Hillary Clinton: Representative of the 0.01%

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Hillary Clinton: Representative of the People?

By Ray Smith

Hillary Clinton
(image by Gage Skidmore)   License   DMCA

Many Americans, especially many older women, feel a certain shared identification with Hillary Clinton. She's one of the people; one of us. This is a basic underlying theme of her campaign, "fighting for us." But how similar is she to most of the 99%? Does she even have a clue of what life is like for most Americans?

In an interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC on July 8^th, 2014, Clinton stated "We came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt . . . we struggled to piece together the resources for mortgages for houses, for Chelsea's education. It was not easy . . ." This was not the only time she told this story.

When they left the White House, the Clintons had one house they had bought for $1.7 million, and just as they were leaving, they bought another mansion for $2.85 million. Within a few months, Bill Clinton was giving speeches for $125,000 a pop, and that first year out of the White House, Hillary Clinton received $2.84 million in royalties from a book publisher. 

This is hardly what most people would consider "dead broke" and "struggling" financially. It's no surprise that from her perspective, someone earning $240,000 per year is "middle class."

On January 27^th, 2014, speaking before the NADA in New Orleans, Mrs. Clinton complained that "One of the regrets I have about my public life is that I can't drive anymore. Last time I actually drove a car myself was 1996." She has repeated this more recently, that she hasn't driven a car herself in about two decades. Poor Hillary Clinton!

Does Mrs. Clinton really expect anyone to sympathize with her on this issue? She's had a limousine and chauffeur, with bodyguards, on call 24-7, for the past two decades, and she's complaining about not being able to drive herself?

The fact is that Bill and Hillary Clinton have monetized their White House experience to a degree far in excess of any other first couple. Mrs. Clinton's basic fee for a one-hour speech is $225,000, and some of her speeches are much more lucrative than that. She usually gets a first-class dinner thrown into the equation, but what's a few hundred dollars when one is getting $62.50 per second for one's time? It should be noted that Clinton has her own speechwriters, so it's not as if she struggles for hours putting these speeches together.

So when Clinton advocates for a minimum wage of $12 per hour, as compared to Sanders' $15 per hour, this is something that she truly cannot relate to. At her suggested $12 hourly salary, a person working 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year with no additional time off, would need to work more than 9 1/3 years to make as much as Mrs. Clinton gets for one afternoon or evening on the town, giving a one-hour speech. (Of course, all of that worker's salary would be subject to Social Security taxes, unlike over 99% of the Clintons' income.) At Sanders' $15 an hour, the corresponding time is 7 years. Clinton takes for granted her bodyguard service for life, costing taxpayers several millions of dollars per year. It's been that way for decades. Working for a salary that's actually related to the hours put in, is as foreign to her as, well, as driving her own car.

But the inability to drive herself around isn't the only thing that sets Mrs. Clinton apart from the 99+%. Americans do many things for themselves, every day, which Mrs. Clinton never experiences, and hasn't experienced for over two decades. The following list is just a very small sample of what most Americans have as a normal part of their lives:

Washing dishes, dusting, cooking a meal for one's family, raking up, doing laundry, mowing a lawn, getting gas in the car, shopping for food, waiting in line for anything -- at a checkout counter, getting tickets or entry to a movie, show, concert, or sporting event, at the motor vehicle bureau, etc.; waiting in a waiting room for a doctor, dentist, hairdresser, barber, etc.; being put on hold on the phone; going through the TSA point at an airport, sitting next to an un-vetted stranger in a theater, or on a bus, train, or plane; personally serving your guests snacks or drinks; cleaning up a spill, planting any sort of plant, and watering it; taking care of a pet; making your own reservations for anything, either online or by phone, etc., etc., etc. Mrs. Clinton never opens the door herself when getting into or out of her limousines. She certainly doesn't dye her own hair, or throw out the garbage, or separate her garbage and recycling. And she never rides in any of the top-selling 20 models of cars, since none of them are luxury sedans suitable for high-class chauffeuring. Mrs. Clinton has more in common with the Queen of England than with most Americans.

It should come as no surprise that Mrs. Clinton, who has been a New Yorker for 16 years, had no idea how to swipe her subway card when her staffers decided she should ride the subway as a "regular" New Yorker. She's about as familiar with the NY subway as the average New Yorker is with the Mars Rover. When you're part of the 0.01%, you don't ride subways with the hoi polloi. And when Mrs. Clinton made a campaign stop at Junior's Cheesecake in Brooklyn, she admired the cheesecake, and put on a good show of lusting after it, but never actually let any of it touch her lips. After all, any regular person can buy and eat a slice of cheesecake.