Super salaries

Do yourself a favor as a taxpayer and look at how much money your local school superintendent is making. I can assure you that you will literally be appalled. It is truly almost that of a sin when they are literally making very well into the six-figure range. I have no problem paying my share of taxes for the school system, however I do have a problem when a majority of my hard- earned money is going to line the pockets of these individuals. At a minimum, their salaries should be cut in half.
http://newssun.suntimes.com/news/10041065-418/talk-of-the-county.html

Even the Canadians!

By noon on Jan. 3, when most Canadians were back on the job, the holidays over, each of the country's 100 highest-paid chief executive officers had already earned the $44,366 the average person makes working full-time all year.

If you, like me, reacted negatively to this news, you might also be unhappy to learn that we have been dismissed by many Canadian commentators as envious, naive, unaccountably blind to the brilliance of the men who run some of our biggest companies, and shockingly ungrateful to men like Magna International's Frank Stronach, who arrived here penniless and built a multibillion-dollar auto-parts company from scratch.

These are insults, not arguments. They're meant to keep lower-earners in their place. But staying put and saying nothing is not a good strategy for the 99.99 per cent of Canadians who make up the rest of the country's workforce. The already wide gap between Canada's top 100 CEOs (along with another 2,360 Canadians who make up the richest 0.01 per cent of Canadian tax filers) and the rest of us continues to grow at a brisk pace. Last year, the top 100 CEOs made 189 times more than the average Canadian salary. In 1998, they made 105 times more. Thirty years ago, they made 25 times more.

As the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives rightly says in its report this month, people who earn an average of $8 million a year "no longer live in the world occupied by the rest of us."

In this alternative world, created and populated by people like them-selves, the 100 top CEOs get to decide how much they, and the other 99.99 per cent, should be paid.

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/business/High+your+business/6001415/story.html

Can Mike Stoops live up to his own legend?

MUCH WILL BE expected of the prodigal brother now that he has officially returned to Oklahoma's football family after eight years wandering in the Arizona wilderness.

Mike Stoops' groupies apparently also believe he has the power to cure cancer, feed the starving masses and bring world peace. And they won't mind if he deals with those problems as long as he's finished before the start of spring practice.


Read more from this Tulsa World article at http://www.tulsaworld.com/sportsextra/article.aspx?subjectid=202&articleid=20120114_202_B1_MUCHWI8987

Bankrupt Solyndra seeking to pay bonuses

Now seems an unlikely time for handing out bonuses at bankrupt Solyndra LLC, but that’s the plan of company attorneys intending to dole out up to a half-million dollars to persuade key employees to stay put.Nearly two dozen Solyndra employees could receive bonuses ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 each under a proposal filed by Solyndra’s attorneys in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.The attorneys say the extra money will add motivation at a time when workers at the solar company have little job security and more responsibilities because so many of their colleagues have been fired.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jan/11/bankrupt-solyndra-seeking-to-pay-bonuses/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS

Bailey: The types of people that come up with these justifications for paying more money to their employees especially this company are mentally very sick or have their heads up their a***s! 

Yahoo dangled US$27m pay for CEO

Yahoo dangled a US$27 million pay package to lure new Yahoo chief executive Scott Thompson away from PayPal.Yahoo offered Thompson a deal that includes a US$1 million salary and a bonus of up to US$2 million this year. Yahoo is guaranteeing to pay him US$1 million of the bonus; the remaining US$1 million will hinge on Yahoo’s financial results.

Thompson will also receive stock incentives valued at US$22.5 million. The stock awards could be worth more or less, depending how Yahoo’s long-slumping shares fare under Thompson’s leadership.

To top it off, Yahoo is paying Thompson US$1.5 million to offset money he forfeited by leaving PayPal. A US$6.5 million chunk of the stock awards are also meant to offset some of the compensation Thompson would have gotten at PayPal, according to the filing.

Thompson received a US$10.4 million compensation package at PayPal in 2010. It included a US$645,000 salary. EBay has not yet revealed how much it paid Thompson last year.

Unless more money and stock is added later in the year, Yahoo will not be paying Thompson as much as former Yahoo chief executive Carol Bartz, who was hired three years ago and fired four months ago. Yahoo chief financial officer Tim Morse has been running Yahoo since Bartz’s ouster.

Bartz’s compensation package during her first year on the job was valued at US$47.2 million. Much of that, though, included stock incentives that are not as valuable as the original calculations envisioned.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2012/01/08/2003522682

Bailey: I read stuff like this all the time and think, wow I could live the rest of my life in luxury on just $200,000. It blows my mind just to think about how out of touch with the rest of us these people are.  They receive a yearly bonus of 1.5 million & they actually think its a average wage, when it takes most of us a life time to make that much!

The Company Men (Movie)

If you recently lost your job, you need to watch this movie.


The story centers on a year in the life of three men trying to survive a round of corporate downsizing at a major company - and how that affects them, their families, and their communities.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1172991/