You Try to Live on 500K in This Town: Oh F*CKING WAHHHHHHH!

[rpannier]

snip
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.

snip

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.

snip

Barbara Corcoran, a real estate executive, said that most well-to-do families take at least two vacations a year, a winter trip to the sun and a spring trip to the ski slopes.

Total minimum cost: $16,000. (you can ram your two vacations up your a*s)

snip

A personal trainer at $80 an hour three times a week comes to about $12,000 a year.

The work in the gym pays off when one must don a formal gown for a charity gala. “Going to those parties,” said David Patrick Columbia, who is the editor of the New York Social Diary (newyorksocialdiary.com), “a woman can spend $10,000 or $15,000 on a dress. If she goes to three or four of those a year, she’s not going to wear the same dress.”

Total cost for three gowns: about $35,000.

link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/fashion/08halfmill.html?em

on note: Bite me and F*CK YOU! F*CK your two vacations, your chauffeurs, your personal trainer, your galas and parties, your private schools and your tutors.
Live like real people.

This tidbit in the story really pissed me off:

Does this money buy a chief executive stockholders might prize, a well-to-do man with a certain sureness of stride, something that might be lost if the executive were crowding onto the PATH train every morning at Journal Square, his newspaper splayed against the back of a stranger’s head?

and Candace Bushnell can go F&CK herself

[BlooInBloo]

1. Every second they whine, another $50,000 off of my offer, if I'm President.

[QC]

2. Where's Robespierre when you need him? n/t

[rpannier]

3. That'd give them something to whine about

up until the very end

[QC]

10. Waaaah! My tumbrel cart has a squeaky wheel! n/t

[rpannier]

11. I got blood on the bottom of my custom made wing-tips nt

[QC]

19. Madame Lefarge's knitting needles are clicking! Make her stop.

There are no words to tell how disgusting I find these people.

[KittyWampus]

33. you realize Robespierre and his band of terrorists executed anyone and everyone, right?

if we lived under that reign of terror here, your ass wouldn't be safe. No one's would.

My point being, careful with your historical invocations. Even in jest.

[razors edge]

4. How dare the poor question the needs of the rich?

They just don't understand the pressures of building wealth.

:sarcasm:

[barb162]

7. There's probably about a few thousand people who really think

this is a worthwhile article, all the ones who are now stuck with the 500,000 limit. Let them live on the "pauper" sum of 500,000.

[rpannier]

8. I just find the gaul of some of these people incredible

The man would certainly not feel like himself on that train, said Candace Bushnell, the author of “Sex and the City” and other books chronicling New York social mores.

The man can certainly kiss my *ss if I think he won't feel himself.

These people need to try living with the rest of the world.
Maybe they'd be less inclined to look down on us

[barb162]

24. These self-proclaimed masters of the universe can go to hell.

They're parasites and basically worthless as far as I am concerned. They were never worth anywhere near the money they were getting. All they did was screw up the banking system and they should be in jail for it.

[razors edge]

18. I would love to have their problems.

Of course I would retire in four years and open the way for someone else to get a space at the trough.

If my lack of a college pedigree is a problem, well, just look at what all these Einsteins have wrought, I couldn't do any worse.

And I would show up for work.

[barb162]

5. Cry Me a River

boohoo

[eleny]

6. Move to Queens and take the J train to work

My heart bleeds.

[Kalyke]

31. Or Brooklyn and take the F Train.

(I love this site: http://ftrain.com/ )

[Cha]

9. It wasn't Obama who got them

into their present crisis..he's just trying to get them out. If they want to play by the rules.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

12. ~

:nopity:

[zeemike]

13. Yes but they were talking about REALLY living....

As opposed to the unreal living of someone that makes less.

[Believing Is Art]

14. These people are insane

Do they have any idea how much they are being ripped off? I don't say that to encourage but Jesus Christ. Instead of wasting $240 a week for 3 hours of exercise, join a gym! Scare of the great unwashed? People making half a mil a year can BUY gym equipment. Get yourself a fucking elliptical, a treadmill and some weights. You can work out as much as you want and save money.

$10000-$15000 on a dress?!?!?! What is this dress made out of, pegasus hair? How about you buy a cheaper one, have a consignment shop add an embellishment and then tell all your high-brow friends it's an Oscar de la Renta original.

