Obama: Wall Street Bonuses "Shameful"

[Squiggy]

What pork?

 

[JonathonWally]

I'd like to see a limitation in CEO bonus and compensation law passed through congress.

Kodak is about to ax ANOTHER 2,000 local workers, they canceled bonuses and raises for the workers... I'm sure Antonio Perez and the upper layer aren't going without.

Notice the bottom layer, the WORKERS who produce product are the ones let go, not the upper management layers?

I understand where you're coming from, and your intentions, but I don't think it's the government's place to place any kind of "top end" or "limit" to the amount of money people can be paid. Except of course when you're accepting a tax payer funded bailout.

I'd even take it a step further and require that any business recieving tax payer funded bailout money has to publish all their salaries to the public, just like most other government jobs do.

This is what is wrong with America, no one wants to actually do any work, we want to be in management positions telling other people what to do. That is the great ambition, get away from actually DOING something and park yourself behind a desk telling other people what to do.

It depends on the person and what you'd like to do. I personally am not interested in ever having a 9-5 desk job. Which is one of the reasons I went into the field I did. But then again, I can't see myself doing what I do for a whole lot longer, let alone forever.

 

[trekkerguy]

What pork?

The Spending, IE the stuff that will actually produce jobs
by creating reasons for companies to have to hire people.


All they want is tax cuts tax cuts tax cuts.
All companies are going to do with tax cuts is pad their banks accounts.

And tax cuts don't do you any good when you don't have a job.
The GOP is completely and utterly short sighted. When this spending
happens it requires work, which requires people to do the work who in
turn get paid, need food, consumables etc. and have a will to spend again.
When they start spending it pumps money into other industries who will
of course require more people to produce/sell/stock etc...

That along with the creation of entirely new industries that will require
research/workers/sales and management teams etc that create scores of
new job for industries that will actually help move us out of last century
and into this one when it comes to power and energy and technology,
and over the long run actually save money.

That along with the tax cutes that are in the bill already.

 

[Dayton3]

I knew a store manager for a company that was in the process of going bankrupt.

He managed 8 different stores. Each one of them was closed and the employees laid off.

He left with a large bonus.

And he deserved it.

Why?

The man was the companies troubleshooter. Their company was going bankrupt and everyone knew it. The stores were going to close anyway so they sent him to each one to manage the eventual closings and get as much money out of the stores and their assets as he possibly could before the inevitable shutdowns.

He kept those stores open months longer than many thought possible and kept the employees on the payroll longer than many expected.

So though the company was failing, he was rewarded for managing the decline and limiting losses.

 

[trekkerguy]

I knew a store manager for a company that was in the process of going bankrupt.

He managed 8 different stores. Each one of them was closed and the employees laid off.

He left with a large bonus.

And he deserved it.

Why?

The man was the companies troubleshooter. Their company was going bankrupt and everyone knew it. The stores were going to close anyway so they sent him to each one to manage the eventual closings and get as much money out of the stores and their assets as he possibly could before the inevitable shutdowns.

He kept those stores open months longer than many thought possible and kept the employees on the payroll longer than many expected.

So though the company was failing, he was rewarded for managing the decline and limiting losses.

Yeah, a store manager. Not someone who wipes his ass with millions of
dollars while his company goes to ruins underneath him and he continues
to rake in money as people are laid off.

The guy you speak of was as much a victim as those who worked under him.
I'm sure he doesn't have some account he can just sit on and spend the
interest the rest of his life (if they're smart enough) and had to go right
back out into the workforce to try and make a living.

 

[John Picard]

What pork?

Hmm, it ballooned from $800B to $900B thus far.
Just an example

House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence of Indiana pointed to a $50 million outlay for the National Endowment for the Arts - an agency that conservatives have long criticized - to help arts groups hit by a drop-off in philanthropy.
"This is stimulus?" Pence asked.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, criticized a part of the bill's $87 billion package to help states with Medicaid costs that would allow states to expand their family planning services. Leaving a White House meeting with Obama on Friday, Boehner said, "How can you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives? How does that stimulate the economy?"

When Obama announced this month that there would be no earmarks in the bill, it sharply curtailed the ability of lawmakers to steer money for pet projects in their districts. But critics say the move won't remove politics from the process - it simply shifts the power to bureaucrats at state and federal agencies, who will distribute billions for roads, schools and other projects.
"In the past, in the appropriations bills we could see a list of the projects. They were right there printed in the bill," said David Williams, vice president for policy at Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog group. "Now it's going to be a lot more difficult to see where the money is spent. You will have to contact each agency and each program manager to find out where the money is going."

