IM

"Kvetch & The City..." Oy vey!

Lunesta — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:53:25 GMT

More whining, complaining, hair-splitting and over-criticizing / reviewing of SATC.

Did it ever occur to ANY of you four, successful, young or young-ish (??) career women to focus instead of how strongly feminist the making of this film actually IS? A woman Executive Producer and is she/ isn't she also the director? Four female stars & the introduction of a new one (Jennifer Hudson), the entire story line revolving around FEMALE friendships & lives, and no doubt, many females on staff garnering nice-sized salaries. The making of this film is as much as triumph for women producers and actresses as is the wonderful Masterpiece series (all the Jane Austens, plus this new Cranford, etc.) done for PBS by women E.Ps, both in England and in Boston, female directors, staff members at every level, and of course, STARS.

And all you can do, instead, is sit around & whine about the clothes & the materialism. Meghan O'Rourke's oversensitivity to the line where Carrie says she felt like she'd been hit with a bullet has got to be the 'ne plus ultra' of critical irrelevance; hint to O'Rourke: The Iraq War has not affected everyone's lives as idrectly as previous wars due to the lack of a draft -- really, Meghan, it's OK for people to still say they felt like they've 'taken a bullet.' People DIE in the streets of NYC, LA, Houston, Dallas & Chicago, every day, Meghan, by taking bullets. Why the gratuitously over-dramatic, overly PC reference to the War on Iraq? As one of the other participants pointed out, in times like this, people NEED a break from hard times & grim realities. Remember it was during the Depression & pre-war hard times of the 1930s that so many of our great GREAT Hollywood comedies & musicals flourished.

Btw, your discussion is hardly original; other media outlets have already revealed that Mr. Big does indeed marry Carrie. Also, your piece reads like Manohla Dargis's snarky NYTimes review of the other day, just divided up into four slices.

Rock on, Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte York MacDougal Goldenblatt !! Rock ON...may this film be a huge success, financially. Its women creators deserve it, and its largely female (my guess) audience is happy to make that happen.

Ugh. These debaters don't know anything about science.

janneys2005 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:37:40 GMT

This article was pathetic. I expected better than this ignorant rambling from supposedly educated people. USPSTF analyzes screening efficacy to provide guidelines for doctors. It has nothing to do with politics so why is everyone in this article hung up on that? The comment that they should have expected this firestorm was completely ridiculous. What, are they supposed to wait for a politically friendly atmosphere to release scientific data now? Give me a break. They did a study and found that women who get regular screenings actually die sooner. What else is there to know? The study is there, plain for everyone to see. This isn't politics, and this isn't money (the findings actually showed increase risk of death, not "cost saving"). Withdrawing harmful guidelines is not rationing, it's good medicine. Some of you seem to be hung up on "if it was you, you'd want the mammo." Or, "if it was my wife, she'd get her mammo." When you say that you are really only focusing on the cancer outcome. Like, if my wife/daughter/self got a mammo, we'd catch that cancer early and she won't be THE ONE who misses an early cancer. Well great - in that respect a woman would be better off with the mammo. The problem is that your wife/daughter/self may also be THE ONE who develops a post-op infection and die from that. Or be THE ONE to get hospital-acquired pneumonia and die from that. Or she may THE ONE who has a reaction to anesthesia and dies from that. You see, it's not just about a woman being THAT ONE who gets the early cancer caught. It is about the host of other things she might be THE ONE to get because she got a mammogram with a false positive. Look at the evidence and open your mind to the possibilities. That is the whole point of the recommendation - it turns out there are a lot of other things that can kill you, and they are more likely, too. It's not just about cancer.

Let one in 1904 die to save money, as long as it's not me

SPADO — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 22:58:52 GMT

Bazelton writes: "Why is it hard to see that the costs of overscreening can outweigh the benefits of early detection? These recommendations ask us to give up a couple of myths we hold dear. The first is that saving one life is worth any amount of trouble or money. "One life out of 1,904 to be saved," Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison said of the stats about getting mammograms in you"

Tell that to my friend, a mother of 5, who's life was saved by a mammogram at age 41. She had a particularly aggressive and nasty form of cancer that would never have been detected by self exam alone until it was too late. I suppose this is what you would call anecdotal evidence, but for the women and their families saved by these screenings the new guidelines seem like the epitomy of big brother interfering with our lives. What could be more cold and calculating than the decision that one woman's life in 1904 is not worth saving? Furthermore the recommendation that women stop doing self exams is as patronizing as anything I have heard in a while. In effect it is saying that women are too stupid or anxious to make decisions about what is a legitimately worriesome lump and what is normal variations. In fact it is important for woment to become familiar with their own bodies to determine what is normal and what is unusual. Am I wrong in concluding that the majority of those in your discussion believe it is better for doctors to assume an even more distant and objectifying approach to their patients while simultaneously recommending that patients become even more passive and complacent about their care?

