Hillary Tone Deaf on Inequality: Forgets that $14k per year in 1973 = $74,464 today

[amborin]

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http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/hillarys-inability-grapple-inequality-making-her-vulnerable-bernie-new-york?akid=14151.215363.HPKJ02&rd=1&src=newsletter1054071&t=2

Hillary's Inability to Grapple With Inequality Is Making Her Vulnerable to Bernie in New York

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....she showed us how out of touch she is with income inequality: "I went to work for the Children's Defense Fund, making about $14,000 a year, so I couldn't afford some big [student loan] payment every month."

Hillary thinks $14,000 a year, back then, makes her a young struggling post-grad? Maybe we need to jar her memory a bit: $14,000 a year was a very good income in 1973. Hillary then earned more 65 percent more than the median male worker ($8,453) and nearly 500 percent more than the median female worker ($2,823) according to census reports. Rather than struggling to get by, she had a very comfortable upper-middle class income.

Today, that $14,000 translates into $74,464 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistic's inflation calculator. That would place her in the top 8% of today's income distribution.

Perhaps she was doing the usual political exaggeration in order to feel our pain; the flip side of coming under sniper fire in Bosnia when you weren't. Or maybe she misremembered her actual income. It might have been much lower than she recalled on Tuesday. But the more likely explanation forms a line from 1973 to today. Back then Hillary really did feel she was living on a limited income compared to her peers; those she went to school with at Wellesley and Yale.

In those schools you're surrounded by real money. You're hanging out with the richest of the rich who can go and do anything they want, whenever they want. Hillary, a child of the upper-middle-class, was a striver, a do-gooder, an up-and-coming star. But relative to her peers, she was of modest income. Her $14,000 a year in 1973, while a very comfortable income compared to the average American, must have seemed like a great sacrifice for an elite Yale Law school graduate.

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[Kurovski]

1. All the little white lies that go swirling into a snowstorm,

otherwise known as the Clinton campaign.

Fudge, fudge, fudge!

[Scuba]

2. I'm still waiting for someone to ask her how much a loaf of bread costs.

[scscholar]

3. Or try to negotiate a grocery store like Bush the Elder...

bumbled around and helped to hurt his run to be ruler again.

[Agschmid]

9. My guess was $2.39, I then googled it and it was $2.37.

I was spot on which is impressive considering I never buy bread ever.

[Marrah_G]

18. Or Mitt Romney's pathetic everyman attempt at shopping in NH

This crap never turns out right. People can small fake.

[bigbrother05]

4. And they were flat broke on leaving the WH

If my memory is correct, the min wage was $2.00 or $4,160 full time, so $14K was a "professional" salary. Anything over $1,000/mo was good money.

[roguevalley]

5. my dad worked from 3 am to 9 at night driving a logging truck into another state to haul logs for

800.00 a month gross at the same time. My mom worked split shifts five days a week for 250$ a month. I remember when a nickel was important. This person has no clue

[Avalon Sparks]

6. Those that got theirs

Don't worry much about these facts

[reformist2]

7. Not tone deaf, cynical. She's hoping most people won't know that $14K in 1973 was a decent salary.

In today's dollars it sounds low, like she was almost in poverty. And that's precisely why Hillary used the number. To deceive her audience.

[athena]

8. So you think she should have been making much less than that.

As a Yale law school graduate who had done post-doctoral work, you think she should have been making less than $74,464 a year.

There is certainly a gender wage gap, but to argue that a Yale law school graduate should be earning less than that is really pushing it. Should she have been working for no pay to please her haters?

Certainly, she could have found a better paying job. Instead, she chose to work to solve children's issues. And yet, in the eyes of Bernie supporters, this is a bad thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton#Yale_Law_School_and_postgraduate_studies

[quaker bill]

14. absolutely not

but intimating from it that she knew something about the conditions of the poor is rather excessive.

[hobbit709]

16. You sure like looking at things backwards.

In 1973 that was way above average pay. In 2016 it's not even poverty level.
And to claim she couldn't afford any big ticket items on $14K back then is BS too.
My parents were buying a house and raising 4 kids on $14k back then even with my stepfather drinking up half his paycheck.

[Marrah_G]

19. Not at all- but don't pretend like you were eating ramen every night

75000 is a damn good salary...

[Cheese Sandwich]

10. Forget or lie. One of those.

[AzDar]

11. She's a horrible candidate...

[jfern]

12. Yeah, I think most 26 year olds would love to make $75k a year

But then again she said she was "dead broke" in 2001. She's totally out of touch with the common American. Riding a subway train for 1 stop doesn't change that.

[PowerToThePeople]

13. I think most people of any age would love to make $75k per year.

eom

[hobbit709]

15. In 1973 my parents were making house payments on $14K/yr income, and feeding 4 kids.

Now here in Austin, $14K won't even pay the rent.

[Bonobo]

17. Not tone deaf. Completely ignorant to the lives most people face. nt