The disappointing thing for me is that the actual rich, the people who don't need to go to work every day keep themselves out of sight. So we all act like crabs in a barrel, attacking the people who make 2-3x what we make, and the people who have 1000x what we do keep on keeping on.
From what my accountant tells me, there's a good chance the people inside the Google bus (driver excepted) are making 10-20X what the folks protesting them are making.
SF median income in 2012 was 74,922. Even if we assume the protesters are making 1/2 of that, your projection is strong — few people, even at Google, are making >$300k per year.
The protesters could be making a lot less than that. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6928230Santa Clara County, Calif., is home to Google, Apple and eBay. So it's no surprise that the median household income was $91,000 a year in 2012, one of the highest in the country. Yet one-third of the households in the county don't earn enough for basic living expenses, even when they work at some of those big tech companies.
"Median income" does not include unemployed people. (Edit: actually, I have no idea how they calculated it.)
I assume that people who are fed up enough to protest and block a bus are making quite a bit less than $37K. I know lots of people who are making less than $37K.
I also know that many, many, many people at Google are making >$300K total comp.
Glassdoor has a lot of issues, but it looks like most salaries listed range between $100-250k. It looks like Directors and above make above 300k, but they'd typically only be 4-8% of total employees ... or 2-4k people at Google.
Maybe all the salaries on Glassdoor skew low, but even doubling that still means 85% of Google employees make under 300k.
Based on numbers I hear from friends and Glassdoor, Google programmers make $100k-150k/year. To make 10x less than that, you'd have to make $10-15k/year; that's less than minimum wage.
Not everyone can get a full time job in this economy. A friend of mine is struggling to pay rent with her part time job at minimum wage. She can't afford to eat every day. Sure, you could tell her "go get a full time job", but no one is hiring. Believe me, she's tried.
