Jersey Bounce You better bounce When you get to that Jersey side You gotta bounce They call it the Jersey bounce A rhythm that really counts The temperature always mounts Wherever they play, the funny rhythm they play It started on Journal Square The top Execs love it there They put on such an air And now you see them everywhere Uptown, gave it new licks Downtown, added some tricks No town, makes it sound, the same As where it came from So if you don't feel so hot Go out to some Jersey spot And whether you're hep or not The Jersey bounce'll make you swing (scat singing) How they love that Jersey bounce (scat singing) Oh come on and play that Jersey bounce (scat singing) They call it the Jersey bounce A rhythm that really counts The temperature always mounts Whenever they play that Jersey Bounce It started on Journal Square The top Execs love it there They put on such an air And now you see them everywhere

I suppose that by now many have figured out how to navigate to the NYTimes SundayStyles section but when reading it on paper I found it breathtaking. On top of the flap is "You Try to Live On 500K In This Town" and below it is "When Nest Eggs Crack". I know it's bad when even the style section is so focused on detailing the expenses of those who can't live on $500K. It betrays their intended audience, formerly only suggested by full page watch ads (which don't seem to be so evident these days).

The sense of entitlement from the NY Times and/or their intended audience is amazing.

Apparently the new york times is not interested in microeconomics.

Falling salaries and bonuses, coupled with mass layoffs of the regions primary industry have already caused rents to fall, home prices to fall, vacation prices to fall, hamptons house prices to fall, etc..

One can expect that with significantly less demand this year, restaurant prices are falling, tuitions at private schools will not rise so fast, and attendance at charity events will be limited, and so on.

The double speak from the broker claiming IT COSTS THOUSANDS, MINIMUM, is wishful thinking that the prices of 2006/7 are coming back soon.

Memo to nytimes - the prices they are citing won't be back until 2012 at the earliest. Maybe then some bank execs will be on the PATH. Meanwhile gas prices dropped in half since the peak. We can all ride in Escalades again.

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your idea assumes that all of the most talented people are also the most greedy, and are unwilling to make a sacrifice for the benefit of their company and it's other employee's, maybe a somewhat logical assumption, but in my opinion probably springing from more of an attempt to rationalize the disgustingly oversized salaries these ceos have been getting as fair compensation for their "amazing" talents. Maybe if more of these rich bigwigs had suffered from the same concern that has stricken many civic employees lately and were to refuse huge raises (which were to occur at the expense of other people's jobs) this country would be in a much better place.

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Forgive me, JoeAuxiliary, but I would rather agree with CEO of GE and Carly Fiorina on that issue, not you.

Whether you like it or not, top talent will not take the $500K salary.

The folks who ran banking into the ground were not top talent. Not Chuck Prince at Citigroup, not the crooks at Merrill. Good riddance to them, of course.

The system needs a reform and regulation (and it's coming, believe me), but limiting the salary to $500K is counterproductive.

Scores Bama some points with the dumb folks, though.

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Yeah, it's gonna be a real shame when all that top tier talent that ran these companies into the ground gets out of the banking industry where they can't gamble with "normal" people's money anymore.

Good riddance.

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Important to note that this was in the Style section, so the focus was entirely social-standing, hence the Candace Bushnell quote (among others).

I would assume/hope that a Business section article would have been a little more hard-hitting.

Typical idiotic NYT article.

What they should be writing about is what Mr Immelt of GE already said - it will be impossible to attract good CEO talent at $500K salary.

This is not an easy job, as Chuck Prince of Citigroup has demonstrated.

I think that it was a knee-jerk, ultimately dumb, and populist move by Obama and its downside will be much bigger than the short-lived spike in approval ratings, which *clearly* motivated Obama.

The top talent will go run hedge funds or will find well-paid jobs abroad, and the US banks, which need talented leadership now more than ever, will have an even tougher time attracting it.

Puleeeze. What a misleading headline you gave this article, GP. No such "prediction" was made. Interesting article though!

Glad you caught that nice complimentary "detail" in the NYT. I wonder if any Wall Street MDs live in Journal Square. Maybe someone who is a deep value guy??

You Try to Live on 500K in This Town
NOT HOUSTON. NOT EVEN HOBOKEN

New York Times
By ALLEN SALKIN
Published: February 6, 2009

PRIVATE school: $32,000 a year per student.
Mortgage: $96,000 a year.
Co-op maintenance fee: $96,000 a year.
Nanny: $45,000 a year.
We are already at $269,000, and we haven?t even gotten to taxes yet.

Five hundred thousand dollars ? the amount President Obama wants to set as the top pay for banking executives whose firms accept government bailout money ? seems like a lot, and it is a lot. To many people in many places, it is a princely sum to live on. But in the neighborhoods of New York City and its suburban enclaves where successful bankers live, half a million a year can go very fast.

