What's It Worth To Ya?

I love money. Money is good. I would love to have a gig where I get paid about a thousand bucks a day to fondle my squid and yank my crank. But nobody's ponied up to offer me that yet, so I have to resort to other ways of making a living.

I've heard lots of people say that CEOs make too much money, and teachers are underpaid. Those are two extremes, I guess. Jack Welsh vs. Miss Buttlefugger the kindergarten teacher.

So then along comes Antonin Scalia (that guy on the Supreme Court) saying in a speech that federal judges don't make enough money. (They bag $165 kilo-bucks a year.) And Peter Singer (that professor of ethics at Princeton who thinks tard babies should be dashed upon the rocks), saying in the New York Times that everybody should give 10% of their total earnings to charity.

Yeah, right. You first, motherfucker.

So we've got lots of perspectives here. Let's start with the bozos who think teachers should make as much as CEOs.

First of all, teachers aren't paid that badly. They only work about three-quarters as many days as someone who works full-time year round. Now I'm a moose, so math isn't my long suit (except when it comes to the legth of my penis), but even I can tell without causing myself a brain rupture that a teacher making $45K for nine months' work is making the equivalent of $60K annually.

Second, there's this darned pesky thing called supply and demand. Just about anybody of average intelligence could earn a teaching certificate and inflict themselves upon the youth of America. But not everybody has what it takes to be a CEO. So even if you don't think CEOs are any more important than teachers, they sure are a lot rarer, which is what the whole difference in earnings is all about.

Oh, yeah, there's another issue with teachers too. The ones that work in the government sector (public school) pretty much all have a union. That means no matter how good a teacher you are, you can't negotiate for more money. Your union representatives do the lowest-common-denominator negotiating for you. So hey, if you wanna teach and make good coin, be exceptional and find a nice ritzy private school, and you'll be all set.

Let's move on to Scalia, and his "judges are underpaid" schtick. As Bugs Bunny would say, what a maroon. Yeah, a lawyer can make more money in the private sector. But the seriously best and brightest legal minds want the opportunity to shape case law that only a judgeship can bring.

How do I know this? Two words: John Roberts. You may have heard of him. He's the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. (Hell, even *I* have heard of him, and I'm just a moose. So if you don't know who he is, please go kill yourself right now.)

Roberts is one of the most hot-shit Constitutional scholars of our age. He didn't become a judge for the money, or so he could bang his law clerks. (I know. What a waste of a boner, huh?) He became a judge because he's a law geek.

So don't worry, Tony Scalia, the bench will be just fine even though those pooooor federal judges are only bagging 165 grand.

And on to Petey Singer, who kinda pisses me off. He takes Herbert A. Simon's theoretical musings about "social capital" completely out of context in order to argue for greater philanthropy. The late Herb Simon, a Nobel prize winner in economics, was very much a capitalist. Besides being a computer genius and a psychology genius, he knew it doesn't take a genius to realize that as tax rates rise, giving to charity goes down. (Tee hee, I said "goes down.")

I could talk more about what a great man Simon was, and what a doorknob Singer is, but all this deep thinking has made me tired. I'm going to go lay down, hold my moose wang, and have a nap.

Maybe when I wake up, someone will call and offer me that dream job i was talking about.