Adding the income that Bristol will earn from her upcoming show with the Massey brothers, the Palin family will have earned almost 3 million dollars from reality programming alone.

From Think Progress:

Sarah Palin’s Alaska, $2 million: TLC paid Palin $250,000 per episode for eight episodes of her nature-adjacent reality show, below the $1-$1.5 million per episode rate Palin was apparently looking for when she started shopping the program. When Sarah Palin’s Alaska premiered strong, the former Governor reportedly pursued a contract renewal that would have brought her up to the $1 million level. But after ratings declined significantly, and the show’s hunting scenes sparked controversy, TLC declined to renew it.

Dancing With the Stars, at least $365,000: Networks are loath to confirm reality show salaries publicly, but in 2009, Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson’s contract with the show was leaked, providing a sense of the DWTS salary structure, which paid participants a base rate of $125,000 no matter how far they make it in the competition, and an escalating per-week rate as they survive elimination. Under the terms of that contract, Bristol Palin earned at least $365,000 for making the finals, and could have made more if the terms of the contract have been renegotiated more favorably since then.

Bristol Palin’s reality salary is hard to calculate.  But a conservative estimate might put Bristol Palin at $50,000 per episode, the same as what Donald Trump made during his first two seasons with The Apprentice, bringing her $500,000 for the whole run of the show.

If our estimate is accurate, that would bring the Palin’s collective income from reality television alone to nearly $3 million since September 2010.

See, now don't you feel silly about working so hard to make a buck? 

Or for spending all of that time getting a good education? 

Or for teaching your children to both work and study hard so that they can have a good life? Silly, silly you.

If only we could have known that all anybody had to do is quit halfway through their job, get knocked up as a teenager, or have your face mutilated by a plastic surgeon, in order to make millions of dollars, we might not have wasted all of that time becoming educated, learning marketable skills, and working hard to advance in our fields. (When I see my high school guidance counselor again, I am going to punch him in the nose.)

Still I can only imagine how devastating it will be for this family once people tire of them, and they can no longer make a living saying provocative things, or pimping out their children on television for a handful of advertising dollars. 

And when that happens what becomes of a family full of tragically undereducated people, with a newly developed taste for the finer things in life?

After all don't they own a television? And haven't they seen what happened to the likes of Dana Plato, Gary Coleman, and Todd Bridges?  And hell, THOSE kids actually had talent!

Well for the Palin children there will still be one more payday.  All one of them will have to do is write a book about what REALLY happened behind closed doors, in that secretive Palin compound, by the poisoned lake, in the little town of Wasilla.  The only question is WHICH one will it be?