A HEDGE FUND MANAGER WOULD CALL THAT A ROUNDING ERROR

The right-wing CNSnews.com attempts to horrify the rubes:

Teamsters’ Hoffa Made $300,000 in 2010

International Brotherhood of Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa Jr. was paid a base salary of $294,285 in 2010, according to the labor union’s financial disclosure forms.

Hoffa made headlines on Labor Day with comments calling union members part of President Obama’s electoral "army" who will "beat the Tea Party and give this country back to workers and America." ...

Omigod! An organization executive making a six-figure salary!

Just for the sake of comparison:

25 Hedge Managers Earn as Much as 441,400 Americans

Ten years ago, when the hedge fund industry was much smaller than it is today, it took 25 hedge fund managers to earn a combined annual payday of $5 billion.

Last year, it took only one.

John Paulson, who rose to fame in 2007 with a prescient bet against subprime mortgages, earned a record $4.9 billion in 2010 as a result of a big wager that his fund, Paulson & Company, made on gold. The metal soared last year, lifting the values of some hedge funds by more than 30 percent.

Last year was very lucrative for some of the biggest and best-performing hedge funds' chiefs. Wealth was so concentrated that a mere 25 people pocketed a total of $22.07 billion, according to this year’s annual ranking by AR Magazine, which tracks the hedge fund industry....

Hoffa's base salary in 2010 was $294,285? That's approximately what John Paulson made every half hour of every day of the year in 2010. (His hourly income was approximately $560,000.)

And Hoffa's base salary was subject to income tax. Paulson's earnings, presumably, were consider "carried interest," and thus were taxed at the low capital-gains tax rate.