It's All About the Benjamins

What’s wrong with our economy?  Check this out…

So part of the non-IT, business side of my job is to conduct wage/salary surveys.  I’m not going to get into a lot of detail on that, but let me say that I’m as close as you’d find to an expert on how much people in certain industries make in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States.  And so as I was compiling a report today using some of the data from the latest survey (conducted between April and July of 2012), I ran across a stunning fact:

CEO’s and upper management are more likely to be given a bonus than the non-management workers—the difference is three-quarters vs. less than two-thirds—and the average value of the CEO’s bonus, AS A PERCENT OF SALARY, is four to five times that of the average worker.

Maybe it’s not so stunning, because we all know that CEOs and executives make a ton of money, but let’s just think about this for a minute and do a little math.  We have Bob, a CEO, who is making $200,000/year as a base salary.  We have Fred, a production line worker, who is making $25,000/year as a base salary.  When it comes bonus time, Bob is more likely to be given (or to grant himself) a bonus over Fred.  And, if Bob and Fred do both receive bonuses, Bob is getting a much larger one AS A PERCENT OF HIS SALARY than Fred is.  So, for example, say Fred is given a 4% bonus.  That means that Fred will get $1000.  Not bad, considering that Fred only makes $25,000/year.  Maybe he’ll be able to take his kids to the beach for a weekend.  Or maybe put a little dent in his credit card debt or mortgage, which hopefully is not underwater.  Bob, on the other hand, is getting four point five times that AS A PERCENT OF HIS SALARY.  Why do I keep capitalizing that?  Because Bob is not getting 4.5 times $1000.  Bob is getting 4.5 times 4%, or 18%, times his salary of $200,000/year.  In other words, Bob is getting $36,000 AS A BONUS.  That’s more than Fred makes in a whole year—almost a year and a half even!

Corporate taxes are at the lowest point since the 70's, and certain political folks in Washington (namely the GOP) think they should be lower to spur on the economy.  After all, trickle-down economics is the way to create more jobs, right?  Put more money into the pockets of the wealthy, and they will, in turn, give more money to the lower classes.  Right?

Not when the executives are taking it in huge bonuses...and then stashing it away in off-shore accounts and paying only 13.9% of their $20 million income in taxes, when all the rest of us are paying 15% or 25%.

What's wrong with our economy?  There's your answer.

Why Do People Hate Leann Rimes??

So I'm sitting here during my lunch break, and I'm thinking about how last night was a typical evening in the Strohman household.  We arrived home from work/daycare, and I immediately went outside and fired up the grill to cook some hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner.  My wife made the hamburger patties, and we bought some Chicago-style hot dogs that we wanted to try.  Thunder rumbled in the distance, but the skies overhead were mostly clear, and so I cooked outside and my wife and I put together a nice little dinner.  I can’t say I liked the Chicago-style dogs all that much, but I did pick one of the first jalapenos from my little garden, sliced it up, and put it on my burger, and boy was that tasty.  And spicy!  Yum!

As we were chowing down, the topic of wormholes and black holes came up, and so I went on ad nauseam about what they are, the science behind them, the implications if they do/do not exist, etc.  My wife always has trouble understanding space-time, and so I think she walked away from it with a clearer picture and maybe even perhaps a better view of what it’s like to live with my brain (hahaha), as I’m always thinking about weird crap like time travel, alternate dimensions, mind control, etc.

After that I rummaged around for my art supplies and began working on the cover of my latest finished novel, Terminal Restraint.  I went back to my bedroom in search of some peace and quiet while drawing, but it didn’t take long for Adam Bomb to come rushing in, wreaking nuclear havoc on my plans.  I actually got him to draw alongside me for maybe, oh, 30 seconds, but then he wanted to climb on me.  Yeah, it’s a little difficult to sketch when a three year old is using you as a jungle gym.  After tossing him off of me and grumbling at him for about fifteen minutes, he switched tactics, instead wanting me to don his Spider-man mask and Hulk hands—I guess I was Spider-Hulk—and fight him.  He’s been on this kick about wearing his Captain America or Spider-man pajamas as soon as he gets home, and his Uncle Anthony bought him a Spider-man ski-mask and gloves to complete his ensemble, and so he was all decked out and ready to go.  Suffice it to say, I didn’t get much drawing done, although I have the overall concept down and started working on shading and coloring.