$44 million for repairs at the Agriculture Department headquarters in Washington.
$200 million to rehabilitate the National Mall.
$360 million for new child care centers at military bases.
$1.8 billion to repair National Park Service facilities.
$276 million to update technology at the State Department.
$500 million for the Transportation Security Administration to install bomb detectors at airports.
$600 million for General Services Administration to replace older vehicles with alternative fuel vehicles.
$2.5 billion to upgrade low-income housing.
$400 million for NASA scientists to conduct climate change research.
$426 million to construct facilities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
$800 million to clean up Superfund sites.
$150 million for the Coast Guard to repair or remove bridges deemed a hazard to navigation.
$6.7 billion to renovate and improve energy efficiency at federal buildings.
$400 million to replace the Social Security Administration's 30-year-old National Computer Center.

The above is hardly what anyone with any sanity would call "economic stimulus"

 

[trekkerguy]

All those things(Outside contraceptives) require workers, planners, researchers, managers...
provisions for the workers, the things they buy, the bills they pay...


All of it reguires paying large amounts of people to do the labor and management of these projects.

Job creation.

Again the GOP has no logic.

 

[Plecostomus]

I'd like to see a limitation in CEO bonus and compensation law passed through congress.

Who are you to dictate how much I make a year? Or how much money I get in a bonus?

It's one thing when the bonus comes out of a bail out. I agree with you there.

But a blanket statement like that is just plain wrong.

No it isn't.
Sitting in an office deciding which value-added paradigms to leverage across which market-sectors does not entitle you to a corporate jet, limo and exclusive bathroom/dining area and other obscene special perks like a bonus worth more than the payroll of your entire research staff... While your workers toil away in shit conditions using 30 year old machines for $10 an hour.

I mean come on, have you ever stopped to consider what a CEO really DOES? Is he really WORTH that much money? No, he's a glorified figurehead who signs off on documents, his only concern is making sure that the stock-price remains steady or increases.

CEOs do not ADD VALUE to a company, they are parasites of the worst sort.

This is my opinion, based on meeting several, actually TALKING to them, watching them saunter around the production floor with their entourage making statements about Quality, Value, Productivity and Doing More With Less while building Shareholder Relations.

The CEO of PACTIV corporation got his fucking tie stuck in a styrofoam plate bagging machine because he felt the safety warnings didn't apply to him, he wanted to see the 30 year old bagging machine in operation... leaned right over it. Hour later he was up in the tower over a styrofoam extruder without a breather mask or goggles... complaining the whole time of the fumes up there.

Then he called us all togehter for a "town square" meeting, but when we told him that would require us to shut machines down he threw a fit and told us to leave them running unattended, that's what all the (non-existant) automation that he paid for was for!

Someone had to explain THAT to him, and he finally agreed to hold the meeting in two parts so the machines could remain tended. What was the meeting about? STAFF REDUCTIONS specific to our plant because we weren't adding enough value per unit produced... The most cost effective solution was to cut staffing by 40% and increase the production day from 8 to 12 hours.

Of course, it never even occured to him the reason we weren't "adding enough value" was the condition of the plant equipment, oh no. No no no, it wasn't until they cut the staffing down to the point we had lines out of operation that they woke up and started upgrading machines.

Tell me, Alpha. That kind of idiot-logic thinking makes a person worth a limo and corperate jet? Worth $2million dollars a year?

Oh and I am curious... were do you work? What is YOUR job? I'm guessing you've never actually been exposed to reality. Not a personal attack, just an observation based on your opinions expressed in this thread.

 

[B.J.]

I don't disagree that top managers do deserve to be paid for their work, but the disparity between them and the average worker has gotten *way* out of hand. In the 1970s, the average executive pay was about 25 times that of the average worker. Today, it's over 100 times, with the top executives getting about 350 times the average worker's pay. See this image.

 

[Gertch]

What pork?

The Spending, IE the stuff that will actually produce jobs
by creating reasons for companies to have to hire people.

What in that package will create jobs? It's going to cost us more to create each job. Do you really think welfare spending and condom distribution will create jobs??? How many poor people have hired you?

All they want is tax cuts tax cuts tax cuts.

Tax cuts are a time proven method of stimulating the economy.

And even Obama's own people say the "stimulus" package wont show an effect until 2010.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDBiYjY3OWJjOWMyMWFjYmZjMjU2MTAwNDg1OGExNTA


Massachusetts' share of the "stimulus" bill is about $11 billion.The number of jobs "created or saved" in MA is touted around 94,560.

