Archive for November, 2009

How much would you pay yourself …

if you were in charge of your own salary?

HYMM

If the truth were told I suppose most of the good,
hard-working, honest, God fearing people of this
nation would be embarrassed to pay themselves
more than $100,000 per year.

They would dedicate their life and limb to doing
the best job possible for that kind of money. They
would pay their taxes, make their mortgage
payments, pay their bills on time, send their kids
to college and in general be good neighbors and
good citizens.

Unfortunately, there aren’t enough 100 K jobs left
to support a village anymore. In fact, there aren’t
enough 40 K jobs, or 20 K jobs, or minimum wage
jobs either. You can still find plenty of work to do
for free.

The top dogs make an average of 400 times the
average base pay per hour. That means if you
make $10 an hour they make $4000. Heck, that’s
still less than $1 million a year. That’s mere pocket
change to the boys with the big appetites on the Street.

I’m not the first to suggest that maybe, just maybe
something is rotten in America. Somewhere over the
past century Denmark started smelling like tulips
and we started smelling like, well, industrial waste.
(Hello New Jersey)

The average serf hasn’t gone far since he crossed
the pond.

To a 20-year-old looking forward 20 years seems

like looking into eternity.

To a 60-year-old looking back 20 years seems

like looking back a few weeks, months at most.

To a 20-year-old the time till your 21st birthday

is forever. Time passes so slowly you can count

the seconds.

By the time you reach 60 time is moving so fast

the days are a blur. You wonder what became

of  last week or last month.

At 20 we have ants in our pants and can’t stay

still for more than a minute. At 60 we sit down

to read a good book after breakfast and the next

time we look up it’s lunchtime.

If we could only have that longtime perspective

during our youth and realize that 20 years down

the road is far shorter than it appears. Long time

is just a trick of time’s perspective.

Looking backward through time’s perspective is

similar to looking at things in your car’s rear view

mirror… Things appear closer than they really are.

Looking forward in time we get tunnel vision and

things seem much further away than they really are.

Somewhere in time we hope our perspective

balances out. Eventually our internal clock slows

down enough that things behind us in life are no

longer stretched out of proportion; and the future

isn’t compressed to the point where you think you

can just jump ahead in line in no time.

You mellow out.

You get to relax for a while.

Hopefully/Maybe.