<p>2boys wrote “I have more problems with executives making such large sums of money when their companies have essentially become government “owned”. The $500,000 cap…which is still higher than most goverment workers…even very senior ones…is appropriate.”</p>
<p>That is the point- I work for the government and every few months some newspaper makes a big deal about all the government workers making over $100k. I do not begrudge anyone making whatever amount of money they can but those of us in government realize that our salaries are fair game for criticism. The director of the department I work has a law degree oversees an agency with 1400 employees has worked for the government 35 plus years and makes $130k. So once you take the government money the public has a say - and to most people $500k is a lot of cash. Remember these companies failed so how good were the executives anyway?</p>
<p>That is what’s wrong with the government, underpaying its employees. The pay is artificially depressed, therefore they can’t always get the right people to do the job. I think the government agencies have failed as much as the securities business - SEC (over Maddof, were they asleep on their job?), FNMA & FHLMC (underwriting guideline, even though they are quasi government). Every bank uses those agencies’ underwriting guideline for mortgages they issue, both Clinton and Bush pushed them to losen up their guidelines to increase homeownership. Every originator and investment bank have it coded in their system of “FNMA or FHLMC guideline.” Each loan is checked to see if it passes the guideline, if so then it is bundled together to be sold to one of those agencies. Loans that do not qualify to be sold to one of those agencies are then priced at a higher spread relative to those MBS to be sold to other investors. Banks didn’t come up with those guidelines. Investors also believed if loans met those guidelines then they must be good performing loans.</p>
<p>Getting back to government employees. Government employees have a lot of “power,” but are paid very little relative to the private sector. When Clinton was a Governor, he was paid $35,000/year (or there about). How easy is it to bribe someone like that, and we are surprised when that happen? If they were paid better they would be more willing to work longer hours to get their work done (how often have you called one of those agencies at 5:01 and no one is there?), more people would compete for those jobs, and maybe less corruption.</p>
<p>oldfort- from your mouth to God’s ears. But to be honest most of the country feel government employees are overpaid. Just read the papers and listen to the radio.</p>
<p>Some positions at the SEC and several other agencies (including at NIH, etc.) get salary adjustments outside the GS payscale so as to retain folks in jobs that require a great deal of responsibility/have had high turnover due to more lucrative opportunities outside the gov’t, etc. Not that it’s a lot, but there is some institutional awareness of the need.</p>
<p>Oldfort, please rest assured that you are getting your tax dollars’ worth from my DH, who is putting in an eight hour day today on top of the 55 hours/week he already works. We are lucky to see him home before 9 pm most nights. Has been doing Sundays in the office for months. :)</p>
<p>He was fortunate to get budget to hire an attorney earlier last year (it’s been two years in the making). Received over 900 resumes, with an astounding number of law firm partners, Ivy backgrounds, etc. Most sobering is that this was BEFORE the crash.</p>
<p>This idea that these companies won’t fined ‘qualified’ executives to bring them back to life is just nonsense. There are plenty of people out there who are highly qualified (likely more so than the jokers currently running these joints), who would do the job purely for the challenge and would be perfectly happy taking home $500k a year.</p>
<p>These whiny executives need to get a reality check and understand that you don’t get a big paycheck for running your company into the ground. If these were private companies they could pay their executives whatever they wanted… but they’re not. These companies only exist today because the taxpayers loaned them money to stay solvent. If they want to give the US its money back (which they can’t) then they can pay people whatever they want… but until then they’ll play by the government’s rules. Honestly if it were up to me I would have said they can get paid no more than the chief executive of the country, which is $400k per year.</p>
<p>Oldfort–come on now. Working parents with nannies are a tiny minority of working parents. All the parents I know work, and none have nannies. I have never met someone who needed a car for their nanny, because of that.</p>
<p>My point, lost here in the nanny sidebar, is that it is perfectly do-able to work in NY and make a whole lot less than 500k. Or 100K. yes, people may not choose the debased lifestyle necessary, but you know what? Then they don’t need my tax dollars to support their corporations, or rescue them from their failings. If their company doesn’t want my rescue, then they can pay them anything they please.</p>
<p>People should get paid because their service is worth the pay, not because they need the money. If the government or any private sector could get people to work at a lower rate and get the necessary performance then they should do so, there is no reason to pay more than you have to. Last time I remember we are not running a charity here.</p>
<p>A lot of people have nannies here. My butcher has a summer nanny – Zoosergirl! He pays her very, very well. He happens to work long hours because of the nature of his business (he does a lot of catering, as well), and it’s worth it to him to have his little one cared for by someone he trusts completely.</p>
<p>Why do you think the government is “bailing out” those banks, because they feel sorry for those institutions? They need to get the credit moving again. Who is going to lend to someone that’s making 100,000 buying a 250,000 house with a 20% down? No bank in Arizona right now, as posted by someone recently. How many people are getting their home equity line shut down now?</p>
<p>garland - what’s their hours? fixed? predictable? So tell me, how is their nanny suppose to get their kids to a doctor if their is an emergency? How do they get their kids to soccer, softball, ballet, or go to grocery store?</p>
<p>Oldfort–like I said, no one i know has a nanny. So I can’t answer what they do in an emergency. Lots of parents I know have long hours–sometimes one member of the family has a different sort of job, sometimes they stagger their hours. Sometimes family helps out.</p>
<p>The point is, these, like having a nanny because it’s necessary, are all choices. Not necessities. We ALL make choices.</p>
<p>If the bailout is necessary, then personnel can deal with the “limitations.” They WON’T say no to the money, so why shouldn’t the taxpayers put constraints on it.</p>
<p>I had one nanny for my second child because it’s cheaper than sending both to day care. But I did not have multiple nannies or had to provide one with a car. But I know my daughter’s friend did hire a babysitter with a car. So why can’t that be part of the nanny hiring process?
