What’s in your wallet?

How big (or small) is your paycheck?

That’s a question the staff at Parade magazine asks hundreds of Americans every year for its annual issue focusing on what people earn. The magazine runs with our Sunday newspaper, as you know, and this coming Sunday, April 12, is the week for this story. It’s pretty popular. We seem to have a strange fascination with how much, or how little, people are paid. Is it a kind of financial voyeurism? Something akin to keeping up with the Joneses? Do we measure our own success, or worth, relative to the success of others?