Is $172,000 a 'modest' salary?

January 5, 2011, 5:42 pm
How ‘Modest’ Is Robert Gibbs’s Salary?
By CATHERINE RAMPELL

Doug Mills/The New York Times

Is Robert Gibbs well-compensated?In an interview with The New York Times this morning, President Obama remarked of his outgoing press secretary Robert Gibbs, “He’s had a six-year stretch now where basically he’s been going 24/7 with relatively modest pay. I think it’s natural for someone like Robert to want to step back for a second to reflect, retool and that, as a consequence, brings about both challenges and opportunities for the White House.”

Modesty is in the eye of the beholder though.

Mr. Gibbs earns $172,000 a year in his current position. Assuming that his White House salary is relatively to close to his overall cash income, he falls within the top 10 percent of the income distribution in the United States, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

So compared to most Americans, his pay is quite generous.

Of course, the pay of the typical American is probably not the benchmark President Obama (and indeed Mr. Gibbs himself) would use to determine whether Mr. Gibbs’s pay is modest, or im-. They would have to consider the opportunity cost of working for the White House — that is, what Mr. Gibbs could be earning if he were employed elsewhere.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/how-modest-is-robert-gibbss-salary/

the same salaries Henry Ford got. They all forgot he owned the company!

Gibbs is probably comparing his salary to what the talking head reporters make.

Not even half that amount. I believe the D.C. bubble will kill us all. That is what rich school districts pay their superintendent. Is that a common job?

I have some ideals that I would never break, even if you offered me billions of dollars. But any ideal that falls short of that, that salary would be enough to make me break.

HOw do they pay the rent?


:sarcasm:

Of Mice and Men.

is connected to reality and how --

Maybe someone should have whispered "homeless" in his ear -- "economic depression" --

50 million with no health care coverage!!

We need a president better connected to the people -- and less well connected to

elite thinking!

$400,000 -- ??

Let's go back to $200,000 and cut all the other Executive salaries in

likewise fashion!

and he could barely afford the nanny, housecleaner and the children's private school tuitions? It was the most disgusting piece of garbage I ever read: http://www.gossiprocks.com/forum/life-living/137052-we-super-rich-man-finds-hard-live-6-figures.html

Everything is relative.

If I said LeBron James was making a modest $10 million a year I would be correct.

The only reason Gibbs can make more in the private sector is because he has been a WH press secretary and his relationship with Obama. Otherwise he would be lucky to be making one third that.

...or a comparably large corporation.

There are people who have not been WH press secretary, who likely make a lot more than 172K as head of communications for any number of moderate to large sized corporations.

Gibbs 'skills'. In the two years he has been there he has said "ahh" about a million times.

You really can't generalize, though

to private industry - director of communication, VP level operations positions - all which would be as much or more than he's making now.

Then throw in some double dipping of the public trough and you have some real cash.

I think that's what President Obama meant, in a tone deaf way.

It's all relative, especially in DC. Just as the President pointed out when he said "relatively modest salary." Lots of people there making a hell of a lot more than that.

relatively is exactly the right fucking word. And calling what he does "work" is a fucking joke.

This is the entire problem with Washington. Totally living in a bubble. No idea what "work" is, no idea what "moderate" is. Just totally detached from the people they are supposed to be serving.

I'm tired of Republicans and Democrats alike pretending they know something about the working person. Ed Shultz does this all the time, talks about "the working man", you fuckers wouldn't know work if it came up and bit you on the ass.

make that kind of money for four years running I'd spend the rest of my life sailing.

That's $14K a month. I have been living on $10K a year for over six years.

The median household income in the United States is $46,326. That is not personal income, it is household. So he makes 370% of he household income of people here in the U.S. Now, that doesn't make him rich, but it isn't modest.

A lot of folks don't even know when their next meal will come.


That's a nice salary, and I am sure other benefits came with the job.
And I'm sure he will get another job that will pay even more. Can't feel sorry for him.

Like wearing a good suit vice jeans everyday...those he has do not come from Mens Wearhouse.

We don't hear much about the expense accounts and aides.

That kind of salary is only found in the top ten percent anywhere in the nation..

Good grief.

this decade...

I bet I worked more hours than Gibbs, back when I had a job.

some special on Obama and they showed Gibbs there very early and very late. Showed him with his little boy and talked about the wrench of a job you care very much about and missing so much time with a growing child.
It is good pay
But Gibbs left more money to go with him
We have no real idea of the scope of his job or the constant pressure of being part of the administration...
Obama does but spoke rather thoughtlessly considering the times we are in

I don't think Obama has forgotten not having a lot of money or the pain and struggles of losing a job (through people he worked with back in Chicago) but he has not done much of a job making that clear or focusing on it policywise

Which is why none of the millionaires he was talking to will stop for even a second over the description of a $172,000 annual salary as modest. For the audience to whom the president was speaking, that is a very modest annual salary. Some of them may even be moved to tears over their evening highball, contemplating the hardship of getting by on a mere $172,000 a year.

I agree it's a lot of money and a heck of a lot more than I make. But for the position he is in, the job pressures, it is pretty modest even including the other perks he gets.

