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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Comment
Arwa Mahdawi

The super-rich live on a different planet. Their thoughts on US salaries prove it

An ornate building on the University of Pennsylvania campus with students walking down the steps.
The average family income of a University of Pennsylvania student is $195,500. Photograph: Hannah Beier/Reuters

It’s an average American salary. What could it be? $800,000?

It costs more than $100,000 a year to attend the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. I don’t know what you get for that money exactly but insights into the everyday economy clearly aren’t on the syllabus. Nina Strohminger, an assistant professor at Wharton School recently asked her students how much they reckoned the average American makes a year. A quarter of the class, she reported in a viral tweet, thought it was over six figures; one student thought it was $800,000. The real figure? About $53,838, according to figures from the Social Security Administration (SSA) last year.

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