Monday, August 25, 2008

In Hyde Park, there's only one class--upper! And middle! And lower

In my (overlong) response to "Mr. Obama's Neighborhood" (below), I despaired of replying to the idea that in Hyde Park, upper class whites and blacks united together to force out the poor. Somehow I forgot to mention that Hyde Park is chock full of biology graduate students who are getting paid $26,000 this year (woo-hoo, top 70%!). It's also chock full of post graduate fellows pulling down $40,000 - almost all the way to the national median, $44k. And junior faculty really rake it in with ~$80,000 (actually in the top quarter).

So I guess I'm upper class. (obligitory 'McCain thinks you're only rich if you make $5mil a year' joke) Or I don't count (although the hit piece uses the students as a cultural marker...), or I'm pre-rich, salivating wildly when I put my one leaf of arugula on my sloppy joes.

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OMG DATA: Median household income $44,142 That's below the median! O NOES!

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