Not sure who said it first
I don't know who said this one first, and at this point I don't really care. The adage is: "When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. I tied that knot earlier in the week and there were moments last night when I felt my usually firm grip on it starting to slip.
I suppose the moment I came closest to losing hold of the knot was when I tripped at the bar where I was playing trivia last night. Now I have physical limitations and health problems but I've been very sure-footed my entire life. There was a step up to where my team was and as I walked back I forgot to step up and sure enough, down I went.
So maybe my grip on the knot slipped off for a second. But I took hold of it again even more tightly, pulled myself off of the floor and went on with my evening. I'm tired. The schedule strain ends Sunday. I can make it through until then.
The moral is of course, even if you're at the end of that rope, hanging on to the knot and you lose your grip, reach out and grab it again.
* * *
If you were offered $3 million for four days of work in Bulgaria (I'm sure travel expenses would also have been covered), would you have held out for $4 million? I wouldn't have. You probably wouldn't have. Bruce Willis did. As a result he lost those four days of work and that $3 million.
It almost a certainty that he doesn't "need" the money. Estimates place his net worth at between $125 million and $175 million. Was it ego or an inflated sense of his value that caused him to make a demand that the producers of the film (friends of his were among that group) chose not to meet? We'll never know why he did what he did unless he decides to tell us.
In his actions though, he has illustrated a concept I haven't commented on in awhile. I call it the perceived value of labor. The other day when I was at the VA I saw a doctor and a janitor having a conversation. If you want to make the issue very simple because it's easy to hire a replacement janitor than it is to hire a replacement doctor, you would be wrong. Right now there are lots of doctors out there and more graduating every year. We may have a shortage in California, particularly in rural areas but hiring a primary care practitioner in Los Angeles isn't difficult.
Now I'm guessing that this doctor is earning around $150,000 a year. The janitor is earning between $26,000 and $45,000 depending on how long he's been a government employee (starting salary for this job at the VA ranges from $12.65 to $14.77 per hour). Let's use a round number of $30,000 Can we therefore conclude that the actual value of the doctor's labor is five times that of the janitors? Maybe. Maybe not.
What we do know from this is that the perceived value of these two different types of labor by those who make hiring decisions is vastly different. Think about it this way. You're ill. You can wait an hour and pay $125 to a doctor to examine you and prescribe medication to cure your illness, or you can be seen in ten minutes by a janitor who doesn't have the skills, education and experience to diagnose your illness, but who will take his best guess at what will cure you and give it to you. Who would you choose to treat your condition?
So when people say there should be a connection between the salary of a company's CEO and its lowest paid employee, that's just ridiculous. A privately held company gets to pay its employees whatever it wants, as long as it complies with all labor laws. The people who should be the arbiters of a publicly held company's CEO pay are the shareholders of that company. The piece that is currently missing in our society's compensation equation when it comes to CEOs is that their pay isn't tied directly to results immediately. A salesperson working on commission gets paid based on what they sell. If CEO pay were tied to corporate earnings and profitability, the amounts some of them get paid would be quite different than what they are currently earning.
While I see the need for a minimum wage, to ensue that the labor force isn't exploited any more than it is already is, there's no need and in fact no justification for a maximum wage.
Now that I've ranted all of that, here's the crux of the issue. The University of California at Davis just hired a woman to be their "Associate Chancellor for Strategic Communications" at a salary of $260,000. She was earning $230,000 annually in a similar position at the University of South Carolina.
Some try to use the salary the governor is paid as a measure of this salary she's been given as being excessive. But governor is an elected position. Politicians who are elected are compensated differently than government employees who are hired.
But she's definitely being overpaid. This is basically a PR job, it just happens to be in academia and in a state where the people who run the UC system think UC is an acronym for unlimited compensation. I'd like to see public universities be forced to reveal the salaries of all of their employees earning more than $100,000 and a breakdown of the benefits and perks they are getting.
I took a quick look at salaries at USC (the one here, not the former employer of that new UC Davis employee). They pay their new president well over $1 million but it's a distinguished professor of surgery that's pulling down the big salary, more than $2.7 million. Even more than the $2 million plus the football coach got (these numbers are from their 2011 tax return).
Would you pay a master mechanic the same amount of money to fix your car as you would the guy next door who has no formal training in automobile repair? No. Perceived value of labor.
* * *
This Date in History:
1220 – Sweden is defeated by Estonian tribes in the Battle of Lihula.
