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I found this on Facebook:

JFK image with donation claim

It claims that:

During his presidency, John F. Kennedy never collected his salary of $150,000 a year. Instead, he donated the full amount to charity.

Initial googling seems to support his charity, but that amount seems to me like a rather high salary for the 1960s.

Cees Timmerman
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  • It would have been illegal to donate more than $100,000 of "salary", because the other $50,000, by law is "expense allowance of $50,000 to assist in defraying expenses relating to or resulting from the discharge of his official duties" 3 U.S.C. § 102 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/3/102 – DavePhD May 21 '15 at 13:58
  • Not everything on Facebook is notable. Can you defend placing this claim? – Mast May 22 '15 at 09:11
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    @Mast The image has only 376 hits on Google, but [this tweet](https://twitter.com/uberfacts/status/469852012801060864) has over 3k favorites and 1k retweets, and [GoogleFacts'](https://twitter.com/googlefacts/status/445401672064708609) (though only at 968 favs) sounds authoritative. I'm not sure how popular other sources like [this site](http://headsup.boyslife.org/nine-things-you-might-not-know-about-john-f-kennedy/) are. – Cees Timmerman May 22 '15 at 09:24
  • @RobertRose Not even verified accounts? – Cees Timmerman May 28 '15 at 06:24

2 Answers2

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Drexel University validates the amount:

Presidential Salary: $100,000/year + $50,000 expense account (refused by Kennedy)

As DavePhD pointed out, that $50,000 could only be spent on presidential business, so the full amount that JFK could donate from his presidential salary was 100,000 minus taxes.

The History Channel backs up the claim that he donated his full presidential income:

6. He donated his congressional and presidential salaries to charity.

Kennedy’s father built a family fortune, and when the young politician entered Congress in 1947, he earned sufficiently ample annual income from trusts established by his father that he decided to donate his entire legislative salary to various charities. Kennedy quietly maintained the practice as president after becoming the richest man to ever take the oath of office.

As The History Channel isn't focused on facts anymore, here's a list of supporting book quotes from this page:

"A millionaire by age twenty-one, Kennedy was our wealthiest President. The only President besides George Washington to decline his salary, he donated his to the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, the United Negro College Fund and Jewish organizations." From: Page 67 "Lives of the Presidents: Fame, Shame (and What the Neighbors Thought)" by Kathleen Krull, read using the "search inside" feature at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/015200808X/

"His $100,000 salary as President was being divided, after taxes, among two dozen charities, including the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America, the United Negro College Fund, and the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies. The schedule of contributions was worked out each year during a short money meeting Kennedy had with a family accountant named Thomas Walsh." From: Page 428 "PRESIDENT KENNEDY: PROFILE OF POWER" by Richard Reeves, read using the "search inside" feature at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0671892894/

"He donated his entire presidential salary of $100,000 to charity, ranging from hospitals to the Boy and Girl Scouts, to Jewish philanthropies and retarded children's associations. In 1962, however, he chose to make what were clearly strategically political contributions with his private funds?the United Negro College Fund and the Cuban Families Committee." From: Page 95 "The Kennedy White House : Family Life and Pictures, 1961-1963" by Carl Sferrazza Anthony, read using the "search inside" feature at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743214730/

As for being a lot of money for that time: 100,000 USD in 1962 would have the same purchasing power as 783,894 USD in 2014. Yet nominally, it would still be worth only 100,000 USD.

