Monday, June 30, 2008

BARACK OBAMA

Obama's Inflation-Adjusted Community Organizer Salary: $39k to $63k

Earlier I noted that Obama's starting salary of $12,000 as a community organizer that he frequently mentions comes out to $23,658.63 in 2007 dollars. (Throw in the money he was given to get a car and it's up to $27,601.73.) Not a lot, obviously, but not that bad for a 24-year-old, considering that the median income per household member (including all working and non-working members above the age of 14) was $26,036 in 2006.

In Byron York's great article in NR on Obama's years a community activist, he quotes the man who hired Obama, Jerry Kellman, as saying that the $12,000 was Obama's "training salary" for the first few months. "After three or four months, he was up to 20,000, and after three years he was probably making $35,000 or so."

In 1985, the year Obama began as a community organizer, that $20,000 would be the equivalent of $39,431.04 in 2007. His salary when he left Chicagot to attend Harvard law School in 1988 would be the equivalent of $63,093.21 in 2007.

Not too shabby. Community organizing: Nice work, if you can get it.

06/30 01:42 PMShare