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.
Now, clearly, this is just an informal poll broadcast on Twitter; it’s not a peer-reviewed scientific study. Still, it touched a nerve with a lot of people because it’s a reflection of the fact that the super-rich seem to live on a completely different planet than everyone else. According to data from the New York Times the average family income of a Penn student is $195,500; 19% of its students come from the top 1% of earners while only 3.3% come from the bottom 20%. Wharton is the alma mater of people like Ivanka Trump and her father. Wharton is a place, to risk being somewhat over simplistic, that largely takes in people from rich families – these people then go on to become politicians and titans of industry and make even more money.
If this poll just demonstrated that a few overprivileged students are incredibly out of touch that would be one thing. However, the myopia represented at Wharton is mirrored in society as a whole. As a Harvard professor noted in the Twitter thread, research shows that what you think others make depends on how much you make yourself. People tend to massively underestimate the gap between the rich and the poor.
Want another example of this lifestyle-induced myopia? Last year, the New York Times asked the eight New York mayoral candidates how much they thought the median sales price for a home in Brooklyn was. Raymond J McGuire, an investment banker, reckoned “it’s got to be somewhere in the $80,000 to $90,000 range, if not higher”. Shaun Donovan, housing secretary under Barack Obama and housing commissioner under the former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, guessed it “at around $100,000”. The real answer? $900,000.
It’s easy to laugh at these guys but, I can’t this stress enough, there is nothing funny about any of this. These people aren’t out-of-touch anomalies: the vast majority of the people running the world don’t live like the people they represent, and seem to have absolutely no idea of the problems regular people face. In the US, the majority of lawmakers in Congress are millionaires. Meanwhile in Britain, Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is an ex-banker who is worth hundreds of millions: much of this comes from his wife, who is richer than the Queen of England. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, meanwhile, once dismissed the £250,000-a-year ($284,000) he earned from a second job writing newspaper columns (lest you think this is normal for a writer, let me disclose that I get paid $500 for each Week in Patriarchy column), as “chicken feed”.
“It’s hard to imagine these men solving a problem they don’t know exists,” said Monica Klein, a political consultant, to the New York Times, in reference to the mayoral candidates’ views on the Brooklyn housing market. And this, really, sums up the issue. Far too many politicians have no idea what it’s like to be unable to afford a house or to be swamped by student loans or bankrupted by medical bills. They have no idea about the problems the vast majority of Americans are facing – which is why none of these problems get fixed. Instead they spend their time on things that matter to people like them, AKA giving the rich bigger tax cuts. And this is a bipartisan issue, by the way: the second most expensive component of the Democrats’ Build Back Better bill is a $275bn tax cut for people who pay large amounts of property tax that primarily benefits the top 10%. This tax cut is more costly than establishing a paid family and medical leave program.
Every single crisis the world is facing is ultimately a crisis of leadership. As I write in my new book (sorry for the somewhat shameless plug), we have no hope of changing anything unless we change the people in charge. That doesn’t mean just sticking more women and people of colour in power: it means breaking down the barriers that stop regular people for running for office. It means having a government that actually represents its constituents.
Gwyneth Paltrow is now selling a $75 ‘Hands Off My Vagina’ candle
It’s supposed to honour the anniversary of Roe v Wade, the landmark abortion ruling. $25 of each sale will be donated to the American Civil Liberties Union foundation’s Reproductive Freedom Project.
Supreme court rejects another attempt to block Texas’ six-week abortion ban
Gwyneth Paltrow better sell a lot of candles because the state of reproductive rights in the US has just gone from dire to extremely dire. On Thursday, the supreme court rejected an attempt by abortion providers to block Texas’ six-week abortion ban. “This case is a disaster for the rule of law and a grave disservice to women in Texas, who have a right to control their own bodies,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent.
The green M&M has had a makeover
The bad news is that women in America aren’t getting affordable childcare or paid maternity leave anytime soon. The good news is that Mars has given its M&M characters a makeover to promote inclusivity; the green one no longer wears high-heels – she wears sneakers. So there’s that.
Female journalists in the Middle East have had their phones hacked with Pegasus spyware
That’s according to a report by Front Line Defenders and Access Now. “When governments surveil women, they are working to destroy them,” wrote Marwa Fatafta, a policy manager at Access Now, in a statement accompanying the report. “Surveillance is an act of violence.”
Men are now buying NFT girlfriends
Just when you thought NFT-mania couldn’t get any more inane.
Barbados PM Mia Mottley wins landslide second term
Mottley came to international attention last year when she gave an incredible speech at Cop26 and her government told the British monarchy that they could go get stuffed.
The week in pawtriarchy
Drones rarely feature in uplifting news stories but this week is an exception. A little dog called Millie that got stuck on mudflats was saved from drowning when rescuers attached a sausage to a drone and enticed her to freedom. “It was something we had never tried before,” a member of the search and rescue team said, “The sausages were the last resort.”
