It would be interesting, albeit embarrassing, for all of us to have a public review of how we spent our money last year, presuming that every penny could actually be accounted for. In many cases, no one would be more surprised than ourselves. I think we d have a lot of wives saying, you know Ebenzer, even with your Midas wardrobe, we can spare a few more coppers for the Tiny Tim program for disadvantaged youth. We live in a world of inexact rewards and perq s. When I started teaching at Rutgers University, I was disappointed to learn that starting salaries on the faculty were slightly lower than the workers that take up tolls on the Garden State Parkway.
People say that there are rewards to teaching that money can t buy and it is true.
But, if we were forced to live on their salary for a couple months, they d have their salaries doubled forthwith. I was talking with the one of the top executives of an advertising firm in New York. He told me that he had recently requested a review of starting salaries for new hires. His daughter, fresh out of college, had just started working for one of their competitors and dear old Dad was subsidizing the rent for a place she was sharing with 3 other people because she wasn t making enough to live on. We could give the Christ Child the gift of our budgets and our priorities.