quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

In an e-mail following up on my initial inquiry, Detective Cheryl Crispin, a police spokeswoman, wrote that stolen strollers were “not a problem here in the city, period.”

“I believe it was a problem out West,” she wrote.

love the idea of a lawless frontier where death is a card game away and no $400 stroller is safe

people in brooklyn mourning their stolen smartphones is a quiddities article that needs to be written.

that article makes me want to move to brooklyn so that i can steal strollers

― j., Sunday, July 3, 2011 3:44 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah was thinking this is a market that needs exploiting

i wouldn't be looking to profit, just throw them in whatever river is closest

gowanus canal, filled w/strollers and guns

turning the entire canal into stroller-landfill = a cheap and easy alternative to the billion dollar superfund cleanup

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/nyregion/with-salary-freeze-more-new-york-judges-are-leaving-the-bench.html?hp

Emily Jane Goodman, a State Supreme Court justice in Manhattan, said the practical effect of her stalled pay was that she had to sell a summer home in the Hamptons and was having trouble paying for increasing fees on her two-bedroom apartment in the city.

“Here I am,” Justice Goodman said, “in a position where I’m working to achieve justice for other people and I don’t feel that I’m experiencing justice.”

eh, as bad as that part reads, I think there's a legit issue in there. If you want good quality judges, you have to pay enough to make it a comfortable lifestyle. $144,000 is a nice salary but it's not a lot for someone with 20 or 30 years of experience and top qualifications in a specialized professional field. I mean a teacher with that much experience can make $100,000 in New York just for sticking it out that long.

Current and former judges described the pressures they felt in fending off offers and trying to pay for mortgages and tuition bills. Mr. Spolzino, 52, said he had expected that he would remain until retirement, as judges did in the past.

“It’s very heady when you walk into a room and everybody rises, people laugh at your jokes,” he said.

Must be tough, only making three times NYC's median household income and 'fending off' people trying to pay you more. But what choice does he have if he wants people to laugh at his jokes?

If you want good quality judges, you have to pay enough to make it a comfortable lifestyle.

this is nyt speak

I mean ultimately what's the lower limit of 'comfortable'? if we're comparing their salaries to nyc partner salaries, is $300,000 still not going to be 'comfortable'?

kids fresh outta law school who get into Manhattan BigLaw (and don't even know if they've passed the Bar Exam yet) make more than $144K/year (and that's not counting any bonuses). keep that in mind when critiquing Judge Goodman's statement.

how do you go from owning (or whatever) a summer home to having trouble paying fees on your two-bedroom apartment?

how do you go from owning (or whatever) a summer home to having trouble paying fees on your two-bedroom apartment?

condo fees and/or poor personal financial management are two possibilities.

condo BOARDS raising condo fees sky-high i meant.

el condo pasa

I'd rather be a judge than go to jail...

kids fresh outta law school who get into Manhattan BigLaw (and don't even know if they've passed the Bar Exam yet) make more than $144K/year (and that's not counting any bonuses). keep that in mind when critiquing Judge Goodman's statement.

yeah but we don't have to pay their salary w/ our tax dollars

yeah but we don't have to pay their salary w/ our tax dollars

actually, you do ... to the extent that any of these BigLaw attorneys have any federal student loans (which, admittedly, gets paid back with interest and is damn near impossible to discharge in bankruptcy).

the real point, though, is that newly-minted JDs who work for BigLaw and who've never set foot in a courthouse (and most likely won't for years) are getting paid more money than the judges who rule on cases brought by their firms. kinda absurd, regardless of who's picking up the tab.

being a judge is awesome tho

1 you get to wear a rad robe
2 screw over anyone you h8

^worth like 200k a/y imho

NY Supreme Court, BTW, is the trial-level court for the NY State court system. Appellate Division and the Court of Appeals (NYS's highest state court) judges probably make close to $200K/year.

http://www.ratemydrawings.com/images/thumbs/2009/09/05/5611/561155.jpg

Actually chief judge of the NY Court of Appeals earns $156,000:

http://www.courts.state.ny.us/publications/pdfs/NCSCJudicialCompReport.pdf

Report is worth skimming through. Judges haven't even gotten cost-of-living increases in 12 years -- their salary has been declining in real terms. It's less a matter of feeling sorry for someone that they have to give up a summer home and more just a matter of wanting to make sure we have qualified judges.

