And, thanks, Hec.

Also on board with the "no sympathy for those who think $500,000 a year is outrageously small" wagon. If the company is in such bad shape that it has to lay off large numbers of lower-level employees, then the higher-ups that made the bad decisions to put the company in bad shape should also be cutting back.

No sympathy here either. Hell, the automakers' CEOs were pledging to work for a $1 salary if they got $15b in loans from the government.

{{{Aimee & Joe}}}

When the economy recovers, I'm buying this tea infuser.

Tea goes into the cage.
Cage goes into the water.
Shark's in the water tea.

Am I wrong in thinking that now is the perfect time to re-calculate executive pay? There is virtually no where for excutives to run off too for greener pastures. No one is in great shape. What is needed is strong no BS leadership of the governing boards, people who are not afraid to call greedy greeders out. Can we get an Obama cloner?

Dear coworker: No matter how fine-grained the statistics you want collected are, they ain't going to show anything. THE RESULT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR ISN'T THERE.

Am I wrong in thinking that now is the perfect time to re-calculate executive pay?

I am so with you, msbelle!

Thanks, all. It hasn't sunk in yet. I suppose it will on Monday, an hour after Aims and Em are off to work and school respectively. That's when I'll snap and vacuum the entire house then alphabetize Emeline's toys.

Am I wrong in thinking that now is the perfect time to re-calculate executive pay?

This. The argument these firms keep making with the huge bonuses is that they have to do it to keep their top performers. And maybe in October that argument held a little bit of water but now? Where exactly are they all gonna go?

And if anyone decides to retire or something similar because they don't want to work for that money, well, one less person to compete for the jobs that are left.

No sympathy here either. Hell, the automakers' CEOs were pledging to work for a $1 salary if they got $15b in loans from the government.

That's true, although that means most of their income probably comes from other sources at this point.

Just one more post on this -- again, I'm NOT advocating sympathy for the executives themselves*. I'm talking about family members and employees -- maids, housekeepers, cooks, drivers. Yes, those are luxuries, but for the people doing the actual jobs, those are their actual jobs.

Anyway. People making that much money have multiple sources of income and probably won't actually suffer much of a loss, proportionately.

(*although I do want to point out that the people who don't have roots are looking at my Netflix subscription and house to myself and -- let's be honest about how good this year has been to me -- trips to Egypt and wouldn't exactly feel sympathy for me if I got a pay cut either. If I got my salary cut in half I'd still have a root, after all.)

ETA: I suppose what I'm saying is that unseemly wealth is largely relative.