In case you haven’t seen this yet, I offer it up for a bit of levity.
And lest you think it’s just fantasy, the New York Times has informed us that the $500,000 President Obama has set as the cap on salaries for execs at banks accepting Federal bailout money—well, evidently $500,000 just doesn’t go very far these days.
With that kind of dough you’d have to think hard about cutting your two vacations per year (minimum $16,000), pulling your 2.5 kids out of private school (at $32,000 per), wearing the same $15,000 frock to multiple charity affairs and laying off the nanny to save her $45,000 salary.
What I’d like to know is: don’t these people have any savings? How about investments that they can use to fund their conspicuous consumption? Or did their funds disappear along with the holdings of the poor schmucks who invested with Bernie Madoff?
Somehow I doubt that. If they can finagle $18.4B in bonuses in a year when money was drying up like an ice cube in the Sahara, they're going to be hurting that much.
Interestingly, while the NYT tells us that this sort of make-do-and-mend sacrifice just can’t be done, evidently the masters of the universe are giving it a go. Bloomberg reports that execs are thinking twice before ordering limos or $1000 bottles of wine.
I’m sure this resonates with the 2.6 million people who lost their jobs in 2008 and nearly 600,000 laid off in January of this year.
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