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.

Vanity Fair has been running lots of articles on the poor Hedge Hogs for a while. I have zero sympathy. Some of their wives are hocking MILLIONS of dollars in jewelry to pay their bills.

When I went in to have my ring repaired I saw a youngish woman in the shop with three small children trying to sell her wedding set for money. They couldn't even give her anything for the scrap value. That sucked.

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[link]

This might be a good time to mention that Modest Needs recently added a grant category for people who've been laid off:

Modest Needs makes Bridge grants by remitting payment to a creditor for a relatively small, emergency expense on behalf of an individual or family suffering from short-term unemployment due to the current economic downturn.

They do cool things, so I wanted to spread the word. And for the still-employed folk... right now they have a matching grant for recurring pledges. Not to be all Sally Struthers about it, but even small amounts add up.

Fuckity! Sorry to hear the news Joe. Here's to a quick turnaround in job hunting. Much -ma to you, Aimee, and the punk.

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Yeah, at this point I think the state might want to step in, as there is something seriously not right about this woman and I have serious doubts about anyone being capable of single parenting 14 children under the age of 8.

Had to pop in to shaare this brilliant headline: Root canal easier when bear's sedated