Tuesday, May 20, 2008

What is your Salary?

I am eternally curious about how much money people make...my neighbor, my car salesman, my dermatologist. I am so curious (one might call it intrusively nosey) that I feel required to spurt out to my hairstylist: "So exactly how much of this sixty bucks comes back to you?"

It's a shallow and crass habit, I accept that judgement, I wear that letter.

I blame it on consumerism, capitalism, and an insaitable need to know how business works. What is skimmed off the top? How much of my $60 goes to the hairstylist? how much to her boss? and how much to the man?

How much of her money goes to rent? Does she have a roommate? Children? What are the mechanics of her day to day? How much debt does she have? What kind of assests has she secured against her debt? What are her future goals? Does she always want to be a stylist or maybe one day own her own salon? And then of course there is the question, why is she giving me that I-am-going-to-slap-this-intrusive-bitch look?

This thought train started from a CNN article explaining the Clinton vs. Obama voting pool. Median household incomes under $50K per year go to Hillary. Above $50K go to Obama.

So what does that really mean? How many households are under $50K? Basically, are there enough poor folk in Oregon that Hillary could have a chance of winning???

I wiki'd it. (because university professors all agree that wikipedia is the most reliable source of information in existance...that was sarcasm, please don't spam me).

The average household income in the US is.....drum roll.....$48,201. (Go HRC!)A household income means total earners in house over 15, so in my house that would be the combination of 2 salaries. (Well three salaries if we convince Chick-fil-a that Payton is 15, and not 9 years old, and fully old enough and intelligent enough to fry chicken.)

The average household income in VA? $55,368. Such over-achievers!

So broken down to stats that matter more to me.

Male with high school diploma: $28,763
Female with high school diploma: $15,962
Male w/ bachelors: $50,916
Female w/ bachelors: $31,309

(Dude whats up with the men folk making so much more than us women??)

I am pretty shocked, given my collected data from real world cases, that with a college degree women only average $31,309. Even with a doctoral degree women still average about $53K. Wow.

I'm not going to share the men's salary, let's just say it's nearly double in some areas to the womens...you can see it for yourself here.

So the next time I break the language barrier to ask my asian dry cleaning lady how much of that $1.95 shirt cleaning charge goes into her personal pocketbook, I'll be sure to impressed when she tells me her annual salary is $92,000 and she is in the top 5% of women earners in Virginia.

And I am not.

Shia Shia.

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