- Home
- News
- Features
- Topics
- Labor
- Management
- Opinions/Blogs
- Tools & Resources
By early episode of The Simpsons, Homer Simpson walks with Marge through downtown Springfield. “Careful now,” he admonishes his wife. “These are dangerous streets for us upper-lower-middle-class types.”
In anThis is Homer’s first admission to being “middle-class” — but for the rest of us, this always seemed obvious. Homer has all the trappings of a stereotypical working-class American: He lives in a modest home in the suburbs with his wife and three children. He works a factory job while his wife Marge tends to the children and cooks. He is not a college graduate. He drinks beer, loves to grill, and wears a white polo shirt with blue jeans.
And his paycheck — which is briefly revealed in season seven — verifies his self-proclaimed economic status:
According to the stub, Homer’s pretax weekly pay of $479.60 works out to $11.99 an hour, or an annual salary of $24,395. Adjusted for inflation, that’s $37,416 per year.
Of course, this is all based on his regular gig as a safety inspector at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. But Homer Simpson has held more than 100 other jobs during The Simpsons’ 27-season run — and analyzing them shows exactly how much of a middle-class icon the cartoon character really is.
Read the rest and see the analysis at:
http://www.vox.com/2016/9/6/12752476/the-simpsons-homer-middle-class