More pro-active hospice next?

Scoot'r-d — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:44:11 GMT

There is no debate. The decision to curtail breast cancer screening was a money decision. Women will die because of it and the Feds now consider them dispensable for the collective good of the country. And so down the slippery slope we go. It is no longer smart and compassionate medicine. It now HAS to be cost effective medicine. How long before a hospice study identifies some excellent cost saving measures? Why support and sustain the dying when you could cheaply and easily assist death and be just as pain free (if not more so)? Active euthanasia would provide excellent pain management and deliver some huge cost savings. Maybe everyone should automatically shift into hospice care at age 75 or 80 at the latest? After all isn't that what good socialized medicine is all about? A balance that provides what is best for the most with sacrificial lambs at the fringes.

Unnecessary Screenings

TheRanger — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:04:06 GMT

"The move to reduce unnecessary screening has some critics of health care reform suggesting that America is moving headlong toward rationing care."

I don't know what unnecessary means. Isn't it a bit like getting your car inspected? If nothing is wrong, then it was unnecessary. If there is something wrong, then it is a life saver. Unnecessary is not a scientific analysis of the data; it is a sociological judgement. Kind of like should they have required more lifeboats on the Titanic? The scientists (egineers) thought the ship was unsinkable. But that was a judgement not a scientific conclusion (obviously). It was what they didn't know about that sank the ship. Just as a sidebar, they really didn't see much of the iceberg that the Titanic hit; they didn't think it was serious until it became obvious. No doubt many small ice bergs never developed serious damage. Maybe that was once reason the Titanic plowed into the big one. They didn't really think it could happen to them.

Isn't the philosophy of the Task Force totally wrong. If a screening procedure is not perfect, throw away the screening procedure. What is left then? Shouldn't the recommendation of the Task Force be to use what we have and work to develop better screens? That concept appears to be totally beyond the scope of the Task Force.

giving up myths

heathlee — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:54:07 GMT

I agree with Emily Bazelon about giving up certain myths surrounding health care. We need to if we are to have any real, sustainable reforms to our current health care structure in the U.S. I think each life is worth saving, the myth part of that has more to do with how we've been selling those saved lives to people. We aren't saving every life as things are. People with more money or better insurance have better access to life saving care. More testing and more screening all willy nilly for everyone regardless of medical history hasn't worked, and more importantly, it's just not sustainable. Profitable, but not sustainable.

Saving every life should still be the goal, the path to that goal is what needs to be changed. When more people have more access to regular physician care more lives will be saved.

Fabulously ignorant discussion!

NickBanglo — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 07:02:44 GMT

For example: "Why forget screening? Isn't that a major part of preventive care? Taking out screening, what's meant by preventive care?"

Here's a thought: why not have full MRI and CT/with contrast imaging for every person who has headaches? Surely (it seems several of the "expert" journalists would believe) more screening is better? Er... no. It would be a terrible idea. Why? Because you find stuff that doesn't matter, and then you have to either investigate it further (brain surgery as screening, anyone?), or live with the anxiety. Still want those initial investigations?

Screening tests are assessed by two numbers: false positives, and false negatives. Almost no test is perfect (I can't think of one). And all of this is still true even if the cost of the tests is ZERO.

The argument in this article (Opening the Screening Door) is mostly childish and ill-informed rubbish - basically - worthless.

And no, I am not a republican. I just happen to hold a professorship in a department of epidemiology.

Lung cancers that don't progress?

Stop-truth-decay — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:11:21 GMT

Sorry, ALL cancers progress. By definition. It is just that some, like low Gleason score prostate cancers, or intraductal breast cancers, progress so slowly that SOME patients with limited life expectancy are more likely to die from their co morbid conditions than the cancer itself.