Cees Timmerman
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    `yearly presidential income ballooned from $25,000 in 1789 to $450,000 in 2001` <--- this is misleading, since according to a few places I found that $25k in 1789 is considerably _more_ when converted to 2001 dollars. – enderland May 21 '15 at 13:14
  • @enderland Balloons can deflate, as well. Added links. – Cees Timmerman May 21 '15 at 13:16
  • @enderland "A few places" is more misleading than my exact numbers. – Cees Timmerman May 21 '15 at 13:23
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    @CeesTimmerman The page you linked makes clear that $25,000 in 1789 may well be worth more than the current day salary, and the historical salaries for which inflation is easier to calculate are worth considerably more "$200,000 in 1969 would be about $900,000". I think your wording is extremely misleading. – MJeffryes May 21 '15 at 14:39
  • @MJeffryes 450,000 is still more than 25,000. Its worth is moot as the question was about numbers. – Cees Timmerman May 21 '15 at 16:44
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    That's like saying that 2 feet are more than 1 meter. It is only true insofar as it is meaningless. – Aaron Dufour May 21 '15 at 17:16
  • @AaronDufour False, because those are different units. – Cees Timmerman May 21 '15 at 17:17
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    @CeesTimmerman One could argue that since the purchasing power of the dollar is so different in the two timeframes, 1789 dollars and 2001 dollars are also different units. – ghoppe May 21 '15 at 17:25
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    Exactly. 1789 dollars and 2001 dollars are different units, too. – Aaron Dufour May 21 '15 at 17:26
  • Have USD tokens expired, or would a bank still honor their nominal value? – Cees Timmerman May 21 '15 at 17:33
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    I'm unsure why that paragraph is even necessary. It adds nothing to an otherwise excellent answer, and appears on the surface to be a veiled indictment of government largesse, perhaps? One could easily make the argument that the President is severely underpaid, when one compares the salary to corporate CEOs. – ghoppe May 21 '15 at 17:37
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    @CeesTimmerman This is a nonsense argument. Suppose that tomorrow the USA decided to pay the president in Japanese Yen instead of dollars, and set the salary at 4,000,000¥. Would you say that this is more or less than the current salary? – MJeffryes May 21 '15 at 17:38
  • @ghoppe It gives perspective to the amount of money, but people could just Google that. I'll remove it for focus. – Cees Timmerman May 21 '15 at 17:39
  • @MJeffryes Yen != USD. And to answer my question: 31 USC 5103. Legal Tender United States coins and currency (including Federal Reserve Notes and circulating notes of Federal Reserve Banks and National banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues. – Cees Timmerman May 21 '15 at 17:40
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    @CeesTimmerman I think that's a good idea. To give perspective, it would be better to give a quick note of Kennedy's salary in 2014 dollars (~$780,000) — considerably more than the current salary of $400,000 by the way. – ghoppe May 21 '15 at 17:45
  • @georgechalhoub Users (of my rep?) can only accept own answers after two days. – Cees Timmerman May 21 '15 at 21:11
  • @CeesTimmerman, oh okay I forgot about that. It's a requirement to wait for two days no matter what the reputation is. – George Chalhoub May 21 '15 at 21:13
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    Extremely misleading is failing to provide a [worth indicator](http://www.measuringworth.com/indicator.php) - [In 2014, the relative value of $100,000.00 from 1962 ranges from $606,000.00 to $2,880,000.00.](http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/result.php?year_source=1962&amount=100000&year_result=2014) – Cees Timmerman May 21 '15 at 23:03
  • I don't understand why the article emphasized that his donations were "after taxes". Weren't charitable donations tax deductable in the 60s? – Michael May 21 '15 at 23:51
  • @Michael The deduction by an individual for charitable contributions under section 170 is [limited generally to 20 percent of the taxpayer's adjusted gross income](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/26/1.170-2) (computed without regard to any net operating loss carryback to the taxable year under section 172). – Cees Timmerman May 22 '15 at 03:48
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    Talking about purchasing power. An Arduino today (the closest thing in terms of processing power to an IBM mainframe in the 60s) cost around $20 and an IBM mainframe in the 60s with the same processing power as an Arduino cost around $100000. – slebetman May 22 '15 at 08:03
  • @ghoppe: one could equally argue that corporate CEO's are overpaid when considering their salary vs. that paid to others who arguably provide more value to society, such as the late Mother Teresa or the President of the United States. – Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні May 22 '15 at 15:12
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    @BobJarvis Conversely, there are some who might argue that politicians take more value from society than they provide. – Michael May 22 '15 at 15:39
  • @BobJarvis Don't get me started on the widening and obscene disparity over the past 15 years of CEO compensation compared to their average employee. – ghoppe May 22 '15 at 16:44
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JFK's Net Worth and Context

Missing from this is context. JFK was a billionaire. He was the second richest president of the USA ever (after Trump). According to Fortune, JFK's dad Joseph, was 9-16th richest person in America in 1957. From Wikpedia,

When Fortune magazine published its first list of the richest people in the United States in 1957, it placed Joseph in the $200–400 million group ($1.74 billion–3.49 billion today), meaning he was somewhere between the ninth and sixteenth richest persons in the United States.

For reference, JFK was elected in 1961.

It's not all that different from Trump himself. From the same source above, Motley Fool, Trump is worth four times as much as Kennedy but has also promised and thus far donated his presidential salary. Outside of the presidency, and the small charitable contribution, it's not all that much different from Steve Jobs who made the choice to work for $1/year. Presidents and CEOs receive other benefits than merely a payroll salary (like stock options, fame, and power).

At some point, giving away the peanuts is simply worth the positive publicity, and if we keep it about material wealth and not about it being symbolically his "salary" the claim is pretty meek. With a Net Worth of 200-400 million, we're essentially saying, presidential candidate promises to give 0.125% - 0.25% of his Net Worth if elected over four years.

Evan Carroll
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