Six months and a day!

I used to work with a trust-fund baby. Actually, I probably worked with several of them over the years, because a lot of the people I met in the artistic side of the magazine business had to be able to get in through the rich-kid gate, to wit:

1) Graduate from a good college;

2) Work as an unpaid intern;

3) Live in Manhattan on a crap salary.

After getting through those three phases, they could start to make a decent living. You will note that those three phases require something to back said junior staff member, generally Mommy's + Daddy's checkbook. That enabled them to take jobs that paid nothing or next to it, without worrying about student loans or making the rent. 

I'm not saying they had it easy, nor were they bad at what they did; I am saying that it was perfect way to keep out the riffraff. 

I, the riffraff, came up the hard way, commuting from the outermost borough, being broke for a long time, and never following the path that led to the glamorous and creative end of the business. But I made a living. 

The TFB that I mention at the top of this post, however, was a real classic of the type. Nice guy, and very intelligent, probably more so than I. But he was like a friendly alien dropped on Earth who had to try to guess what Earth people were like in order to go unnoticed. He could be a smartass but did not have a rough edge. He was curious about the lives of skilled laborers like my father. He always looked perplexed. He spent days contemplating aloud the purchase of a rice cooker. Should I buy or not? If so, what kind? A cooker or a steamer? Is one brand superior to another? What quantity of rice is proper? It is a puzzlement. 

Just use the microwave like everyone else!

I remember him telling me about his grandparents. Grandpa, the head of the family in a very real, very fearsome, and very financial sense, was from Massachusetts, but for tax purposes he officially lived in New Hampshire for six months and a day. That 50.01% residency kept him from having to pay Massachusetts' high income tax. New Hampshire only taxes interest and dividend income.

I have since learned that "Live Free or Die" might as well be replaced as New Hampshire's motto:

This is one of the reasons why, when politicians set out to tax the rich, the middle class always finds its taxes going up. The poor saps in Boston who can’t declare residency outside the state get stuck with the bill for the big spending plans that "taxing the rich" was supposed to fund.

Now, I have no idea how Mr. Boston Brahmin Grandpa voted, but if he was like the contemporary wealthy, he would continue to vote for the very policies he was fleeing, wherever he went. In doing so these moneybags screw over the state in which they amassed their fortunes and also the state in which they expect to keep them. 

I do not understand why someone, looking at the laws in their home state and regarding them as unfair and unjust, would support those same laws elsewhere. But they do. Thus, New Yorkers have been accused of ruining Vermont, Bay Staters of ruining Maine, and Californians are being accused of ruining Colorado. It's like they can't help themselves. 

I'm not sure why I brought all this up today, except I was thinking of that trust-fund baby and his grandfather. While TFB was studying this strange form of life known as the "middle class," we were studying him. I've never met anyone like him, but I'll bet in his youth he was like everyone else around him. 

Peculiar fellow. I don't even know if he ever got his rice cooker.