Thank you, John Dickerson.

auros — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 01:53:41 GMT

Presumably, if doctors decided that what was once considered preventive is now expensive and full of false positives and bad health outcomes, a well-functioning comparative-effectiveness system would spread the word so that doctors could make intelligent decisions with their patients based on the latest research. This comparative-effectiveness scheme would guard against a mindless mantra in favor of or against preventive measures and base decisions on actual studies, ultimately leaving the decision to the doctor and patient. Critics, of course, claim that spreading information about studies immediately equals rationing.

Bingo. That's exactly what's going on here. The folks advocating for preventive care -- and its potential savings -- are not necessarily talking about any one specific screening or procedure. They're saying, in general, things that prevent illness save money. As was also said in the thread, it's easier and cheaper (and nicer for the patient!) to treat diabetes when it's in early stages, rather than when you're going blind from retinopathy and suffering chronic pain from neuropathy in the hands and feet.

Sometimes we're going to discover that stuff we thought was a good idea, for prevention, just doesn't work out the way we hoped. It's not sufficiently accurate, or it has bad side effects. Or, in the case of mammograms, you get "true" positives, but discover that in fact, not all cases of breast cancer are created equal. Using older methods, we tended to only notice the cases that were dangerous; now, we've learned that a lot of cancers are not actually particularly life-threatening. So then the question becomes: Do you still screen aggressively (at significant expense), or do you just go back to the older methods? And if you do screen aggressively, what do you tell the patient about whether it's worthwhile to go in and do surgery that may have nasty side effects. (See also: men with prostate cancer -- the vast majority of cases are things you'll die with, rather than dying from, and the treatment causes sexual dysfunction and incontinence.)

It's shame that the GOP has no shame, because this was almost an opportunity for folks to actually learn something about how to be better advocates for themselves and better partners with their doctors. But, even almost-sane Republicans like Rachael couldn't possibly pass up an opportunity to slam those evil socialist Democrats. They know what their ideology tells them, and they can't be bothered with details like "science" or "facts".

YOU MUST RECOGNIZE ONE FUNDAMENTAL THING, GUYS!

magdalena_ — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 01:52:23 GMT

YOU'RE SIMPLY NOT CAPABLE OF DISCUSSING THE ISSUE SERIOUSLY.

Let the doctors do so.

First, you're not able to read technical medical papers, not to mention interpret correctly medical analyses. They are undreadable for lay persons.

Second, it's extremely dangerous for lay persons to discuss in public the issues that they can't put into a lerger perspective.

Third, the persons who are the best qualified to write non-technical medical papers are those who are able to read and analyze technical ones.

Yes, I'm also interested in cancer! I think it's one of the most fascinating fields of medicine. I recognize that non technical papers help raise public awareness, and admit that I happen to"quarrel" with doctors, and I'm pretty sure that in some cases, they are wrong, and I'm right. However, no matter our research interests or hobbys, we're not able to discuss policy responses to most serious medical challenges! There are people who are by far more qualified to do so than we are. In fact, we're not qualified at all. Let the doctors analyze all the serious studies, discuss them in their narrow circles, and then present their conclusions to the public IN PLAIN ENGLISH. That's really the best we can do.

Seeing everywhere the demon of politization is not a solution.

If we KNOW many small cancers don't progress . . .

the true conservative — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:03:29 GMT

If we KNOW many small cancers don't progress then why do we automatically have to treat any small tumors just because we found them? Why can't we test, and if the doctor finds a small, relatively harmless looking tumor, go over the information with the client and explain that the best approach is to "wait and see" on it? That way we can continue to catch the actually harmful cancers in the people who contract it at 40 instead of 50, and can also know who we should watch more closely because they are more prone to have problems in the future.

Nobody forces you to treat just because you test. We can have the best of both worlds, it sure seems to me.