The president of the company I work for makes a lot more than me but he works about twice as many hours as I do and is always under pressure. Is it fair? Who knows.

...which just goes to show you another reason why DC is SO out of touch with regular Americans.

Time for Gibbsy to cash in. That "opportunity cost" they cite, will be transformed into a golden opportunity now that he has 2 years as Presidential press secretary on his resume.

That'd be $33 / hr.

The reason everybody says "I want to go spend more time with my family" is that, honestly, you never get to spend any time with your family if you work in the west wing.

I can imagine a lot of 14-16 hour days for Gibbs, 7 days a week. Wouldn't be hard to come up to 80 hours a week.

In that light, his salary doesn't seem so outrageous.

:hi:

He'll probably earn 4 or 5 times that on his next job. $172K is not an unusual salary in mid-level corporate America. It's peanuts on Wall Street.

It's about three times as much as a middle-class salary, in my opinion.

Also when you consider DC has a rather high cost of living it really isn't that much.

Granted he isn't hurting or cutting corners but he could leave that office and land a job elsewhere in private sector making easily triple.

His is exceptional.

I know Admin's that make that kind of money

I'm not delusional. You are.

I know a number of people who make a lot more than that. My administrative assistant at a previous job (also in NYC) made more than $60K a year and she was no great shakes. You need a lot of money to live and work in the New York area (and Washington too). Many employers recognize that and pay big salaries to attract the best talent.

I'm not delusional and just because you don't personally know any high salaried people, doesn't mean they don't exist. I apologize for calling you delusional in the previous post. We evidently live and work in very different environments and have very different views about what constitutes normal and reasonable

But then again I live in a large east coast city. I'm not saying a kid right out of college would start at that, but for somebody who's been in the company for a while, sure.

We deserve our money back.

poor guy prolly has to hit the streets after dark to give out $20 HJs just to get by. :eyes:

power corridor or in Manhattan, for another example, $172,000 IS relatively modest as someone like Gibbs, with his high-profile resume, could make a hell of a lot more money in a leading law firm, bank, brokerage, foundation, etc. I'm not saying it's fair, or right but it's just the reality. Obviously no one is going to starve or go homeless on $172,000 a year, but economic realities are not uniform in the U.S.A. What seems like a fortune in one place is "relatively modest" in another area. I don't mean this to be snotty or snobby, or an insult to Oklahomans, but in (imaginary) Gopher Gulch, OK $172,000 may be a stunning salary but it's not in other parts of the country, where salaries are high because expenses, housing and living costs are, for better or worse, high.

Though this was a few years ago. I think that would be nip and tuck if you're living in the city west of the river, though.

Plus they have full pensions from us and health care I'd they retire at 50

Some of us live in the real world.

The fact is, whether you like it or not, someone of Gibb's profile would make millions per year in the private sector.

as modest. Under the circumstances, not generally.

For most people, work ends when we leave work. For most people, that is an amazing salary.

.

based on 40 hours at 7.5 each ,no over time thats 300 dollars a week, so 573 weeks of work for a minimum wage person..I'd say there are plenty of folks in the world that would literally KILL to have his job. D.C. is out of touch wit the rest of the world, and they don't care!! one year of his pay is like 11 years of a regular run of the mill grunt, thats like reverse dog years...fuck at 650 a week thats still 5 years to one of his!!!!

If not, the comparisons are meaningless. You could make the similar comparisons to an NFL quarterback's salary, but how many people could step on the field and run a two minute offense?

he isn't qualified to do theirs either.

As somebody pointed out upthread, if you say 80 hours a week (which might even be too low an hours estimate) that shakes out to $33/hour.

are not on what he makes per hour, but versus how many hours a a real working person has to put in to earn what this glorified talking head makes!!

It's a great salary but Gibbs is worth a lot more.

$172,000 is a great deal compared to what most people earn, but not that much compared to what Mr Gibbs could almost certainly earn in a comparable job in the private sector, which he could almost certainly get if he wanted.

His skills are in demand, and people are willing to pay a lot for good PR/media management. He could be making a lot more on K street.

He had absolutely no idea who I was asking about so that didn't skew his answer. To him that means solidly middle class, but to the rest of us (including myself) that seems quite affluent and we've never even dreamed of being able to make that kind of money.

And that's only been getting worse as the hipsters flood uptown and northeast. It's not as bad as Manhattan or SFO, but it's like Chicago or Boston in terms of cost of living.

But he chose to insult liberals by serving the President.

Because he lives by a lake in Mississippi in a house he bought for $40,000; $40k is less than a year and a half's rent for my crappy basement apartment.

kpete linked to this study yesterday:
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6324.html

Are people who travel in town cars and on corporate jets different—on a psychological level—from you and me? Does the availability of luxury goods "prime" individuals to be less concerned about or considerate toward others? The answer from new research seems to be yes.

HBS professor Roy Y.J. Chua and Xi Zou, an assistant professor at London Business School, suggest that luxury goods have an important effect on human behavior that is only now becoming clear—and that may have implications for addressing the continuation of objectionable choices among, for example, high-flying executives on Wall Street....{/i]