Celebrity Rip-Off

Me too.

I just finished writing an article about the films of Meryl Streep for a local Portland paper. I will receive $50 for my efforts, which took about five hours, or $10 an hour. During that time I did some research on the actress and learned that her current net worth is $90 million.

That seemed like a lot, but less than I expected since I remember reading many years ago that actor Tom Hanks commands $20 million per movie, and she is certainly in his league. That got me wondering about the net worth of some other celebrities. Jerry Seinfeld is worth $950,000,000. That's nine-hundred-and-fifty million, in case like me all those zeroes stumped you. But that's pocket change compared to Oprah Winfrey, who's got $2.6 billion, a figure I cannot even write using zeroes.

What gives? Why are celebrities so rich when they do little but "amuse" us, and likely have a ball doing it? What about nurses? The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists the average pay for registered nurses at $64,690 per year, or about $31.00 per hour. That's better than my ten bucks an hour, but nowhere near the average movie star's haul.

I don't know about you, but I'd rather be stuck in an elevator or a mine shaft or a collapsed building or a flu epidemic with a nurse than with Meryl Streep or Oprah Winfrey, or in fact any actor or actress except maybe one from Grey's Anatomy who might have picked up some helpful information during all those years of pretending.