In Search of a Billionaire...
Who Will Spend a Year Living on the National Median Income of $60,000
In 2001, Barbara Ehrenreich published her classic Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, in which she spent months working as a hotel maid, waitress, nursing home aide, and superstore clerk. The national minimum wage at the time was $5.15 an hour.
In 2026, the national minimum wage is just $7.25. The highest state or local minimum wage, in Washington, D.C., is $17.95, all the better to serve our elected officials.
More numbers to consider.
The median annual income for a full-time worker in the United States is about $60,000. And a year’s forty-hour work week at the Washington, D.C., minimum wage totals $37,336, which means a full-time worker with a family of four is barely above the official poverty level of $33,000.
Ehrenreich died in 2022, celebrated for her fierce understanding of American inequality. By every measure, the inequalities have gotten greater in recent years.
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One of these days, and probably in the not-too-distant future, one of the approximately one thousand individual billionaires in the United States will be worth a trillion dollars.
So, here’s my imaginary challenge, imaginary only because I no longer commission new books, as I did for so long as a publisher. But if I still did, this would be at the top of my list: Find a billionaire willing to spend a year living on the national median income of $60,000, without access to all the splendor and resources that money provides the very rich.
If there’s a literary agent involved, I’ll leave it to that person and the publisher to wrangle over the advance, to be paid at the successful conclusion of the year, plus, of course, full royalties on the books sold in print, ebook, and audio.
I wonder what daily life is like for the approximately 1.3 million American households in the top 1 percent of wealth. Different in most respects from everyone else, except that they still use have to use the bathroom for its traditional purposes.
The idea for the book challenge came to me recently, on a day when I was on the phone changing a flight reservation, using points for a hotel room in New York, and driving to the auto dealership for help with a check engine light on the dashboard and also a warning that my tires needed air.
My wife and I live on annual household budget significantly larger than any of the national or median income figures I’ve cited. But we are responsible for the management of what we do, when and how and what it all costs.
We have all the conveniences of a comfortable life, a car (with indoor parking), central air conditioning, enough property and health insurance for peace of mind, savings and retirement accounts that (so far) have not been upended by the swings in equity markets and are managed by a responsible financial adviser. We can vacation on Lake Michigan at a family home.
In short, we are far from having to make do within the national income averages.
But we are responsible for keeping track of our expenses, making all our own appointments, reservations, and plans.
And that is where the test becomes real for our imaginary billionaires. If they use a computer, an iPad, or a smartphone, they are at the mercy of the disciplines imposed by technology. There is rarely a week when I don’t have to untangle some glitch on a device. I pay annually for Best Buy’s Geek Squad and often resort to YouTube, a younger family member, or a tech support name I find on the internet.
What if you suddenly had to do all this yourself? What if you had to apply for a mortgage or a credit card, or had to pay an unexpected tax bill in the thousands of dollars. What about a new roof or sewer system that was not in your budget?
Billionaires delegate most things to someone else.
Every so often, an item appears about a billionaire or politician who can’t handle something like a self-checkout at a grocery store. The most famous of these was actually unfair: When President George H. W. Bush was running for reelection in 1992, he seemed to be baffled by a supermarket barcode. His team insisted he was not.
The principle remains. What characterizes life in the median is how to make the most and best of what you have, and proficiency in day-to-day life.
So step up, Ms. or Mr. Billionaire, and take the challenge. I’m predicting the book would be a money-making bestseller.
For this to be a meaningful "test," it's crucial that the billionaire subject not be allowed to make use of favors provided by friends and family, or perks provided by their employer. I suspect it will be extremely hard to find a billionaire willing to operate for a year under these conditions. I picture the billionaire's associates declaring, "Our businesses can't possibly survive for a year without the unique wisdom of Mr. X!" They will then arrange to have Mr. X shuttled between board meetings and executive retreats in the company jet, with stays in grand hotels and resorts along the way—all without adding a dollar to Mr. X's formal salary of $60,000. And if a glitch arises with Mr. X's laptop or smart phone, will he really fix it himself—or place a call to a CEO friend who will dispatch a team of experts to help?
Looking at the backgrounds of tech billionaires, as an example, do you believe they can't manage a normal lifestyle? An example you present is that they probably can't use the express checkout a grocery store. I'd differ on that front since I doubt the creators who developed our technology would be unable to use the scanner at the grocery store since it was developed using their technology. Just thinking back on Bill Gates and Paul Allen and the introduction of Windows operating system on our computers. It had a monumental change for advancing the use of computer systems for people and industry alike. If they hadn't taken a huge risk to leave l college to develop their ideas to advance technology how long would it have taken otherwise?
I feel the lesson here is that if you have an idea become educated on its viability in real world application and if you believe in what you can develop, you take the risk and a high risk it is. Unless you're an heir to a fortune, working your butt off to achieve what you believe in, is well earned and well deserved and it is inevitable your lifestyle would change. Thinking about the scanners in the grocery store, I believe most billionaires can do whatever is needed to accomplish the goal, since in the example of the scanner at the express lane, they probably had it on their drawing board.