Poor Writers

Poor writers,

No, not people who write poorly but writers who are poor. Megan McArdle bemoans the fate of the poor ink stained wretches who struggle to make ends meet on a mere pittance of $180,000 PER YEAR!.

It seems our NY Times employed scribe got himself divorced, remarried an childhood sweetheart, got himself a liar’s mortgage for half a million dollars and found that his new wife felt a need to buy things that were in keeping with their assumed station in life: We had very different ideas about money. Patty spent little on herself, but she refused to scrimp on top-quality produce, Starbucks coffee, bottled juices, fresh cheeses and clothing for the children and for me. She regularly bought me new shirts and ties to replace the frayed and drab ones in my closet. She thought it wasn’t worth agonizing over nickels and dimes.

So why does it happen to writers? According to McArdle, it’s because writers are really, really smart and hang out with people who make more money that they do:

Yet writers are, as a class, extraordinarily at risk. They spend their twenties, and often their thirties, living paycheck to paycheck. They are extremely well educated, and all that education is not only expensive, but builds expensive habits. You end up with a lot of friends who make much more money than you--who don't even realize that a dinner with $10 entrees and a bottle of wine is an expensive treat, not a cheap outing to catch up on old times. Our business is in crisis, and we lose jobs often. When we do, it's catastrophic.

This is what David Brooks calls "status-income disequilibrium", and unless you are among that happy breed of writers who is married to someone with a high-paying job, or who has a trust fund, you feel it keenly. Everyone you write about makes more than you. Most of the people you know make more than you. And you come to feel that shopping at the farmer's market, travelling to Europe, drinking good coffee, are minimum necessities. Your house is small, your furniture is shabby, and you can't even really afford to shop at Whole Foods. Yet you're at the top of your field, working for one of the world's top media outlets. This can't be so.

Somehow I can’t help but feel that McArdle is doing a little preening on how tough it is to be a writer, with all that education which leads to expensive habits which leads to living beyond your means which is understandable because you are extremely well educated and all the friends around you have more money and you can’t help needing to live their lifestyle that you need to live because you feel it keenly since you are the master of the universe because you write for the Goddamn New York Fucking Times the world’s top media outlet. Don’t you know who I am? I write for the New York Times. I AM SOMEBODY! I need that half-million dollar house because I AM A WRITER!

The writer the McArdle is feeling sorry for is EDMUND L. ANDREWS, the schmuck who is the economics reporter for The New York Times. He and wife number 2 made a combined salary of $180,000 per year (until she lost her job) and are waiting for the bank to foreclose.

It figures.