The brits have it right

ARMENTER — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:00:45 GMT

I agree with most of the posts. As a physician who is responsible for signing away millions of dollars of care every year, I am acutely aware of the fact that we have divorced value from any discussions of treatment. When someone's life is on the line, people want to know what will help the most. Period. While this is understandable, there are some treatments that are FDA approved that offer ridiculously poor value (Tarceva for pancreatic cancer extends survival for an average of 2 weeks, a course of treatment costs about $20,000 for 4 months, a year of life saved in aggregate would cost ~$500,000). If someone said to the patient with pancreatic cancer that they could either have $20,000 to keep, or buy extra 2 weeks life (with a little rash and diarrhea on the side), most people would choose the money, but because someone else is paying for it, and no one is offering a wad of cash, those patients are frequently going to want the marginally effective therapy. Incidentally, the drug companies realize this. All they have to do is get FDA approval and they can basically charge whatever they want whether the drug is a genuine breakthrough or a marginally effective wiff of improvement. For mammograms, there are issues about the harms of screening and the limited effectiveness of mammograms for women in their 40s, but there are also legitimate concerns about the costs of mass screening. If 1900 women need to be screened yearly for 10 Years to prevent 1 breast cancer death, at $100 per test, that works out to about $2 million dollars per life saved. Is that a reasonable amount of money to spend. If the government is paying and you are Sarah Palin or Rachel Larimore, the answer is yes, spend the money, and then you get to criticize the government for spending too much. The democrats pretend that if we can just cover enough people and get everyone preventative care (and make the evil insurance companies "compete"), healthcare will be bountiful and cheap--they are in denial or willfully silent about what they know to be true. All the Republican pundits decry the high costs of health care and government overspending, and beat their chests and scream to the heavens when someone mentions the "r" word. The fundamental issue we need to address first is what a reasonable sum of money would be to invest in a year of life. If you set those goalposts, you can set up a rationale system around it. And we wouldn't have to be as cheap as the brits. We could come up with an "American" number. And just because you set the goalposts for government sponsored care at-- what, $70-100-150k/year life saved-- that doesn't mean people couldn't buy up. If someone thinks their life should be worth more and they want the million dollar drug that will help them live an extra week, then they can buy a more expensive gap policy or save the money themselves to buy what they see fit. But we have to get away from the fantasy that we all have the right for someone else to pay an unlimited amount of money when it is our life on the line.

Ah, Slate.

Kimmitt — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 15:45:16 GMT

An entire debate on health care which never mentions the couple dozen countries which all have higher life expectancies but spend between one half and two thirds as much per capita. A rational person might ask what they're doing differently from us? A Slate arguer might be stunned to realize that countries outside the United States exist.

Recommendations vs Rationing

ItOnlyStandsToReason — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 06:39:01 GMT

As I read it, they are recommending that regular screening for average women start at 50. The recommendation doesn't apply to women who have or suspect an elevated risk due to family history, genetics (BRCA1 and BRCA2 or other risk alleles), race, dense tissue, etc. In particular it is not a recommendation against earlier testing for women who think they have an elevated risk.

And once you grasp that, this whole controversy becomes a tempest in a teapot.

Not too much but too little prevention ...

kati — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:13:20 GMT

I wonder if the stats aren't deceptive. If 1,900 mamograms save one life, how will that life be lost? I suspect that treatments for that life might cost more than 1,900 mamograms, including treatment for false positives. Just think about the cost of 3 or more courses of chemotherapy, at least 3 or more surgeries (the last one usually for brain cancer), and perhaps a total of 3 months in hospital, plus visiting nurses and hospice care (at home or in a hospice facility)....

And then of course there's the issue of that one person becoming disabled (drawing full social security before retirement age), stopping paying taxes, needing a full time care giver (another person in the family giving up his/her job, stopping paying taxes, and getting paid a modicum stipend out of state fund to care for that person?), perhaps the cost of putting her kids in foster care, etc. The loss of that one life might be costing quite a bit more than one million bucks...

Dying and disability costs a lot more than prevention (the committee also advised against self exams.... all of the women I know who have come down with breast cancer found it themselves at an early treatable stage).

There should be more testing for other conditions as well rather than less: just think how much cheaper it is to snip off a pre-cancerous polyp during a colonoscopy that might run from $2,000 to 3,000 than to treating a colon cancer that has spread throughout the body, with again, disabililty, loss of income, loss of ability to take care of dependents, etc.

On the other hand invasive and painful treatments pursued when all hope of recovery has been lost are indeed unwarranted. If we have to monetize the cost of a life, that's where we should focus because it's both to the benefit of the patient and of the budget.

