TV judge Judy Scheindlin isn't one to brag, but her life is pretty good right now. She gets paid $45 million a year for her syndicated Judge Judy show which requires only five actual working days each month, which The New York Times Magazine's Andrew Goldman points out works out to a whopping $865,000 per day. For comparison purposes, that's more than triple average annual salary for Los Angeles County Superior Court judges. Goldman asked how she feels about the whopping day rate in his interview: "Does hearing it put that way embarrass you, or does it make you proud?" The notoriously harsh judge answered:

I don’t know how to answer. It’s not a question of how much I make. It’s how much income my program generates. It’s just like tuna fish on toast — if I owned a luncheonette and somebody who worked really hard for me saw at the end of the day my profit from making a tuna fish on toast was $1.50, they would want half the profits from that tuna fish sandwich.

Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author at cdickson at theatlantic dot com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.
Caitlin Dickson