Obama's Wealth War--500k is PEANUTS

[Capablanca]

Quote from TGregg:


That's the point of the article, though. For most folks, 200k is serious money. But it depends in a big way on where you live and work, and for some large areas that's chump change. Which makes 500k a great weapon in the class war. Country bumpkins who don't know any better scream that is way too high. Urban snobs turn up their noses and proclaim that is laughably low. And BAM! the next rounds are fired in the war on the rich that empowers the democrats so much.

But it is the urban areas on the coasts that most reliably vote Democrat. It's the more rural areas of the Midwest and South that are most Republican. So much for your opinion and analysis.

 

[MandelbrotSet]

Quote from JJacksET4:

That's exactly what I was thinking.

People don't have to be idiots you know.

For one job, if you are offered say $300K a year in a place where it will cost you $290K/yr to live, but you are offered another job for $150K per year where you can live well for $80K, no one is forcing you to take the first job, and you shouldn't wine about the high cost of living there if you do.

BTW - Haven't some of these companies ever heard of technology? Why do so many of their employees have to reside in NY City? I bet 99.9% of their business could be conducted online, over the phone and through video hookups.

JJacksET4

Yep, they just want all the money, regardless.

Putting upper limits on corporate compensation when they feed from the government trough is a pure stroke of brilliance.

I'm glad Obama came up with the idea, I know any other President wouldn't have.

 

[Vespasian]

Let's put this into CONTEXT please.

THIS IS FOR THOSE EXECS WHO'S FIRMS NEED BAILOUT MONEY.

This is a good thing because it will REWARD the strong and wise and punish the weak.

This is America right?

 

[WaveStrider]

The New Wall Street is now Washington DC where the real $ deals are made.

The public is griping because they see TARP money as welfare money, and bonuses paid in banks that are insolvent as welfare checks under a different name. Of course, those receiving it don't see it that way.

And during the subprime bubble, the first derivative of fake profits being booked in company accounts would be large bonuses paid on fraudulent "performance".

That money needs to be recovered, because it was removed at a cost to the company and it's shareholders.

 

[rc5781]

You're an idiot...

Quote from marketsurfer:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/fashion/08halfmill.html?_r=1


PRIVATE school: $32,000 a year per student.

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Related
In Curbing Pay, Obama Seeks to Alter Corporate Culture (February 5, 2009) Mortgage: $96,000 a year.

Co-op maintenance fee: $96,000 a year.

Nanny: $45,000 a year.

We are already at $269,000, and we haven’t even gotten to taxes yet.

Five hundred thousand dollars — the amount President Obama wants to set as the top pay for banking executives whose firms accept government bailout money — seems like a lot, and it is a lot. To many people in many places, it is a princely sum to live on. But in the neighborhoods of New York City and its suburban enclaves where successful bankers live, half a million a year can go very fast.

“As hard as it is to believe, bankers who are living on the Upper East Side making $2 or $3 million a year have set up a life for themselves in which they are also at zero at the end of the year with credit cards and mortgage bills that are inescapable,” said Holly Peterson, the author of an Upper East Side novel of manners, “The Manny,” and the daughter of Peter G. Peterson, a founder of the equity firm the Blackstone Group. “Five hundred thousand dollars means taking their kids out of private school and selling their home in a fire sale.”

Sure, the solution may seem simple: move to Brooklyn or Hoboken, put the children in public schools and buy a MetroCard. But more than a few of the New York-based financial executives who would have their pay limited are men (and they are almost invariably men) whose identities are entwined with living a certain way in a certain neighborhood west of Third Avenue: a life of private schools, summer houses and charity galas that only a seven-figure income can stretch to cover.

Few are playing sad cellos over the fate of such folk, especially since the collapse of the institutions they run has yielded untold financial pain. But in New York, where a new study from the Center for an Urban Future, a nonprofit research group in Manhattan, estimates it takes $123,322 to enjoy the same middle-class life as someone earning $50,000 in Houston, extricating oneself from steep bills can be difficult. .......

continued in the nY times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/fashion/08halfmill.html?_r=1