The recent calls tab on my iPhone currently looks like this: Tennessee number, Minneapolis number, Jackson, Miss., number, Los Angeles number, my mom, Cleveland number, Boston number, different Los Angeles number, my sister. |
Over the past three months, while my Brooklyn neighborhood was largely in lockdown, I made dozens of calls to Times readers around the country for a series of reporting projects. For each chapter of The America We Need, a Times Opinion series on economic inequality, we posed questions to readers about the personal effects of structural inequalities. We heard powerful, intimate and at times funny stories from the over 2,000 readers who responded. |
Today, we published the final pieces in the series, which print readers can find in this week’s Sunday Review section. We asked readers to share what they were paid in 2019 and whether they thought it was fair. Given that what people earn is generally a taboo topic, I was stunned that we received over 1,100 responses. Dozens of medical residents wrote in, as did day laborers, artists, dog walkers and bank executives. We feature about 15 responses — from people earning $24,000 to $415,000 — in our article today. |
We’ve done three other “reader callouts” for the inequality series. For Chapter 1, we posed a simple question: 40-Year-Olds, How Are You Doing? (We chose 40-year-olds because Americans born in or after 1980 have had a harder time moving up the economic ladder than older Americans, research suggests.) Nearly 500 readers wrote in. I spoke with more than a dozen of them for a piece we called “I Am the Portrait of Downward Mobility.” |
And for the third, I spoke to people with the same jobs as their parents. I spent a particularly memorable afternoon speaking with a retired locomotive engineer in Wyoming. As I sat at the makeshift dining table/desk in my living room, he regaled me with stories about being caught on cargo trains in snowdrifts in January, about his father, who was also his colleague, and, more somberly, about his sense that unions and their members have lost ground in America |
Last week, a tech worker I was interviewing about his salary described what he called the “Yelp problem”: People who are inclined to post on Yelp have often had either an exceptionally bad or good experience. Reading their reviews, you sometimes miss out on the just sort of normal, relatable human experiences. |
Although I didn’t have a name for it then, going into this project I was worried about this phenomenon. But through the course of these conversations, I was proven wrong. A vast majority of readers wrote in simply because they were curious and interested. They stumbled across a question that resonated with them, and they had a story to share. |
I was blown away by the generosity of readers in sharing their stories, and I am excited to share this final piece with you today. |
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Here’s what we’re focusing on today: |
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