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.

  • Coelacanth@feddit.nu
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    7 months ago

    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.

    • JimmyMcGill@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      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.

      • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        “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.”

  • Allonzee@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    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.

    • oatscoop@midwest.social
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      7 months ago

      Dual income homeowners with healthy retirement funds. The fucked up thing is 1 million dollars isn’t that impressive anymore – you can easily spend that in retirement living a middle class lifestyle in the USA. Particularly when you factor in age related medical expenses and elder care.

      It’s not like our retirement, healthcare, and elder care systems are catastrophically broken or anything.

    • dhork@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      There are some places where all you have to do to become a millionaire (at least on paper) is to live long enough in one place to pay off the mortgage.

  • jprice@kbin.run
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    7 months ago

    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.

    • Doom@ttrpg.network
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      7 months ago

      I don’t follow YouTube shit but what happened with Mr Beast why is he so hated now?

      • SpicyAnt@mander.xyz
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        7 months ago

        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.