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To offer a slightly different perspective on Barks's income, I compared, somewhat randomly, Barks's 1954 wages to the 1954 IRS information for California taxpayers. Barks's sales of art and story in 1954 earned him $11,100. Of 4,733,521 California tax returns in 1954, only 241,249 were for incomes of $10,000 or more. This puts Barks in the top 5 percent of all California earners (also New York), and probably a bit higher compared to all USA taxpayers.

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So, how much did Barks make? In 1948 he made $6,470 and at least one bonus of $1,441. According to the US government CPI calculator, those amounts had the buying power of $63,555.27 plus $14,155.04 in 2014, or over $77,700 in total, a pretty decent wage. And 1948 wasn't an especially good year. In 1947 and 1949 Barks made about $7,400 and $7,300 respectively, not including any bonuses. In 1950 he made about $8,800, and his sales of art and story grew to about $14,900 in 1960, his peak year because he took on a lot of extra drawing work to save up for an extended vacation. And again those numbers don't include any bonuses, which he surely received, at least in the earlier years. According to the CPI calculator, in inflation-adjusted dollars those earnings would be about $87,000 to $119,000 now.

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Yes, Barks was underpaid, but he was still paid well, got regular bonuses, was an employee of Western receiving benefits such as healthcare and eventually a pension. All of which he worked long and hard for. But he was perhaps not as exploited as some who throw around numbers like 3,000,000 would have you believe.