MicroWaveJul 30, 2024

King Charles’ €500K lobster dinner blows hole in French presidency’s budget

https://lemmy.world/post/18109078

King Charles’ €500K lobster dinner blows hole in French presidency’s budget - Lemmy.World

A decadent dinner costing nearly €475,000 for the U.K.’s King Charles III helped push France’s Élysée Palace — the office of President Emmanuel Macron —to a record high deficit last year.  France’s love for grand gestures and opulent dining are fully in evidence in the pages of a damning  yearly audit [https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/2024-07/20240729-S2024-1053-Comptes-et-gestion-de-la-presidence-de-la-Republique_2023.pdf] of the Élysée’s budget, released on Monday by the Cour des Comptes, France’s top audit court.  The Élysée’s spending, which includes costs related to the president’s diplomatic and presidential duties as well as administration, personnel, security and estate management, reached a whopping €125 million, plunging the books €8.3 million into the red. Among the biggest deficit drivers were two luxurious state dinners, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and King Charles III.

Show threadTacticsConsortJul 30, 2024

What. How do you even spend that much on a dinner, even for 1000 people.

And like. It’s King Charles. I loved the Queen and thought she was iconic, and even I don’t really care about Charles. All of my friends in my circle actively despise him and what he represents. Literally why are you trying to curry favour with him that hard.

Show threadArbitraryValueJul 30, 2024
$500 per person wouldn’t be that much, given that a middle-class wedding often costs around $250 per person. (I’m guessing each guest at this dinner drank well over $500 of wine alone.)
Show threadTaTTeJul 30, 2024
I have no clue how you define “middle-class” but not even the fanciest weddings I’ve been to have spent even close to $250 per person. That kind of expenditure sounds quite a lot more like upper-class to me. Assuming you invite 100 people to the wedding, an average Joe will not have 25k to spend on one party.
Show threadArbitraryValueJul 30, 2024

the national average cost of a wedding in 2023 was $35,000

Source. I’m not vouching for that source but it does match my personal experience.

Show threadTaTTe

The issue with these statistics is that they look at the average, which is heavily boosted by the exceptionally expensive weddings of the higher upper-class. The median is significantly lower.

silkstemcollective.com/median-and-average-wedding…

Also I’m not American, maybe people there just spend a lot more on weddings in general than what I’m used to.

Median vs. Average Wedding Cost - Silk Stem Collective

$26,720 was the average wedding cost – but 3 in 4 couples spent less than $20,000. We explain how the big spenders skew the average.

Silk Stem Collective - Rent Wedding Flowers
Jul 30, 2024 at 4:31pmWeb
Show threadArbitraryValueJul 30, 2024
You’re correct, but even the inflation-adjusted median is still probably over $20,000 right now (based on the assumptions that it was $18,000 in 2019 and 2020 is not representative). I think my broader point still stands.