Report also notes that a lot of comparable public positions earn more -- including district attorneys!

she had to sell a summer home in the Hamptons

not getting into the actual pay grades of these folks, but uh this is not exactly about *struggle* is it

- I don't know how much a judge *should* make but at the end of the day they are public servants / the money we spend on them comes at the expense of something else
- any high-powered million a year partner job is gonna require other big lifestyle sacrifices (trustmeIknow)
- in any case if there's going to be a huge gap between what we can afford to pay for the 'best' lawyers, how much is it worth it for society to have the 'best' lawyers as judges?
- tbh I mostly just wanted to paste the quote where she says "I don’t feel that I’m experiencing justice."

er

in any case if there's going to be a huge gap between what we can afford to pay for the 'best' lawyers *and what they can make in the private sector*

i feel it's unjust not to own a house in the hamptons. how will little my little colin-dakota bean and sophia isabella bean ever get to look down on virtually all their neighbors?

not at nytimes – at atlantic monthly, but basically the same thing – but this article has some pretty choice quotes secret fears of the super-rich

maybe she's FROM the hamptons.

xpost

http://www.lawyers.vetfems.org/profile-egoodman.html

aforementioned judge, you'd think she'd have a better perspective on 'justice'

haha tracer, so what if she is? the true injustice is that she can only afford one place of residence, surely.

i mean, the summer home could be anywhere; provincetown, the vineyard, nantucket, shelter island. the real tragedy is that she is trapped in her 2 bedroom condo, in the city, forever.

that atlantic article is kind of amazing

best argument for wealth-redistribution ive seen this week

Many wealthy parents structure their children’s inheritances such that the money arrives only in discrete packets, timed to ensure that during their formative years they have no choice but to find a vocation. But Kenny hasn’t seen the strategy work, he says, because the children always know that the money is out there, and usually their friends do too. “We try to get our kids to do chores,” one survey respondent complains, but it’s hard to get them to mow the lawn when “we have an almost full-time gardener.”

life is tough

i mean really the whole article basically is like "being rich sucks," at which point its like, so why bother having rich people??

my old roommate believed in a flat 100% inheritance tax, as a leveling mechanism, with a few provisos for orphaned children and v. v. minimal cost-of-living allowances for spouses. but i've always wondered about the idea: you can give away all your shit before you die, but once you've kicked the bucket, your money goes straight into the welfare system.

best argument for wealth-redistribution ive seen this week

― ☂ (max), Tuesday, July 5, 2011 10:53 AM (29 minutes ago)

how does it rank among the best pro-wealth redistribution articles of the year, though? 2011 has been particularly strong

there are a lot of good arguments for wealth-redistribution featured in articles in this thread!

my old roommate believed in a flat 100% inheritance tax, as a leveling mechanism, with a few provisos for orphaned children and v. v. minimal cost-of-living allowances for spouses. but i've always wondered about the idea: you can give away all your shit before you die, but once you've kicked the bucket, your money goes straight into the welfare system.

― remy bean, Tuesday, July 5, 2011 11:02 AM (27 minutes ago)

ideologically i am 100% behind this but i doubt even a democratic congress with a demmocratic president these days would even approach this - oh wait they just reduced this last year! death tax!

Serious suggestion: people who inherit that level of wealth, instead of worrying about having v. not having jobs, should just start some kind of vanity business and employ people. Best case scenario it might even be profitable.

You mean like the Trump family? :)

Or Jared Kushner, or dubya, I guess

'the only thing that makes me unhappier than having all this money is the thought of someone else having it'

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/nyregion/more-apartments-are-empty-yet-rented-or-owned-census-finds.html?_r=1&hp

Slightly lateral to topic, but this (old) story indicates there's a lot of vacant residences in Sydney too.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/empty-dwellings-in-a-city-desperate-for-places-to-live/2008/05/25/1211653847174.html

"He described the part-timers as 'skim-milk New Yorkers — only 2 percent.'"

No offense to the author and keen urban observer Gay Talese, but skim milk and 2% milk are two different things.

Ha i thought the exact same thing.