Chapter 10 dispels the myth that tenure-stream academics lead financially carefree lives using a combination of salary and debt statistics and individual stories. It also shows that, in many disciplines, faculty pay a “salary penalty” for choosing academia and that they are expected to provide significant amounts of uncompensated labor without complaint.

This is the first of three biographical chapters, concentrating on one powerful politician and their record of manipulating statistics. This chapter deals with Donald Trump, who is sometimes called the ‘master manipulator’. His manipulative skills are not those of manipulating statistics, but the very different skills of manipulating people. In this chapter we deal principally with two areas: Trump’s treatment of unemployment figures and his treatment of voting figures, both of which he claims have been subject to bias. We question whether he is simply lying, because of evidence that he may be deceiving himself. We also look at his tendency for self-praise. We analyse his claims that the official unemployment figures were too low under Obama’s presidency but under his own presidency similar figures were correct. We also examine his claims that the 2020 presidential voting figures, especially for the State of Georgia, were too low. We note that he takes these claims from extremist and conspiracy sources. We also examine his threatening language when he attempted to persuade election officials to changes the votes in Georgia. Above all, Trump’s claims show his disdain for statistics.