We already ration life and death constantly in society

Becephalus — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:13:13 GMT

Everytime a DoT project which is projected to stop X number of accidents a year is not enacted because of budget constraints you put a $ value on life. Everytime your city cuts back on police/fire/EMT coverage to deal with budget shortfalls you put a $ value on life.

As a society we already ration life and death constantly, it is impossible not to. What do you think the FAA does?

As far as screenings go, let the people trained to make the decisions about the what is the best method of care make them. Period. Then we as a society need to decide how much money we are going to devote to said care. And they will make decisions based on the resources available to them. it is a simple system, not sure what all this debate is about.

The thing to be debating is the $ value devoted to healthcare. 99% of us (including all of you) are completely unqualified to comment on the advisability of spending some of that money on cancer screenings.

You people just don't get it

Bondsman — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:14:18 GMT

Medicine is NOT bean-counting. In bean counting you just want to know how to get a certain percentage of colored beans out of a jar, but *you don't CARE what happens to an individual bean (whether they stay in the jar or not).

In medicine it's the exact opposite. Your doctor doesn't really care what is good for *everyone*, they care about what is good for YOU at that time.

As an example, say the cheapest and best drug to treat your infection is penicillin. However, you are allergic to penicillin, and the one time someone gave it to you before, you almost died. Going by a "best practices" model, you'd get the penicillin as the best and cheapest drug, and maybe die. In reality, you'd get something you were NOT allergic to, and live. The point being when someone talks about treating everyone with X, what they really mean is they are NOT taking time to see what specific factors affect that person at that time. If one DOES take individual factors into account, the number of times "cookbook" medicine can be practiced drops by a lot. Most of those situations really don't even NEED doctors, really, if all you have to do is follow a pre-programmed treatment program, have the PA or nurse do it. Why waste a doctor's time?

As far as screening, that should be individualized as well. Saying "everyone" needs something is just as bad as saying no one does. I'd bet though that for the specific example of mammograms if you showed people the chance of developing a secondary cancer or performing an extra biopsy vs. the chance of removing an existing cancer at an early stage that may have gone on to kill you, they'd take the mammogram. I know I would.

But then I also get yearly flu shots, and believe vaccination to be a good thing for most people.

You're all dumb as the average teabagger

roger3815 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:23:42 GMT

I'm embarrassed for you.

They're fun and special.

LisaK — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:05:13 GMT

I'm 31. I got my Kirsten doll in 1988, so 2 years after the Pleasant Company launched. I had two friends (one actually NAMED Kirsten) who also had the Kirsten doll. We are all of Scandinavian descent so that's why we each chose that particular doll. At the time there were only the three to choose from (Kirsten, Samantha, and Molly)...I would also be interested to know the ages of the women in this article, as they seem to be quite a bit younger than me (having had the dolls that look like them, Addy, and Felicity, which were introduced in the early to mid-90s).

Despite growing up in a fairly well-off area, my friends and I each had only the one doll. My parents were reluctant to buy the expensive doll (which actually costs about the same today as it did 20 years ago unlike so many things), and initially bought me the first couple of books. After about a year of begging they finally bought me the doll. Despite my intense desire for all the pretty matching dresses and accessories, I was given only the doll clothes and only given them at special occasions. My grandfather got into the act by commissioning a bed in the same style as the one for sale from Pleasant Company from a local woodworker and rosemaling (Norwegian folk painting) artist. This was FAR more special than anything bought from a catalogue, knowing that it was one of a kind. Because I was aware how much the doll cost, and because it was so elegant, I treasured her. I think because of my parents' initial reluctance to spend $100 on a doll, she was kept special for me. She was my one treasured doll. Maybe it was just my family, but because of the cost being somewhat prohibitive, we found ways around the rampant consumerism that the women in this article talk about. I think by only allowing me the one doll, and keeping the experience special, I was somewhat shielded from the consumerism of it. It wasn't an everyday kind of thing. It was a treasure to be kept safe, not just another of many dolls.

Like one of the women in this article, Kirsten helped spark my life-long interest in history (I now have a masters degree in it). She also fed my interest in my Swedish ancestry and where my family came from. I even went so far as to have a pioneer-themed birthday party one year in a little one-room schoolhouse.

I think the key to keeping girls from the rampant consumerism of it all is doing what my parents did: make it a very special, exceptional thing for your daughters. It is a parent's job to make sure their children don't turn out spoiled; teaching them that just because it's for sale doesn't mean you can, or should, have it is an important lesson. I think that's another lesson the American Girl catalogues can teach girls.

