"Ain't Nobody Gon' Pay Yo' Gucci's No Mind, 'Long As You Standin' in Dat Welfare Line,,,, I Got Dem Capped Down, Cleaned Out, Lost My Lamborghini Blues"

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After several months of truly Herculean exertion, the ol’ Bloviator managed this week to bestow on his long-suffering publishers up in wicked New York City a fairly complete draft of the next ponderous tome he means to inflict on that small-and-shrinking populace sometimes known as the “reading public.” In light of this achievement, he decided to reward himself by cutting back this weekend on anything requiring action by that part of his body lying above his ears and eye brows.
Despite his very best efforts, however, one thing did keep rolling across OB’s mind. Earlier in the week, he had noticed on the web site for his U.S. History course that a student was asking if someone would share his or her notes with him because he had gone “on a cruise” and missed class. Then that lying Hotlanta paper actually reminded me of a parallel to this kid’s casual indifference to how his less than heart-wrenching story might be received by the objects of his supplications. In an article asking “how stimulating” the proposed economic stimulus plan might actually be, not only did the AJC kindly provide a nice head-to-head comparison of how and when the House and Senate versions actually differ, but it offered a brief “pro” and “con” on Oby’s proclaimed $500k limitation on pay for executives of financial firms that are the very tallest hogs at the federal bailout trough. Here, for your scrutiny and delectation is the argument against the pay cap advanced by one Scott Talbott, senior vice president of government affairs at the Financial Services Roundtable: “The pay scale for Wall Street is different for the pay scale for America. [Thanks for the breaking news, Scott. Got any more where that came from? Hear anything about some guy named Made-off pulling some kind of scam?] So these numbers look large, but the market value for these executives—there’s a very small talent pool of individuals that have the education, experience and knowledge to operate a global, international services firm in this day and age.” [ Recent events would seem to make this blatantly obvious as well, Scottso. Too bad some of the people splashing around in this teensy weensy “talent pool” weren’t actually working for some of these dead-beat firms that are on the dole right now.]“Executives may quit banks that fall under the new $500,000 pay limits…. I don’t think the issue is a dollar amount. It’s being paid what you’re worth. . . . Would you be willing to work for less than what you think you’re worth?” [ Maybe you should beam yourself down to our galaxy, Scotty. You just described the circumstances of at least 95 percent of all the employed people on the face of the earth. Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that most people work all their lives for less than they think they’re worth? And they don’t do that because they “want to,” you dimwit!. They do it because they have to.] “Companies will have to re-evaluate whether the benefits are still worth it under the new rules.” [ Right on, dude! That’s what the “free market,” (the one you guys are so fond of extolling when it suits your purposes) is all about: choices. We’ll all be waiting anxiously to see after they soberly “re-evaluate whether the benefits are still worth it” how many of the high-rolling firms who want to keep rollin,’ period, decide to say, “No thanks” to any more of our money. If these companies feel their current execs are simply “indispensable,” ( Anybody recall what ol’ Chuck DeGaulle said one time about cemeteries being chock-full of these types?) then they can always sweeten the pot simply by setting aside enough of the firm’s stock to fund the “sweetener.”]
Maybe I’m stretching it a bit , but I find it difficult not to see a link between my student’s lack of hesitation in divulging why he needed the help of the poor losers who were slogging away in class while he was lolling around on the Love Boat and the damn-near delusional sense of entitlement among people like our friend Scott, or for that matter, the big-time New York bankers whose case he pleads. The sad tale of what the Obama pay cap means for this latter crew is told “if not for sympathy, at least for sport” in today’s New York Times, by Allen Salkin, who reminds us that “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.”
The bare-bones-minimum pre-tax income required to sustain this MO, Salkin reckons, is a tad more than three times what ol’ Oby’s allowing. Who better to give us an idea of the trauma that will be inflicted by the truly Draconian downsizing that awaits many of these poor little rich boys than Candace Bushnell, the author of “Sex and the City” and all-around chronicler of “New York social mores”? “People inherently understand that if they are going to get ahead in whatever corporate culture they are involved, they need to take on the appurtenances of what defines that culture,” sez Ms. Bushnell, “[s]o if you are in a culture where spending a lot of money is a sign of success, it’s like the same thing that goes back to high school peer pressure. It’s about fitting in.”
You got that right, Candy! “Fitting in” is also precisely what it’s going to be “all about” for the once high-altitude New York money changers and their mouthpieces like Scott and for the young cruiser in my class as well, as they get their imminent, involuntary, but long overdue introduction to the real world, where, as Paul Krugman puts it, “It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in.”
Finally, the O.B. had been just as curious as many of you, I’m sure, about why he wasn’t picked for a key post in the new administration. Then, it finally dawned on him, that over the course of well-nigh forty years of pure matrimonial bliss, he and the missus have been just about the tax-payingest tandem they know. If you wonder how Geitner and Daschle had heretofore gotten away with stiffing the IRS, then consider this fact, also courtesy, the AJC. On average, roughly half the taxpayers audited each year earn less than $25,000. If the Feds intend to continue the practice of searching for tax cheats in the welfare line, it might be more cost-effective in the future to check out the guys wearing Guccis.

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This page contains a single entry by Jim Cobb published on February 8, 2009 2:39 PM.

He Done Rush Wrong, and, Oh, the Price that He Paid! was the previous entry in this blog.

A Salary Cap Would Look Great on This Guy is the next entry in this blog.

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