Our Handy Calculator Lets You Pretend You’re a 1-Percenter For a Day

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Do you ever wonder what your income would be like if it had grown as fast as the average investment banker’s since 1960? Well, wonder no more! Click here, enter your current salary, and our handy-dandy calculator will tell you how much you’d be making today if ordinary incomes had gone up as fast as the top 1 percent.

Now, before you ask, no, it’s not realistic to think that everyone’s income could rise as fast as the superwealthy’s has. Still, this calculator provides a concrete sense of what a 270 percent increase really means. When you hear that the head of Goldman Sachs used to make $20 million and now makes $75 million, it just seems like two ginormous numbers. When you find out that a similar growth rate means that you would be making, say, $150,000 instead of $50,000, it kind of brings it all home.

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Owned by no one—except you.

We just keep seeing it happen: Newsrooms owned by billionaires and corporations are spinning their own narratives, overwriting the truth, following only stories that keep them in the pocket of those with even more power.

Not here. We’re not owned by anyone. We’re not part of any cult that demands our allegiance to a bottom line. We’ve spoken up and spoken out while other newsrooms changed their stories—or cut them altogether—to keep the C suite happy.

Our mission is to find the truth and amplify it. That’s why we’re independent, nonprofit, and, crucially, funded by readers. The investigations on our website will always be free to read, watch, and listen to, but our newsroom is powered by readers who pitch in what they can so we can keep asking the hard questions.

Can you chip in today?

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