While record corporate profits during an economic downtown and Occupy rhetoric may have put the spotlight on the growing problem of income inequality in America, an excellent infographic by CNN allows you to visualize what that actually looks like in real time.
Over the course of one minute, the salaries of NBA-star Kobe Bryant, a minimum wage worker, a teacher, a doctor, President Obama, and Exxon Mobil-CEO Rex Tillerson are compared side by side. The differences are staggering: not just between Bryant, who earns more than $30 million per year, and the minimum-wage worker, but between the professional classes as well.
Every five seconds, Bryant makes another $14, as opposed to the $10 or so dollars a minimum wage worker would make in two hours. In 15 seconds, Tillerson has earned close to $5 (not counting stock or bonuses, of course). A general practitioner, on the other hand, has earned a mere 34 cents. And your mom wanted you to be a doctor.
After 30 seconds, Kobe Bryant has made more than $80, while a teacher has just made 21 cents--that’s .2% of Bryant’s salary.
After a full minute, an American median wager earner has made about $.27. President Obama makes about $3. Tillerson has made a little less than $20, while Bryant has made a shocking $162. The vast differences in our incomes can become somewhat abstract when you’re talking in terms of annual salaries. But when you see it in terms of the time it took you to read this sentence, perhaps it becomes a little more visceral.