I used to work unpredictable hours too but my husband and I always made sure there was always one person at home with the kids. I think it’s perfectly ok not to have children if your life is so busy that you need multiple nannies. I’m wondering with the multiple nannies and what’s not, why do these people in NYC have kids, like the article I read in the NYT today. The kid said his mom left the house at 5:30A.M and did not come home until 11:00 P.M.</p>
<p>Would you rather put your kids in a babysitter’s beat up car, or in your car that has regular maintenance? I don’t let my daughter hitch a ride home from just anyone from college, I would rather let her have a car or go up there to pick her up myself. It is a choice. We also made a choice not to have kids until we could afford to have a nanny for them instead of sending them to daycare. I never had multiple nannies because my husband had a job that had better hours (8-6). But many of those parents with multiple nannies are great parents. They sacrifice in many ways to provide a very safe, secure environment for their children. They are the ones that make homemade play doh, cookies for their children late at night.</p>
<p>My next door neighbor and friend looked after my kids for years. If I needed to work late she generally could keep my kids longer. Both my husband and I can determine our own hours to some extent. (He occasionally has to go out of town to meetings, I often have to meet clients or go to board meetings in the evenings.) We mananged pretty well. But neither of us have super high-powered jobs on Wall Street and I worked part-time for many years. My babysitter’s car was nicer than ours! I’m sure there are good parents who work long hours, but I don’t know how they do it. It wasn’t a choice I could make.</p>
<p>I take your word for it that they are great parents, but it must be in their sleep(11:00 P.M to 5:30 A.M) because they are not their for most of the day.</p>
<p>Since we are all throwing stones and judging how other people live their life…I remember when my D1 was first born, I couldn’t even go to the bathroom or get dressed the first 6 months and I am a fairly competent woman. I thought to myself, if I couldn’t handle one infant by myself how could I expect someone else to take care of 3 infants (I think that’s the quota by law for daycare). What would happen if all 3 of them started to cry out of hunger at the same time, would they just let my baby cry? Are those parents that put their kids in daycare uncaring parents, or are they just doing it out of necessity?</p>
<p>I went back to work when my kids were ten weeks old because my husband is functionally illiterate and made less than 20k with no benefits. Women were a lot more judgmental and less forgiving then, so my girls were always the ones left out because I wasn’t part of the SAHM clique. A woman on my bus is a mid-level administrator who recently had her second baby and hired a nanny. Totally middle class people and the nanny uses their car. Which they don’t use during the day in Manhattan so it works out very well for all concerned.</p>
<p>Here’s the thing to keep in mind about the $500K proposed pay limit. To talent CAN get other jobs. They can work for international banks, private equity firms or start their own boutiques. Anyone who doesn’t understand this does not know the business. Those without options will be left to bring back the banks and failing companies. We’re all in trouble if this happens.</p>
<p>I am well aware that $500K is a lot of money to most people. But the fact is, it’s not to these folks. You can look at salary surveys of MBA programs at top schools. 10 years out, 80% are multimillionaires. It’s a different world, but a real one.</p>
<p>And why don’t these people stay home rather than hiring nannies and housekeepers? Because when you’re making hundreds of thousands or millions, even a well paid nanny is a rounding error. The only way to keep a semblance of a normal, functioning household when you work 14 hour days and travel often is to bring the help into your home. While it may sound excessive to many, this is a way of life for the top 5% of earners and was a growing choice well below that. Now nannies have joined those out of work where just a year ago people were fighting over them.</p>
<p>oldfort, the rest of us – and by “rest” I mean 95% of Americans – aren’t rich enough to afford to pay for nannies, so we make other arrangements… just like we aren’t rich enough to stay in 5-star hotels or buy ourselves a new Mercedes every other year. </p>
<p>The point is, these executive pay caps apply only to companies on the dole. There is a choice – the companies can declare bankruptcy and lay off their top executives. </p>
<p>How much do you pay your nanny? If the cost of living means that $100K is the minimum threshold to get by, does your nanny earn $100K plus benefits? Isn’t your nanny’s job pretty important, worthy of high pay? Do you support a raise of the minimum wage in New York to $50 an hour? Because that is what it would take to guarantee all workers a gross pay of $100K a year ---- and you seem to be arguing that $500K isn’t enough for executives whose primary qualification seems to be that they have mismanaged the companies they work for?</p>
<p>Most nannies live in outer boroughs or lower east side. My nanny had a nanny. Her nanny was illegal, spoke no English. She was paying her nanny half of what I was paying her(trickle down effect?). I think the going rate now for nanny in NYC is 750-1000/week with benefit. My kids are older now and we now live outside of NYC, but once they were old enough it was more important to have a driver to take them to various activities. D2 will be driving soon.:)</p>
<p>I know a lot of straight-up middle class people who have nannies or au pairs. Most of them work and pay the nannies for the sake of having medical/retirement benefits, and childcare eats up a lot of their take-home pay.</p>