Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you think Cal State psychology professors are “rich”? Twenge has a salary of about $100,000/year. https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2016/california-s... Plus whatever she brings in by writing non-fiction books, delivering paid speeches, doing market research consulting, and maybe some summer job. That’s probably quite a bit lower than the average reader of this forum.
Rofl, $100k/yr is rich.
When someone says “that guy is rich”, “oh what a sheltered rich guy who can’t understand the struggles of the rest of us”, etc., I’m imagining someone who eats expensive restaurant meals 5 times a week, vacations all over the world, puts their kids in exclusive private schools, maybe owns a sailboat or a small plane, buys luxury cars, etc... Someone who can just afford to buy a house and put 3 kids through college and save for a modest retirement seems pretty solidly “middle class” by most standards. You might have a different definition.
Obviously if you compare to rural peasants or developing country factory workers, $100k is a very high salary, but compared to working professionals in urban California with a similar amount of training and experience, state university professors are at the low end of salaries.