The Nation: "Lifestyles of the Rich and Generous?"

 
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090323/pollitt

From the second half:

The skewed values of the boom years--which I realize were only boom
years for some--extend far beyond the corporate world. They corrupted
the nonprofit world too: the million-dollar galas that raised a
million dollars, the college presidents and NGO heads paid like CEOs
of major corporations. I stopped donating to the New York Public
Library when it gave its president and CEO Paul LeClerc a several-
hundred-thousand-dollar raise so his salary would be $800,000 a year.
Writing my modest check to the Friends of the Library made me feel
pathetic, like one of the Southern Italian peasants in Carlo Levi's
Christ Stopped at Eboli who gave Christmas presents to the local
landowners instead of the other way around. If the library needed
money, why didn't it start by asking LeClerc to give back, say, half a
million dollars a year? That would buy an awful lot of books--or help
pay for raises for the severely underpaid librarians who actually keep
the system going. And LeClerc's case, though egregious, is part of a
trend: a few minutes clicking around on charitynavigator.org will turn
up lots of salaries in the $400,000 and over range. The usual
justification is that you need to pay humongous salaries to get the
best people, but I don't believe it. There are lots of "best people"
out there. If a Wall Streeter won't take a pay cut to do some good in
the world, the heck with him. Nobody needs to make $800,000 a year.
That's sixteen times the median household income.

(end of excerpt)

Lenona.

 

If nobody is allowed to make more than the median household income of
(about) $50,000 then who is going to pay all the income taxes required to
support our wonderful federal and state governments?

 
Nobody's suggesting that we disallow incomes greater than the median.
(I'm not, anyway.)

However, there's a point at which a salary is just a way of keeping
score
against other CEOs; it's simply ridiculous.  The only way they
perpetuate
those outrageous levels of compensation is that all those fat cats are
on each
other's boards of directors.

$800,000 for the CEO of the New York Public Library is a colossal
waste
of those taxpayers' money.  I'd be hopping mad if I lived there.
(Time to
find out what the head of the Ann Arbor Public Library makes.)

Cindy Hamilton

 Cindy Hamilton wrote:

Everyone has a bone to pick with government as far as where they're
spending taxpayers' money.  If you find a way to make them spend your
money where you want it, let me know.

Marsha

 Marsha wrote:


We have put the foxes in charge of the henhouse and the only sure way to get
rid of them will probably result in a lot of unpleasantness involving a SWAT
team, with prison being the most favorable outcome.

--
Ch  rs,
B v
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My f ck ng k yb  rd h s l st  ts v w ls.