1503 – King James IV of Scotland marries Margaret Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII of England at Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh, Scotland.
1576 – The cornerstone for Tycho Brahe's Uraniborg observatory is laid on Ven, Denmark.
1585 – John Davis enters Cumberland Sound in search of the Northwest Passage.
1588 – Anglo-Spanish War: Battle of Gravelines – The naval engagement ends, ending the Spanish Armada's attempt to invade England.
1605 – The city of Oulu, Finland, is founded by Charles IX of Sweden.
1647 – The Irish Confederate Wars and Wars of the Three Kingdoms: Battle of Dungan's Hill – English Parliamentary forces defeat Irish forces.
1709 – Bartolomeu de Gusmão demonstrates the lifting power of hot air in an audience before the King of Portugal in Lisbon, Portugal
1786 – Mont Blanc on the French – Italian border is climbed for the first time by Jacques Balmat and Dr. Michel-Gabriel Paccard.
1793 – The insurrection of Lyon occurs during the French Revolution.
1794 – Joseph Whidbey leads an expedition to search for the Northwest Passage near Juneau, Alaska.
1844 – The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, headed by Brigham Young, is reaffirmed as the leading body of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).
1863 – American Civil War: following his defeat in the Battle of Gettysburg, General Robert E. Lee sends a letter of resignation to Confederate President Jefferson Davis (which is refused upon receipt).
1870 – The Republic of Ploiești, a failed Radical-Liberal rising against Domnitor Carol of Romania.
1876 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.
1908 – Wilbur Wright makes his first flight at a racecourse at Le Mans, France. It is the Wright Brothers' first public flight.
1918 – World War I: the Battle of Amiens begins a string of almost continuous victories with a push through the German front lines (Hundred Days Offensive).
1927 – The predecessor to the Philippine Stock Exchange opens.
1929 – The German airship Graf Zeppelin begins a round-the-world flight.
1940 – The "Aufbau Ost" directive is signed by Wilhelm Keitel.
1942 – Quit India Movement is launched in India against the British rule in response to Mohandas Gandhi's call for swaraj or complete independence.
1946 – First flight of the Convair B-36, the world's first mass-produced nuclear weapon delivery vehicle.
1960 – South Kasai secedes from the Congo.
1963 – Great Train Robbery: in England, a gang of 15 train robbers steal £2.6 million in bank notes.
1963 – The Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), the current ruling party of Zimbabwe, is formed by a split from the Zimbabwe African People's Union.
1967 – The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is founded by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
1969 – At a zebra crossing in London, photographer Iain Macmillan takes the photo that becomes the cover of the Beatles album Abbey Road, one of the most famous album covers in recording history.
1973 – Kim Dae-jung, a South Korean politician and later president of South Korea, is kidnapped.
1974 – President Richard Nixon, in a nationwide television address, announces his resignation from the office of the President of the United States effective noon the next day.
1980 – The Central Hotel Fire occurs in Bundoran, Ireland.
1988 – The "8888 Uprising" occurs in Burma.
1989 – Space Shuttle program: STS-28 Mission – Space Shuttle Columbia takes off on a secret five-day military mission.
1990 – Iraq occupies Kuwait and the state is annexed to Iraq. This would lead to the Gulf War shortly afterward.
1991 – The Warsaw radio mast, at one time the tallest construction ever built, collapses.
2000 – Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley is raised to the surface after 136 years on the ocean floor and 30 years after its discovery by undersea explorer E. Lee Spence and 5 years after being filmed by a dive team funded by novelist Clive Cussler.
Famous Folk Born On This Date:
Emperor Horikawa of Japan
Nelson A. Miles
Emiliano Zapata
Sara Teasdale
Arthur Goldberg
Jimmy Witherspoon
William Asher
Rory Calhoun
Rudi Gernreich
Jerry Tarkanian
Mel Tillis
Joe Tex
Serena Wilson
Donald P. Bellisario
Frank Howard
Dustin Hoffman
Ken Dryden
Keith Carradine
Randy Shilts
Robin Quivers
Don Most
Branscombe Richard
Deborah Norville
Kool Moe Dee
Jon Turtletaub
Sable
Eric Angle
Drew Lachey
Roger Federer
Movie quotes for today come from 1978's "Every Which Way But Loose" from the brilliant Clint Eastwood. It's a very funny movie.
Philo Beddoe: I'm not afraid of any man, but when it comes to sharing my feelings with a woman, my stomach turns to royal gelatin.