?As hard as it is to believe, bankers who are living on the Upper East Side making $2 or $3 million a year have set up a life for themselves in which they are also at zero at the end of the year with credit cards and mortgage bills that are inescapable,? said Holly Peterson, the author of an Upper East Side novel of manners, ?The Manny,? and the daughter of Peter G. Peterson, a founder of the equity firm the Blackstone Group. ?Five hundred thousand dollars means taking their kids out of private school and selling their home in a fire sale.?

Sure, the solution may seem simple: move to Brooklyn or Hoboken, put the children in public schools and buy a MetroCard. But more than a few of the New York-based financial executives who would have their pay limited are men (and they are almost invariably men) whose identities are entwined with living a certain way in a certain neighborhood west of Third Avenue: a life of private schools, summer houses and charity galas that only a seven-figure income can stretch to cover.

Few are playing sad cellos over the fate of such folk, especially since the collapse of the institutions they run has yielded untold financial pain. But in New York, where a new study from the Center for an Urban Future, a nonprofit research group in Manhattan, estimates it takes $123,322 to enjoy the same middle-class life as someone earning $50,000 in Houston, extricating oneself from steep bills can be difficult.

Therefore, even if it is not for sympathy but for sport, consider the numbers.

The cold hard math can be cruel.

Like those taxes. If a person is married with two children, the weekly deductions on a $500,000 salary are: federal taxes, $2,645; Social Security, $596; Medicare, $139; state taxes, $682; and city, $372, bringing the weekly take-home to $5,180, or about $269,000 a year, said Martin Cohen, a Manhattan accountant.

Now move to living expenses.

Barbara Corcoran, a real estate executive, said that most well-to-do families take at least two vacations a year, a winter trip to the sun and a spring trip to the ski slopes.

Total minimum cost: $16,000.

A modest three-bedroom apartment, she said, which was purchased for $1.5 million, not the top of the market at all, carries a monthly mortgage of about $8,000 and a co-op maintenance fee of $8,000 a month. Total cost: $192,000. A summer house in Southampton that cost $4 million, again not the top of the market, carries annual mortgage payments of $240,000.

Many top executives have cars and drivers. A chauffeur?s pay is between $75,000 and $125,000 a year, the higher end for former police officers who can double as bodyguards, said a limousine driver who spoke anonymously because he does not want to alienate his society customers.

?Some of them want their drivers to have guns,? the driver said. ?You get a cop and you have a driver.? To garage that car is about $700 a month.

A personal trainer at $80 an hour three times a week comes to about $12,000 a year.

The work in the gym pays off when one must don a formal gown for a charity gala. ?Going to those parties,? said David Patrick Columbia, who is the editor of the New York Social Diary (newyorksocialdiary.com), ?a woman can spend $10,000 or $15,000 on a dress. If she goes to three or four of those a year, she?s not going to wear the same dress.?

Total cost for three gowns: about $35,000

Not every bank executive has school-age children, but for those who do, offspring can be expensive. In addition to paying tuition, ?You?re not going to get through private school without tutoring a kid,? said Sandy Bass, the editor of Private School Insider, a newsletter that covers private schools in the New York City area. One hour of tutoring once a week is $125. ?That?s the low end,? she said. ?The higher end is 150, 175.? SAT tutors are about $250 an hour. Total cost for 30 weeks of regular tutoring: $3,750.

Two children in private school: $64,000.

Nanny: $45,000.

Ms. Bass, whose husband is an accountant with many high-end clients, said she spends about $425 every 10 days on groceries for her family. Annual cost: about $15,000.

More? Restaurants. Dry cleaning. Each Brooks Brothers suit costs about $1,000. If you run a bank, you can?t look like a slob.

The total costs here, which do not include a lot of things, like kennels for the dog when the family is away, summer camp, spas and other grooming for the human members of the family, donations to charity, and frozen hot chocolates at Serendipity, are $790,750, which would require about a $1.6-million salary to compensate for taxes. Give or take a few score thousand of dollars.

Does this money buy a chief executive stockholders might prize, a well-to-do man with a certain sureness of stride, something that might be lost if the executive were crowding onto the PATH train every morning at Journal Square, his newspaper splayed against the back of a stranger?s head?

The man would certainly not feel like himself on that train, said Candace Bushnell, the author of ?Sex and the City? and other books chronicling New York social mores.

?People inherently understand that if they are going to get ahead in whatever corporate culture they are involved in, they need to take on the appurtenances of what defines that culture,? she said. ?So if you are in a culture where spending a lot of money is a sign of success, it?s like the same thing that goes back to high school peer pressure. It?s about fitting in.?

By the way, the frozen hot chocolate costs $8.50.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/fashion/08halfmill.html