Assuming this is accurate, the net cost to taxpayers is $116,328 per job. I'll get laid off if I can get that much!

 

[trekkerguy]

So those projects just magicaly happen themselves?


Wow.

And yeah it's a little thing where they've planned it out as
a long term dealio... you know the kind the sustains the growth
over years time so that it's not just a quick bump in peoples
pockets that goes away a couple months later.

The whole "trickle down economics" has NEVER proven to work.

 

[John Picard]

So those projects just magicaly happen themselves?


Wow.

And yeah it's a little thing where they've planned it out as
a long term dealio... you know the kind the sustains the growth
over years time so that it's not just a quick bump in peoples
pockets that goes away a couple months later.

The whole "trickle down economics" has NEVER proven to work.

Really? Is that why, whenever "soak the rich" taxes go into effect they're repealed quickly, because "the rich" stop buying goods (yachts, expensive cars, etc) and the people who earn a living building/selling those items lose their jobs?

"Trickly Up" economics (giving money to the so-called poor) sure as hell doesn't work.

Sorry, but those projects outlined in the "stimulus" are pork. They don't help the national economy one iota. And yes, President Obama is moving for tax cuts. Perhaps you could explain to him how tax cuts don't work It's evident that you're another of those armchair economists whose never taken any courses in Economics or Finance.

 

[Squiggy]

"Trickly Up" economics (giving money to the so-called poor) sure as hell doesn't work.

Neither does trickle down.

 

[trekkerguy]

I do believe in tax cuts. But they've never been shown to be an effective solution.
Only part of it. When relied on as the solution... *looks out window* yeah it doesn't work.

The GOP had it's chance when they had a majority and the White House, they failed utterly.

 

[Dayton3]

IIRC, it was during the George H.W. Bush admin. that the Democratic Congress decided to put a huge tax on luxury yachts. After all, people that could afford to buy a yacht for 500,000 dollars wouldn't mind paying a few thousand extra.

Right?

What happened?

The domestic pleasure boat building industry in the United States took a massive hit. IIRC, roughly 18,000 people lost their jobs in one year alone in the industry.

Wealthy Americans simply bought yachts built overseas.

That is why "soaking the rich" is largely pointless. As Steve Forbes pointed out once, extremely wealthy people (like himself as he admitted) could not be forced to pay massive tax increases. They could simply hire and army of accountants and lawyers to tell them how to avoid it.

Whenever you "soak the rich" it is the poor and middle class who suffer.

 

[Alpha Romeo]

What pork?

Hmm, it ballooned from $800B to $900B thus far.
Just an example

House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence of Indiana pointed to a $50 million outlay for the National Endowment for the Arts - an agency that conservatives have long criticized - to help arts groups hit by a drop-off in philanthropy.
"This is stimulus?" Pence asked.

When Obama announced this month that there would be no earmarks in the bill, it sharply curtailed the ability of lawmakers to steer money for pet projects in their districts. But critics say the move won't remove politics from the process - it simply shifts the power to bureaucrats at state and federal agencies, who will distribute billions for roads, schools and other projects.
"In the past, in the appropriations bills we could see a list of the projects. They were right there printed in the bill," said David Williams, vice president for policy at Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog group. "Now it's going to be a lot more difficult to see where the money is spent. You will have to contact each agency and each program manager to find out where the money is going."

$44 million for repairs at the Agriculture Department headquarters in Washington.
$200 million to rehabilitate the National Mall.
$360 million for new child care centers at military bases.
$1.8 billion to repair National Park Service facilities.
$276 million to update technology at the State Department.
$500 million for the Transportation Security Administration to install bomb detectors at airports.
$600 million for General Services Administration to replace older vehicles with alternative fuel vehicles.
$2.5 billion to upgrade low-income housing.
$400 million for NASA scientists to conduct climate change research.
$426 million to construct facilities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
$800 million to clean up Superfund sites.
$150 million for the Coast Guard to repair or remove bridges deemed a hazard to navigation.
$6.7 billion to renovate and improve energy efficiency at federal buildings.
$400 million to replace the Social Security Administration's 30-year-old National Computer Center.

The above is hardly what anyone with any sanity would call "economic stimulus"

Aside from Family planning, I disagree. All of those things could create jobs and are also probably needed in the long run.

 

[Squiggy]

And family planning could be worked into a "stimulus" because not having a baby is a whole hell of a lot cheaper than having one.

 

[Alpha Romeo]

I'd like to see a limitation in CEO bonus and compensation law passed through congress.

Who are you to dictate how much I make a year? Or how much money I get in a bonus?