A Fray to Call my own?

Intransigent_Mind_v3 — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 17:57:31 GMT

How'd that happen?

The argument for bonuses

Crawford — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:15:06 GMT

Financial industry bonuses are not really "bonus" pay, but rather, part of expected compensation. Actual salary has ordinarily been only 20-40 percent of total comp for these workers, with the bonus comprising the bulk of pay.

While writers criticizing the bonus culture characterize the bonuses as executive compensation, for lower-level employees, it's really a mechanism, in a high-turnover business, for only paying in full to employees who are around at the end of the year.

While cutting jobs is common during a downturn (and Wall Street is cutting lots of jobs), slashing pay is extremely unusual. The auto industry was also bailed out, but there is little pressure for massive salary cuts for auto workers. Pilot pay didn't get cut when airlines got bailed out.

It may be hard to argue it's unfair that these guys should have to live on their $200k salaries, but the Wall Street lifestyle isn't exactly enviable. These guys are very highly qualified and work hundred hour weeks and often spend months of the year traveling for business. Cutting their pay for work they've already done by 75% because it's called a bonus is pretty lousy.

If there is a problem with bonus "culture" or bonus incentives, compensation should be restructured on the front end of a year, rather than stiffing everybody at Christmas.

While bonus compensation probably swelled to outrageous levels during the boom, the 44% cut is a big compensation reduction to employees who were not to blame for the problems. Those guys were fired months ago.

Part of the reason Thain at Merrill was so insistent on bonuses for his people is because they were brought in after the bank was hobbled by these obligations. Thain believes he earned his bonus because he got the deal with BofA, which saved value for shareholders in September. Merrill shareholders didn't end up like Lehman shareholders as a result.

And, while talent loss is not an immediate concern while the industry is shrinking, once the recession ends and demand for talent rises, a compensation cap on institutions that used bailout funds will certainly result in a mass exodus of talent from those funds at precisely the time when the government wants that talent in place to earn back the money the institutions owe the taxpayers.

why not pay hobos?

amspock — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 14:19:52 GMT

If there are ancillary economic benefits to bonuses, why not pay out the same money to all the unemployed guys. I am sure the multiplier effect of such payments would be far greater than bonuses paid to the already rich.

Giuliani did it

tddoog — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:25:14 GMT

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/30/giuliani.corporate.bonuses/index.html

The commentary suggests that he supports trickle down, but offhandedly he suggests that the tax revenue from bonuses allows the government to employ more people via tax revenue.

There's a War Going On

Guylinder — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:10:53 GMT

The patriotic thing to do, when America is involved in a war and the country is in economic crisis, is to donate your multimillion dollar bonus to the war effort.

That's what they would have done in WWII. Except in those days, piss-poor job performance which resulted in the ruination of the nation's economy didn't get bonuses. Nobody got bonuses of more than a few bucks if they got any bonuses at all.

Why does everyone forget to mention the ruinous war with Iraq when addressing the nation's economy? It's costing us gajillions.

Did it go away?

Is the war over?

Because I never hear about anyone talking about how much of our nation's money is being wasted there every. fucking. day.

Jack Welsh did on Charlie Rose

doughdee222 — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 09:10:35 GMT

On Friday night's edition of Charlie Rose Jack Welsh justified the CEO pay and bonuses in the typical way: without them the talent would run off to other companies.

What I ask, and he never really answered in his comments, is:

1. Companies justify the high pay as the price of attracting the best talent, but wouldn't the talent be attracted with less pay? Wouldn't a professional athlete still play for a $1 million paycheck instead of a $5 million check?

2. If these men were really so talented would their companies come crashing down so hard? Let's face it, any fool can drive a car 100 mph into a wall. It takes more skill to drive at 50 mph and avoid obstacles.

3. If these talented men truly loved their companies wouldn't they be willing to stay on if the bonuses were cut? How fickle is their love?

I could go on but you see my point. I am highly skeptical of the vaunted qualities of these upper management types. Yes, some may be worth it, but most...? I bet with 9/10 companies if you fired the top 10% of management and promoted those below the company would see little or no change in quality or output.

-Doughdee222

"I am a realist, not a pessimist. The real world is pessimistic by nature."