Low-grade spoiler:
The notion that earnings of a "mere" $20,000 a year made one an ordinary or impoverished worker is simply wrong. Nearly all members of a 1932 audience of this movie only fantasized about making that kind of money, even in the better years of the 1920s.
Adjusted for inflation, $20,000 is equivalent to about $290,000 in 2009, which yields the proper perspective that Mr Sausage Marketeer was earning very good money for the times, making a comfortable life possible, the kind of life most Americans of the day could only dream about.
Ms Fluffhead was not rejecting a respectable middle class station--she was rejecting a very comfortable, upper middle class life, which is how she should be viewed to understand the point of the movie.
The notion that earnings of a "mere" $20,000 a year made one an ordinary or impoverished worker is simply wrong. Nearly all members of a 1932 audience of this movie only fantasized about making that kind of money, even in the better years of the 1920s.
Adjusted for inflation, $20,000 is equivalent to about $290,000 in 2009, which yields the proper perspective that Mr Sausage Marketeer was earning very good money for the times, making a comfortable life possible, the kind of life most Americans of the day could only dream about.
Ms Fluffhead was not rejecting a respectable middle class station--she was rejecting a very comfortable, upper middle class life, which is how she should be viewed to understand the point of the movie.