It's one thing when the bonus comes out of a bail out. I agree with you there.

But a blanket statement like that is just plain wrong.

No it isn't.
Sitting in an office deciding which value-added paradigms to leverage across which market-sectors does not entitle you to a corporate jet, limo and exclusive bathroom/dining area and other obscene special perks like a bonus worth more than the payroll of your entire research staff... While your workers toil away in shit conditions using 30 year old machines for $10 an hour.

I mean come on, have you ever stopped to consider what a CEO really DOES? Is he really WORTH that much money? No, he's a glorified figurehead who signs off on documents, his only concern is making sure that the stock-price remains steady or increases.

CEOs do not ADD VALUE to a company, they are parasites of the worst sort.

This is my opinion, based on meeting several, actually TALKING to them, watching them saunter around the production floor with their entourage making statements about Quality, Value, Productivity and Doing More With Less while building Shareholder Relations.

The CEO of PACTIV corporation got his fucking tie stuck in a styrofoam plate bagging machine because he felt the safety warnings didn't apply to him, he wanted to see the 30 year old bagging machine in operation... leaned right over it. Hour later he was up in the tower over a styrofoam extruder without a breather mask or goggles... complaining the whole time of the fumes up there.

Then he called us all togehter for a "town square" meeting, but when we told him that would require us to shut machines down he threw a fit and told us to leave them running unattended, that's what all the (non-existant) automation that he paid for was for!

Someone had to explain THAT to him, and he finally agreed to hold the meeting in two parts so the machines could remain tended. What was the meeting about? STAFF REDUCTIONS specific to our plant because we weren't adding enough value per unit produced... The most cost effective solution was to cut staffing by 40% and increase the production day from 8 to 12 hours.

Of course, it never even occured to him the reason we weren't "adding enough value" was the condition of the plant equipment, oh no. No no no, it wasn't until they cut the staffing down to the point we had lines out of operation that they woke up and started upgrading machines.

Tell me, Alpha. That kind of idiot-logic thinking makes a person worth a limo and corperate jet? Worth $2million dollars a year?

Oh and I am curious... were do you work? What is YOUR job? I'm guessing you've never actually been exposed to reality. Not a personal attack, just an observation based on your opinions expressed in this thread.

They deserve that stuff if they have worked hard, dumped their own money into the business and have reaped the dividends. Tell me, how many years did you go to school for? How many student loans do you have?

Who are you to dictate who should be making what?

There is a pecking order in life, friend. The people who go to school, make money and then dump it back into their businessess are NOT going to shell it out for those that are supporting it. Sure, they should treat them well, but they shouldn't give it all away.

As a worker on hourly wage, I'm betting they go home at 5PM every day? The business owner is likely not doing that. He's likely working a hell of a lot more than you.

Anf FYI: I'm a lawyer. I billed almost 2300 hours last year. Worked more than that. I have 125K in student loans. If I work hard you're damn right I expect to make more than the guys below me. Why? Because I worked for it and I earn it.

 

[John Picard]

Aw damn It looks as if this Bill that the "stupid Republicans" didn't support could be up for some changes:

SCENARIOS-Senate poised to debate economic stimulus bill

Obama says he is open to new ideas from Republicans and Democrats that would strengthen the bill, either on the tax or spending side.

* Among amendments senators were considering proposing during Senate debate are:
- Dedicating more spending for investments while cutting other spending that might not create jobs;

Increasing the ratio of tax cuts to spending. These could include more help for businesses to invest and create jobs, allowing new tax breaks for companies that repatriate profits held overseas and using the tax code to encourage more home-buying.

Quick, someone warn the President that *TAX CUTS DON'T WORK!!! EVIL BUSINESSES DON'T CREATE JOBS*!!

 

[trekkerguy]

Aw damn It looks as if this Bill that the "stupid Republicans" didn't support could be up for some changes:

SCENARIOS-Senate poised to debate economic stimulus bill

Obama says he is open to new ideas from Republicans and Democrats that would strengthen the bill, either on the tax or spending side.

* Among amendments senators were considering proposing during Senate debate are:
- Dedicating more spending for investments while cutting other spending that might not create jobs;

Increasing the ratio of tax cuts to spending. These could include more help for businesses to invest and create jobs, allowing new tax breaks for companies that repatriate profits held overseas and using the tax code to encourage more home-buying.

Quick, someone warn the President that *TAX CUTS DON'T WORK!!! EVIL BUSINESSES DON'T CREATE JOBS*!!

Derr, everyone knew it would be up for changes.

But tax cuts cannot be the solution.