#2
Cholla: [the Black Widows have shown up at Philo's home, Ma Boggs is on the porch, they pull their bikes into her yard and Cholla pulls up on the porch] Say, old lady, where's Philo Beddoe?
Ma Boggs: How the hell do I know? Get off my porch with that thing. Get off my property!
Cholla: You're uh... you're not very hospitable.
Ma Boggs: Hospitable my ass. Get off my porch!
Cholla: Very well, if you insist.
[Cholla chains his bike to a support on the front porch, pulling it down... bikers laugh, Ma pulls out a pump-action shotgun]
Woody: [seeing the gun] Alright lady... put down that gun now!
[bikers dive out of her way]
Woody: I'm warning you lady! Put down that gun now!
[Ma fires and bike next to Woody explodes... she shoots several other bikes as they're attempting to flee]
Ma Boggs: [during a recoil] Oof!
Woody: [running after his gang on foot] Wait for me!
Ma Boggs: [seeing the flaming bikes on her lawn... to herself] First the police, and I told those boys not to leave a vulnerable old lady all alone!
[goes inside with gun]
Ma Boggs: Hospitable? Horseshit!
#3
Waitress: [to Elmo after the Widows question her about Philo's whereabouts] You want to talk, take a walk. You want to eat, take a seat.
[diner erupts into laughter]
Frank: [to fat man at counter] What're you laughing at, lard ass?
Fat Man: [fuming] I tell you what. You turn around and walk out that door, and I'll forget what you said.
[looks up at Frank, grinning]
Fat Man: And I won't tell everybody you drink horse piss!
[waitress and patrons giggle]
Frank: Elmo, Cholla, did you hear what he just said?
Cholla: [fiercely] I heard it.
Waitress: [taking fat man's plate] I'll just keep this warm for you, Lester.
Frank: Okay bigmouth, let's go.
Waitress: [to fat man] You want me to keep a piece of that lemon merangue?
Fat Man: Yeah, this won't take but a minute.
[to Frank]
Fat Man: Let's go, cutes!
[all exit to watch the fight]
#4
Cholla: The very first thing we do is find out who we're talking about. I mean, we don't even know where to find him.
Elmo: How are we gonna find him?
Cholla: Well it appears to me that there can't be too many guys driving around this valley with an ape.
I suppose the moment I came closest to losing hold of the knot was when I tripped at the bar where I was playing trivia last night. Now I have physical limitations and health problems but I've been very sure-footed my entire life. There was a step up to where my team was and as I walked back I forgot to step up and sure enough, down I went.
So maybe my grip on the knot slipped off for a second. But I took hold of it again even more tightly, pulled myself off of the floor and went on with my evening. I'm tired. The schedule strain ends Sunday. I can make it through until then.
The moral is of course, even if you're at the end of that rope, hanging on to the knot and you lose your grip, reach out and grab it again.
* * *
If you were offered $3 million for four days of work in Bulgaria (I'm sure travel expenses would also have been covered), would you have held out for $4 million? I wouldn't have. You probably wouldn't have. Bruce Willis did. As a result he lost those four days of work and that $3 million.
It almost a certainty that he doesn't "need" the money. Estimates place his net worth at between $125 million and $175 million. Was it ego or an inflated sense of his value that caused him to make a demand that the producers of the film (friends of his were among that group) chose not to meet? We'll never know why he did what he did unless he decides to tell us.
In his actions though, he has illustrated a concept I haven't commented on in awhile. I call it the perceived value of labor. The other day when I was at the VA I saw a doctor and a janitor having a conversation. If you want to make the issue very simple because it's easy to hire a replacement janitor than it is to hire a replacement doctor, you would be wrong. Right now there are lots of doctors out there and more graduating every year. We may have a shortage in California, particularly in rural areas but hiring a primary care practitioner in Los Angeles isn't difficult.
Now I'm guessing that this doctor is earning around $150,000 a year. The janitor is earning between $26,000 and $45,000 depending on how long he's been a government employee (starting salary for this job at the VA ranges from $12.65 to $14.77 per hour). Let's use a round number of $30,000 Can we therefore conclude that the actual value of the doctor's labor is five times that of the janitors? Maybe. Maybe not.
What we do know from this is that the perceived value of these two different types of labor by those who make hiring decisions is vastly different. Think about it this way. You're ill. You can wait an hour and pay $125 to a doctor to examine you and prescribe medication to cure your illness, or you can be seen in ten minutes by a janitor who doesn't have the skills, education and experience to diagnose your illness, but who will take his best guess at what will cure you and give it to you. Who would you choose to treat your condition?