How does Leann Rimes tie into all of this?  I'm getting there...

From there I played some games of SongPop on my phone with my wife.  I absolutely detest that game.  It probably wouldn’t be so bad if I played it on my tablet, which I think I’ll try tonight, but my fat fingers are always pressing the wrong choices on my phone, and in the few weeks we’ve been playing it, my wife has just obliterated me.  I think, at least at the time of this post, she’s winning 34 to 17.  Apparently she’s really good against everyone else she plays, so if you are up for a challenge, request to play her.  She’s even beating me in genres that I absolutely know more about than she does, i.e., metal, industrial, and punk.  Even TV show theme songs!  Grrr…

I wrapped up the evening watching A.J. Burnett of the Pittsburgh Pirates try to pitch a no-hitter.  My wife wanted me to turn off the TV so that we could go to bed, and so I had to explain the importance of a no-hitter to her.  Of course, AJ gave up one measly run to a pinch-hitter in the eighth inning after the umpire failed to recognize two previous close pitches as strikes.  The Buccos still won though!  Let’s Go Bucs!  Anyway, I turned it off as soon as the game was over and fell asleep within minutes.

Why am I telling you all of this?  Who cares, right?  Well, I do have a point to my madness.

Yesterday I was reading an article about Leann Rimes, who I admittedly know very little about.  I do know she is a country singer, I think she was rather young when she first met stardom, and I might have heard that she maybe had an affair with some guy that was on CSI: Miami and, I think, possibly married him?  Other than that, I couldn’t name one of her songs or even come remotely close to guessing her work on SongPop.  Grrr…hate that game.  But anyway, in this article they were describing her tweets regarding some emergency dental issues she was having.  She supposedly had to have an emergency root canal done, it was extremely painful, and she posted all about it on Twitter.  I read the article, read her tweets, thought to myself “so what??”, and then I read the comments underneath...

Man, people freakin' HATE Leann Rimes!

I realize that most of the vitriol you read in Internet comments are typically entered by spiteful, loathsome people, but some of these were extreme—saying she should have all of her teeth knocked out by a flying brick and other such hateful verbiage.  I don’t know what Leann Rimes did to these people, and I don’t know why people feel so inclined to post such negative comments, but I feel sorry for the poor woman!  And it also got me thinking…

Why do we care so much about other people, so much so that we will spend five minutes reading their tweets or blogs about their daily lives...wait, err...let me rephrase that.  Why do we care so much about celebrities?  Why are we so fascinated with every aspect of their lives?  TMZ.com has become huge, and People magazine has been around since the 70’s and is still going strong.  Twitter has become a huge stomping ground for celebs, and they all have hundreds of thousands of followers.  Why?

I’m a regular on Twitter and I have to admit that I follow close to a hundred celebrities (not Leann Rimes though).  I do always get a kick out of how normal some of them are.  Take Wil Wheaton, for example, who played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation and has a recurring role as himself on The Big Bang Theory.  That guy tweets about his love for video games, brewing his own beer, etc., and he just seems so...normal (albeit this is coming from me, a geek).  Others like DJ Pauly D and Simon Pegg and Kal Penn are just the same.

I just find it amusing that we are so interested in everyone else’s life.  Chalk it up to plain curiosity, or perhaps it’s the competitive nature in humans, and we just want to see how everyone else is living to see if we—or they—are “normal”.  Call it whatever you want, but wouldn’t we be happier if we focused more on our own lives rather than what everyone else is doing?  I’m not trying to drive away my readers, but I just think sometimes we concern ourselves too much with the thoughts/actions/feelings/gardens/facial hair of others.  I love sitting and talking with people, listening to their little anecdotes and life stories, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.  When people sit at a computer, read tweets or news concerning said tweets from a celebrity, and then write hateful statements in the comments, well, that’s a problem.  Am I right?  I mean, if that's what you consider a productive use of your time, I really think you need to get a life.  Go to a library or a church function or join a running group or something and meet some new people.  Take up a new hobby like sketching or playing with your kids or playing SongPop or whatever.

Who is with me on this???