Celebrity buying power (2)

That's the ticket
If Kobe Bryant wants to return to China and relive his memories of earning Olympic gold as a member of the "Redeem Team," affording the airfare shouldn't be a problem.

With an annual salary of about $39 million, he could earn enough for a first-class ticket from Los Angeles to Beijing in a little more than two hours.

If you make your living as an umpire, ref or other sports official, though, you might want to fly coach. With an average salary of $34,720 per year, it would take a little more than three months to earn enough for that $9,000 first-class ticket.

Barack Obama: Something to cling on
Barack Obama lost some primary votes when he contended in a speech that some rural people cling to their guns and religion out of frustration or bitterness.

Obama doesn't need to cling to guns himself; with the $4.2 million he earned from his books in 2007, a $780 Remington hunting rifle would cost him the equivalent of 97.5 minutes in earnings.
Buying that kind of gun would be a bigger deal for a fish or game warden, who has an annual salary of $55,720. It would take a warden more than five days to earn enough for that rifle.

Affordable housing

John McCain provided late-night comedians with plenty of material when he was unable to tell an interviewer how many homes he owns.

That may be partly due to the wealth of his wife, Cindy, though, because his 2007 earnings of $405,409 mean it would take him more than six months to earn enough to buy a typical American home.

A simple plan

Ads for the new iPhone promise that it will cost half the price of the previous version, but critics point out that the savings go away when you factor in the cost of the service over the life of the contract.

But even that $1,975 price for an iPhone with two years of service is nothing to Steve Jobs, who is worth an estimated $5.7 billion, according to Forbes. An investment return on that fortune earns Jobs enough to pay for the phone and the contract in 2.6 minutes.

The price looks different to economists, who earn an average of $86,700 a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For them it takes more than eight days to earn enough for the phone.
But even on his own he does better than the typical real-estate broker, whose average salary of $79,800 means it would take more than two and a half years to earn enough to buy a $206,500 home.

Endless vistas

Bill Gates makes so much money from sales of computer operating systems that he wouldn't have to think twice about upgrading his PC.

Even Windows Vista Ultimate, which has a list price of $319.95, would require the equivalent of about 2.4 seconds' worth of earnings for the world's richest man, who is estimated to be worth about $59 billion.

Someone who makes a living helping people cope with computer operating systems would need a lot more time to earn enough to buy the priciest version of Windows Vista. It would take a typical computer-support specialist about 14.7 hours to earn enough.