Turn on the news, pick up the paper, talk to someone and most likely they have heard all the latest news of yet another company, corporation, government agency or home buyer admitting to financial failure. Extending further the already bulging burden of money to be paid back for bailing them out. Reorganization, forced early retirement, layoffs and simply fired due to economic cutouts are what companies, corporations and others are doing presently to try and save money. Filling for bankruptcy is becoming a trend in order to get out from the financial burden of a mortgage that can no longer be afforded.

Heads of companies and others taking bonuses they feel are due them, not handing them back in order to put the monies back in to the company. While still others are taking flights to meetings and making news doing so. Now the Post Master General has received a fat bonus. Are these bonuses being given out like candy for jobs well done by companies that have had a fantastic financial year?

Correct me if I am wrong here but were bonuses not put in to play many years ago when companies were doing well as a reward for a job well done. Today, many feel as though they are part of their salary and their God given right to have and they expect and outright demand them regardless of whether the company has done well or not. This does not work well when the company or corporation is financially drowning, not to mention it makes the recipient look horrendous.

The financially unstable bus is getting a little on the full side with more companies, corporations and individuals looking to be bailed out and let the little people pay the price of this. They chop the jobs of the lower wage earners and expect in the end for whomever to pay the price so long as they get their comeuppance in bonuses. Somehow this just does not begin to make sense to me or many for that matter.

Employers used bonuses to reward workers’ and if the company or corporation did not do well that year financially the bonus was not forthcoming. Tough times call for tough measurements. Cutbacks and belt tightening in order to keep everyone employed would be great but not all think this way. If not taking that bonus, overtime or raise would help keep others’ employed many workers would be most willing to oblige. However when AIG bonus recipients were questioned about bonuses that they received some gave theirs back while others said that they would not give them back. Again, correct me if I am wrong but the giver of such bonus could not afford that bonus, why was it ever given?

Having read an article recently about a CEO, from a Boston hospital, talking to employees about what he wanted to do in order to keep everyone employed. I find it rather difficult to contemplate why it took this one CEO to shed light on what others should have been doing all along to save their company or corporation. Ask employees, most are willing to do what they can in order to save jobs for themselves and others. No one wakes up in the morning wishing to find their self unemployed and filing for unemployment. Worrying how they will pay their bills and keep things going for their family and/or themselves. No one wants to see the disaster that is looming ahead come to realization but it is looking more and more inevitable. Look around, we are becoming; a what is in it for me society and forgetting about our fellow man. Quoting John F. Kennedy, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”