In keeping with these posts about Obama’s allies constantly reminding us he could have made more money in other jobs, and his stories of household debt that don’t quite add up, William Kristol notices something about Obama’s description of his early work as a community organizer.

In college, he explains, “I began to notice a world beyond myself.” So while his friends were seeking jobs on Wall Street, he applied for jobs as a grass-roots activist. And one day, a group of churches in Chicago offered him a job as a community organizer for “$12,000 a year plus $2,000 for an old, beat-up car.”
“And I said yes.”
Those four words form their own paragraph in the prepared text. Obama wants us to be impressed by the drama of his spurning the big bucks, by his bold acceptance of such a pittance of money in order that he could do good.
Leave aside the fact that two years elapsed between Obama’s graduation from Columbia in 1983 and his heading off to Chicago in 1985. Dramatic foreshortening is, after all, sometimes necessary. And leave aside whether $14,000 in 1985 was really such a shockingly low salary for someone recently out of college — in inflation-adjusted dollars, it’s about what we pay entry-level editorial assistants today at The Weekly Standard.

(Let us keep in mind that it is the official position of this blog that few Americans are more strikingly underpaid than editors at conservative magazines.)

According to the inflation calculator, Obama’s $12,000 salary from 1985 comes out to $23,658.63 in 2007 dollars; $14,000 comes out to $27,601.73 in 2007 dollars.

The median income per household member (including all working and non-working members above the age of 14) was $26,036 in 2006. So Obama’s salary then was pretty reasonable sum to a lot of folks, although obviously not for Columbia graduates. I’m sure Chicago was a fairly expensive place to live compared to many parts of the country back then, but note that Obama is living alone. A starting salary in the mid-20s for a first major job out of college wouldn’t stun a lot of Americans, I suspect.