After almost a decade on the court, Thomas had grown frustrated with his financial situation, according to friends. He had recently started raising his young grandnephew, and Thomas’ wife was soliciting advice on how to handle the new expenses. The month before, the justice had borrowed $267,000 from a friend to buy a high-end RV.
At the resort, Thomas gave a speech at an off-the-record conservative conference. He found himself seated next to a Republican member of Congress on the flight home. The two men talked, and the lawmaker left the conversation worried that Thomas might resign.
Congress should give Supreme Court justices a pay raise, Thomas told him. If lawmakers didn’t act, “one or more justices will leave soon” — maybe in the next year.
At the time, Thomas’ salary was $173,600, equivalent to over $300,000 today. But he was one of the least wealthy members of the court, and on multiple occasions in that period, he pushed for ways to make more money. In other private conversations, Thomas repeatedly talked about removing a ban on justices giving paid speeches.
I had a boss back in the ‘90s who used to be a corporate headhunter in San Francisco and then moved back to the east coast and bought a temp agency. He hired me to do computer stuff for his dalliance into futures trading so I had access to his finances; he had investment accounts of around $5 million, a 50’ sailboat, a couple BMWs and the temp agency which earned him around $25K per month, so he was rich by almost anybody’s standards. But he had many friends back in the bay area who were worth hundreds of millions of dollars and the reality of his relative poverty absolutely ate him alive - it was virtually the only thing he could talk about and explained his adventures in futures trading.
Hilariously, I once watched him berate his two temp agency receptionists (who made $7 an hour) because his monthly income had dropped from $40K to $25K, as if it was their fault and they could be expected to give a shit in the first place.