We know that the Obama administration has an odd idea of who the rich are. For more than two years, the White House and Democrats in Congress have tried to hike taxes on all those who make $250,000 a year, which is a pretty good living but hardly qualifies as one of the Four Hundred.   Given how low the threshold Democrats seem to have for the “rich,” what do they think represents a “modest” living?  At least according to Barack Obama, it turns out that there isn’t as much difference between the rich and the hoi polloi as one might think:

President Obama, who is in the middle of making final decisions on the first major reorganization of his administration, said in a brief telephone interview on Wednesday that Mr. Gibbs would remain a close adviser and “will continue to shape the dialogue politically for many years to come.”

“We’ve been on this ride together since I won my Senate primary in 2004,” Mr. Obama said. “He’s had a six-year stretch now where basically he’s been going 24/7 with relatively modest pay. I think it’s natural for someone like Robert to want to step back for a second to reflect, retool and that, as a consequence, brings about both challenges and opportunities for the White House.”

“Relatively modest pay”?  Not even the New York Times could swallow that one:

Mr. Gibbs earns $172,000 a year in his current position. Assuming that his White House salary is relatively close to his household’s overall cash income, he falls within the top 10 percent of the income distribution in the United States, according to the nonpartisan  Tax Policy Center.

So compared with most Americans, his pay is quite generous.

The average American household salary is just over $50,000 per year, which makes Gibbs’ salary more than three times the average.  It’s only relatively modest next to Obama’s own salary of $400,000 per year … or perhaps the President had the salaries of recent City of Bell leaders in mind.  Either way, calling a $172K salary “relatively modest” for a position with only one real responsibility — acting as a mouthpiece to the White House press corps — makes Obama look rather out of touch, and just a little hypocritical considering his rhetoric on tax policy for those making just $68K more a year than Gibbs.

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