ridiculous 401k. Your average American wishes they had that freedom. Not a dig on Walz, just a dig on our retirement and healthcare system.
Yep. This.
All those pensions and lifetime benefits are worth a lot in financial planning and means you aren’t slaving as hard to build the large nest egg required to actually have a hope of retiring. They put their years of service in to get those benefits. It’s always amazing to me how much having those benefits in someone’s back pocket changes their perspective, it’s a freedom that most Americans will never know.
Do they not count the present value of an annuity when calculating net worth? Seems like a major oversight.
Journalism is all but dead. 6 conglomerates own 95% of our media and now “journalists” P-hack whatever data fits the narrative they are told to push.
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.
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.
Wow, you are 100% dead-on right. Be prepared for downvotes though, because you claimed the existence of good religious people here!
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.
Not seeing many downvotes. I think people understand nuance more than you expected. :)
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.
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 militantly 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
I’m definitely out of the loop, but what’s the deal with asmongold and otk? I thought they were just generic twitch streamers
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.
I’m sorry, 1 in 15 Americans is a millionaire?? Holy shit.
Regional cost of living, and the inflation around it, really skews those numbers. A million in San Francisco or Manhattan is very different than a million in the middle of the country. Housing and pay are a lot higher in the major metros.
I’d love to see what these numbers look like when adjusted for CoL.
1:15 has a net worth of a million. That includes all possessions, pensions, etc.
Treasure a retiree with a house that’s worth a couple hundred grand, throw in their 401k, vehicles, etc and it adds up.
Look at it this way: my car is probably worth about 20 grand, but that doesn’t mean I have that much cash. Ask me to cough up an unexpected $500 and it’s gonna hurt.
Oddly enough very easy to accomplish with property and retirement accounts. Doesn’t apply (and probably won’t apply) to most genx, millennials or gen z, as Boomers shit the pool.
My father is quite proud that as he nears retirement, he’s scrounged and saved enough to break into the millionaire’s club! He also voted Republican for his entire life, and now I probably won’t ever be able to retire, so thanks a lot dad! (This is also one of many reasons they aren’t ever getting grandkids.)
Only if you include their retirement savings that has to cover their aging healthcare costs. If you are earning a pension in your country and have free healthcare then you can’t directly compare American salaries and networth.
It gets further muddled when you factor in how shitty American cities have become. Americans have chosen to have higher wages and endless urban sprawl rather than build public transit and make their cities great places to live.
Yup. And that’s for all age groups. According to this link, 28% of 60-64 year olds are millionaires.