Who the hell spends $16000 on two vacations? If they want to take vacations, fine, but I don't think I could spend that much on vacation if I actually tried.

[The_Casual_Observer]

15. What's up with the culture that finds bastards that actually do very little

of anything so worthy of all these riches? The emperor has no clothes.

[rpannier]

17. I said to my friends (in one of my Trotsky moments)

If you went out tonight, lined up every CEO and marched them over a cliff tomorrow no one would notice.
If you marched every farmer and construction/maintenance worker over that same cliff we'd all starve and our infrastructure would collapse.

[Thor_MN]

16. You know, if we are so F'ing short of CEOs, we need an H-1CEO Visa to bring talented CEOs from

foreign countries, to do CEO jobs that Americans won't do for a mere $500K a year.

[treestar]

27. Which is exactly what H visa haters are all about

Driving up the cost of what they do for the rest of us.

I mean you should prefer to pay American CEOS their 500K rather than let some furriner come here and rate them all down to 475K and get the work done and provide more jobs for the American underlings.

[Thor_MN]

28. Maybe I should have used the scarcasm smilie...

My point is the hypocrisy of the corporate execs that say they can't find enough US professional talent. So they need the H-1Bs to come in to fill the jobs (drive down IT and Engineering wages). The salaries of CEOs are through the roof over the last 30 years and the stated reason is that they need to pay that much to get talented CEOs. I'm just asking why there is no call to bring in CEOs from other countries, since there appears to be a MAJOR shortage of US CEO talent.

My personal opinion would be to do away with the Visa programs and prohibit companies that off-shore jobs from getting any government contracts or tax breaks. The whole "Too big to fail" concept has to be thrown out, lack of competition is ruining the economy. If the company is "Too big to fail", it is also "Too big."

[Hippo_Tron]

20. If they don't have the savings to cover that during hard times, they are living beyond their means

First of all, you shouldn't have a summer home until you've paid off the mortgage on your first home. Secondly you shouldn't have a chauffeur and spend $35,000 on gowns when you have one mortgage let alone two.

Ditch the trainer for the basic gym membership, drive your own ass to work, get rid of the fucking summer house until you can afford it, hop on Southwest to go see family members for your vacations, and hire a responsible college kid to watch your kids between the time they get home from school and when you get home from work. It's really not that difficult.

[DeepBlueC]

21. shocking. How can we help them?

I say we have a round of executives on Trading Places. "How do the simple folk live". That I might watch. Or maybe we just get Donald Trump to ambush them on camera and say "you're fired!"?
:rofl:

[rpannier]

26. Put em in an old rowboat and set them adrift out to sea

That's how I'd help them

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

22. If they cannot live on 500K a year...

Then they weak links in the genetic herd and they need to be culled.

I swear, it is way past time for some serious ass kicking to take place.

[provis99]

23. reads almost like an Onion article

except the rich really do feel sorry for themselves if they don't have all that shit. And no self-respecting rich jerk would lower himself to shop at Brooks Brothers; that's for the peasants. They all have their suits custom made on Savile Row for $10,000 apiece.

[angrycarpenter]

25. Screw conspicuous consumption.

Things like this make want to just lose it. They lose the life saving of thousands of people and they cry about half a million a year? What did they do to earn a single penny? They deserve NOTHING! If just one of these princes ended up poverty stricken I would feel a lot better.

[SammyWinstonJack]

30. Screw that! I want all of them to end up poverty stricken. They deserve it!

Greedy whiny bastards! :grr:

[DemoTex]

29. $80/hr for a personal trainer????

If that personal trainer averages 40 hours per week, he/she pulls down over $165,000 per year! That is considerably more than Capt. Sully Sullenburger makes flying Airbuses for US Airways, to put things in perspective.

:wtf:

[Obamarama]

32. They should gratefully accept $500,000 and be thankful we're not bringing back the guillotine

These people need to feel hurt, even if hurt means having to live on the paltry sum of $500,000 a year. We have to hit them somewhere.

Not so long ago their heads would have been whacked off and displayed on pikes and their blood would be running in the gutters. And if the big boys of Wall Street don't halt their glorified frat parties at our expense, I'm not so sure that won't eventually happen. Remember the Bastille, all you greedy fucks. We the People are PISSED AS HELL.