So when people say there should be a connection between the salary of a company's CEO and its lowest paid employee, that's just ridiculous. A privately held company gets to pay its employees whatever it wants, as long as it complies with all labor laws. The people who should be the arbiters of a publicly held company's CEO pay are the shareholders of that company. The piece that is currently missing in our society's compensation equation when it comes to CEOs is that their pay isn't tied directly to results immediately. A salesperson working on commission gets paid based on what they sell. If CEO pay were tied to corporate earnings and profitability, the amounts some of them get paid would be quite different than what they are currently earning.
While I see the need for a minimum wage, to ensue that the labor force isn't exploited any more than it is already is, there's no need and in fact no justification for a maximum wage.
Now that I've ranted all of that, here's the crux of the issue. The University of California at Davis just hired a woman to be their "Associate Chancellor for Strategic Communications" at a salary of $260,000. She was earning $230,000 annually in a similar position at the University of South Carolina.
Some try to use the salary the governor is paid as a measure of this salary she's been given as being excessive. But governor is an elected position. Politicians who are elected are compensated differently than government employees who are hired.
But she's definitely being overpaid. This is basically a PR job, it just happens to be in academia and in a state where the people who run the UC system think UC is an acronym for unlimited compensation. I'd like to see public universities be forced to reveal the salaries of all of their employees earning more than $100,000 and a breakdown of the benefits and perks they are getting.
I took a quick look at salaries at USC (the one here, not the former employer of that new UC Davis employee). They pay their new president well over $1 million but it's a distinguished professor of surgery that's pulling down the big salary, more than $2.7 million. Even more than the $2 million plus the football coach got (these numbers are from their 2011 tax return).
Would you pay a master mechanic the same amount of money to fix your car as you would the guy next door who has no formal training in automobile repair? No. Perceived value of labor.
* * *
This Date in History:
1220 – Sweden is defeated by Estonian tribes in the Battle of Lihula.
1503 – King James IV of Scotland marries Margaret Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII of England at Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh, Scotland.
1576 – The cornerstone for Tycho Brahe's Uraniborg observatory is laid on Ven, Denmark.
1585 – John Davis enters Cumberland Sound in search of the Northwest Passage.
1588 – Anglo-Spanish War: Battle of Gravelines – The naval engagement ends, ending the Spanish Armada's attempt to invade England.
1605 – The city of Oulu, Finland, is founded by Charles IX of Sweden.
1647 – The Irish Confederate Wars and Wars of the Three Kingdoms: Battle of Dungan's Hill – English Parliamentary forces defeat Irish forces.
1709 – Bartolomeu de Gusmão demonstrates the lifting power of hot air in an audience before the King of Portugal in Lisbon, Portugal
1786 – Mont Blanc on the French – Italian border is climbed for the first time by Jacques Balmat and Dr. Michel-Gabriel Paccard.
1793 – The insurrection of Lyon occurs during the French Revolution.
1794 – Joseph Whidbey leads an expedition to search for the Northwest Passage near Juneau, Alaska.
1844 – The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, headed by Brigham Young, is reaffirmed as the leading body of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).
1863 – American Civil War: following his defeat in the Battle of Gettysburg, General Robert E. Lee sends a letter of resignation to Confederate President Jefferson Davis (which is refused upon receipt).
1870 – The Republic of Ploiești, a failed Radical-Liberal rising against Domnitor Carol of Romania.
1876 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.
1908 – Wilbur Wright makes his first flight at a racecourse at Le Mans, France. It is the Wright Brothers' first public flight.
1918 – World War I: the Battle of Amiens begins a string of almost continuous victories with a push through the German front lines (Hundred Days Offensive).
1927 – The predecessor to the Philippine Stock Exchange opens.
1929 – The German airship Graf Zeppelin begins a round-the-world flight.
1940 – The "Aufbau Ost" directive is signed by Wilhelm Keitel.
1942 – Quit India Movement is launched in India against the British rule in response to Mohandas Gandhi's call for swaraj or complete independence.
1946 – First flight of the Convair B-36, the world's first mass-produced nuclear weapon delivery vehicle.
1960 – South Kasai secedes from the Congo.
1963 – Great Train Robbery: in England, a gang of 15 train robbers steal £2.6 million in bank notes.
