Income Inequality Organization Fights Income Inequality By Giving Scads of Money to Economist for Doing Almost No Work
Paul Krugman, December 2013, speaking about income inequality:
[T]he discussion has shifted enough to produce a backlash from pundits arguing that inequality isn’t that big a deal.
They’re wrong.
. . . .
Inequality is, indeed, the defining challenge of our time. Will we do anything to meet that challenge?
Yes, we will! We will give Paul Krugman $225,000 a year for doing almost nothing!
According to a formal offer letter obtained under New York’s Freedom of Information Law, CUNY intends to pay Krugman $225,000, or $25,000 per month (over two semesters), to “play a modest role in our public events” and “contribute to the build-up” of a new “inequality initiative.” It is not clear, and neither CUNY nor Krugman was able to explain, what “contribute to the build-up” entails…
CUNY, which is publicly funded, pays adjunct professors approximately $3,000 per course. The annual salaries of tenured (but undistinguished) professors, meanwhile, top out at $116,364, according to the most recent salary schedule negotiated by the university system’s faculty union. And those professors are expected to teach and publish. Even David Petraeus, whom CUNY initially offered $150,000, conducted a weekly 3-hour seminar…
$225,000 is more than quadruple New York City’s median household income.
It’s performance art, right? If you’re upset by income inequality, because you feel like rich people get paid too much, check out how much we’re paying this shmuck for doing nothing! Like I say: performance art.