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POLITICS & COMMUNITY Let Them Eat Averages: A Personal History of Wage Stagnation May 9, 1996 Other columns by Ted Rall

Last week the Clinton Administration announced that most new jobs pay "above-average" incomes. The desperate reliance on averages to imply individual reality brings to mind the old adage about a car going 60 mph as it passes a hitchhiker -- the average speed of the car and the pedestrian is 30. Medians are a far more useful way to analyze a group than simple averages, although anything short of a highly-segmented breakdown really doesn't mean squat. More subtly, average income is falling, meaning that the starting salaries of those new jobs are less than they used to be. This country was founded upon certain self-evident truths, but you'd never know it now. Everyone knows that smoking causes cancer, but we act as if the scientific evidence isn't yet 100 percent conclusive. Everyone knows that global warming is real, but still we suffer the fools who claim otherwise. Intuitively, no one really believes that businesses oppose a minimum wage increase because it would put poor black teens out of work, but we grant this fiction equal time. Maybe the truth is too scary to contemplate. In any event, our obsession with specious objectivity has gone too damn far. The current rhetorical demolition derby over wage stagnation is yet another example of equal time gone mad. Economists, college professors, policy wonks, business writers and corporate chieftains waste time that could be spent solving the problem fighting over whether or not it exists in the first place. Let the debate stop here: Wage stagnation is real. Since I don't have access to Nexis and its vast resources of employment statistics through the years, I will use myself as an example. My first real job in 1986 was a typical entry-level position for a college graduate, as a trust administrator at a Japanese investment bank in New York. My starting salary was $17,500. This would be $27,000 in today's dollars. Today, my old job pays $21,000. By 1990, I'd risen to the lofty position of assistant loan officer, earning a salary of $36,000 to stare out my window over Midtown's sea of gridlocked taxis. (Adjusting for inflation, that would be $48,500 today. A worker at my old desk now receives about $35,000, and must hold an MBA. Six years ago, a BA was considered sufficient.) By August of 1990, my phone hadn't rung in months and the stench of downsizing hung in the recirculated office air. I took a year off to finish my bachelor's degree at Columbia. (Yeah, well, I'd lied about my education to get the job.) After graduating, in early 1992, I was lucky to find any job at all, even with an authentic transcript replacing my fake one. I spent the first two years of the Clinton Recovery filing admissions folders and emptying voicemail boxes as an Office Assistant Grade 6. My plum unionized salary: $21,000, which would be $26,000 in 1996 dollars. That job now pays $22,000. Two years later, I moved to California to get married. I found a gig as a financial analyst at a small consulting firm, earning $32,000 (that's $34,000 now). Unfortunately, I got fired owing to my so-called "bad attitude". This was not the first time this issue had come up at work, thus I faced the terrible truth: My attitude could be better. That was my last "day job"; now I survive on cartooning and writing, at about $30,000 a year, which is equivalent to what I earned eight years ago. What could I have done differently to earn more? A Clinton apologist might say I should have remained at the Japanese bank, but that wasn't an option -- eventually I would have gotten laid off. A Republican might claim that I was a typical Gen X'er, lacking ambition, but the slacker label doesn't fit me. Burdened by student loans and an addiction to recorded music, I worked long hours and jockeyed for raises and promotions to pay for my sinful ways. I frequently complimented my bosses on their superb taste in clothes. I lied about my education and padded my resume. Because I understood early in life that happiness and employment are mutually exclusive, I took whatever jobs would maximize my income -- no matter how unpleasant the working conditions. Despite my hard work, flexible ethics and relentless greed, my real income has remained roughly the same for a decade. Meanwhile, the New York City subway fare doubled from 75 cents to $1.50. The rent on my West Side apartment has doubled too, from about $700 to $1,400. I've given up trying to keep up. Like most Americans, I vote my pocketbook. Let Clinton and his experts spew all the baroque statistics they want; no one can convince me that I'm not losing ground any more than a real estate broker can get me to believe in the difference between "indirect light" and darkness. Individual experiences decide elections. Smoking kills, global warming is real and incomes are going to hell. Ted Rall, a syndicated cartoonist and freelance writer, often thinks about applying to law school before he remembers his atrocious grades as an undergraduate. © 1996 Ted Rall, All Rights Reserved.