1963 – The Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), the current ruling party of Zimbabwe, is formed by a split from the Zimbabwe African People's Union.
1967 – The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is founded by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
1969 – At a zebra crossing in London, photographer Iain Macmillan takes the photo that becomes the cover of the Beatles album Abbey Road, one of the most famous album covers in recording history.
1973 – Kim Dae-jung, a South Korean politician and later president of South Korea, is kidnapped.
1974 – President Richard Nixon, in a nationwide television address, announces his resignation from the office of the President of the United States effective noon the next day.
1980 – The Central Hotel Fire occurs in Bundoran, Ireland.
1988 – The "8888 Uprising" occurs in Burma.
1989 – Space Shuttle program: STS-28 Mission – Space Shuttle Columbia takes off on a secret five-day military mission.
1990 – Iraq occupies Kuwait and the state is annexed to Iraq. This would lead to the Gulf War shortly afterward.
1991 – The Warsaw radio mast, at one time the tallest construction ever built, collapses.
2000 – Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley is raised to the surface after 136 years on the ocean floor and 30 years after its discovery by undersea explorer E. Lee Spence and 5 years after being filmed by a dive team funded by novelist Clive Cussler.
Famous Folk Born On This Date:
Emperor Horikawa of Japan
Nelson A. Miles
Emiliano Zapata
Sara Teasdale
Arthur Goldberg
Jimmy Witherspoon
William Asher
Rory Calhoun
Rudi Gernreich
Jerry Tarkanian
Mel Tillis
Joe Tex
Serena Wilson
Donald P. Bellisario
Frank Howard
Dustin Hoffman
Ken Dryden
Keith Carradine
Randy Shilts
Robin Quivers
Don Most
Branscombe Richard
Deborah Norville
Kool Moe Dee
Jon Turtletaub
Sable
Eric Angle
Drew Lachey
Roger Federer
Movie quotes for today come from 1978's "Every Which Way But Loose" from the brilliant Clint Eastwood. It's a very funny movie.
Philo Beddoe: I'm not afraid of any man, but when it comes to sharing my feelings with a woman, my stomach turns to royal gelatin.
#2
Cholla: [the Black Widows have shown up at Philo's home, Ma Boggs is on the porch, they pull their bikes into her yard and Cholla pulls up on the porch] Say, old lady, where's Philo Beddoe?
Ma Boggs: How the hell do I know? Get off my porch with that thing. Get off my property!
Cholla: You're uh... you're not very hospitable.
Ma Boggs: Hospitable my ass. Get off my porch!
Cholla: Very well, if you insist.
[Cholla chains his bike to a support on the front porch, pulling it down... bikers laugh, Ma pulls out a pump-action shotgun]
Woody: [seeing the gun] Alright lady... put down that gun now!
[bikers dive out of her way]
Woody: I'm warning you lady! Put down that gun now!
[Ma fires and bike next to Woody explodes... she shoots several other bikes as they're attempting to flee]
Ma Boggs: [during a recoil] Oof!
Woody: [running after his gang on foot] Wait for me!
Ma Boggs: [seeing the flaming bikes on her lawn... to herself] First the police, and I told those boys not to leave a vulnerable old lady all alone!
[goes inside with gun]
Ma Boggs: Hospitable? Horseshit!
#3
Waitress: [to Elmo after the Widows question her about Philo's whereabouts] You want to talk, take a walk. You want to eat, take a seat.
[diner erupts into laughter]
Frank: [to fat man at counter] What're you laughing at, lard ass?
Fat Man: [fuming] I tell you what. You turn around and walk out that door, and I'll forget what you said.
[looks up at Frank, grinning]
Fat Man: And I won't tell everybody you drink horse piss!
[waitress and patrons giggle]
Frank: Elmo, Cholla, did you hear what he just said?
Cholla: [fiercely] I heard it.
Waitress: [taking fat man's plate] I'll just keep this warm for you, Lester.
Frank: Okay bigmouth, let's go.
Waitress: [to fat man] You want me to keep a piece of that lemon merangue?
Fat Man: Yeah, this won't take but a minute.
[to Frank]
Fat Man: Let's go, cutes!
[all exit to watch the fight]
#4
Cholla: The very first thing we do is find out who we're talking about. I mean, we don't even know where to find him.
Elmo: How are we gonna find him?
Cholla: Well it appears to me that there can't be too many guys driving around this valley with an ape.
posted by me at 3:08 PM
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