… based on rigid, out-moded social mores, the kind of businesses that the Left feels don’t pay their fair share
CHICAGO — Dave Tiderman wondered if the decimal point was in the wrong place when he opened his $35,000 company bonus. Jose Rojas saw his $10,000 check and thought, “That can’t be right.”Valentin Dima watched co-workers breaking down in tears over their bonus checks and didn’t trust his emotions. He drove home first, then opened his envelope: $33,000.
Year-end bonuses are rare these days. Rarer still is what the Spungen family, owners of a ball bearings company in Waukegan, about 40 miles north of Chicago, did as they sold the business.
They gave out whopping thank-you bonuses. [...]
“They treated us like extended family,” said Maria Dima, who works at Peer Bearing along with her husband, Valentin, and received a somewhat smaller check than he did. “We won the lottery.”
With $100 million in sales last year, Peer recently was acquired by a Swedish company for an undisclosed amount. Danny Spungen, whose grandfather founded the company in 1941, said it was a unanimous family decision to thank employees with the bonuses.
Laurence and Florence Spungen and their four children decided on a bonus formula a year before the sale closed to SKF Group, “a gamble that we would come out OK as well,” Danny Spungen said.
He and other family members signed, by hand, two thank-you cards to each employee, one in Spanish and one in English. Each card was printed with all the workers’ names and the years they were hired. The text expressed gratitude for “the loyalty and hard work of our employees over the years.”
Nathan Spungen, who died in 1990, would have approved, Danny Spungen, 47, said. He noted the elder Spungen was generous with customers who owed money. “My grandfather was always charitable,” he said.
Charity? Pfffft. A Nanny government needs no competitors. Hope, change and free gas! That’s the ticket.
Comment by cranky-d on 11/30 @ 2:18 pm #
But, but, but… big companies are EVIL ENTITIES THAT TAKE ALL OUR MONEY. And stuff like that.
Comment by meya on 11/30 @ 2:26 pm #
“… based on rigid, out-moded social mores”
Out moded social mores like higher wages and profit shares? Man the left hates that. Card in Spanish was cute though.
Comment by Jeffersonian on 11/30 @ 2:32 pm #
Just think of all the good things our politicians could have done with that money. Now it’s going for frivolous things instead of the Robert Byrd Memorial Furr-Bearing Trout Farm or the Dick Durbin Flatus Windmill Farm.
Comment by meya on 11/30 @ 2:38 pm #
“Just think of all the good things our politicians could have done with that money.”
Depending on tax treatment, the government may get to see more of it as a result of these actions. If it was capital gains for the employer, but now wages for the employee, and since we tax work more than owning shit (class war! huzzah!), it may be that the government will get more of it now.
Comment by Sdferr on 11/30 @ 2:53 pm #
More of it meya? More than it was to start out with, which total seizure was the simple (and funny) implication of Jeffersonian’s joke? Why would you twist so simple a thing in order to come out sounding stupid, when you clearly want to sound smart?
Comment by thor on 11/30 @ 3:06 pm #
What’s the point, again? That family owned businesses are more generous than public ones? I don’t get it because if the employees owned stock they’d have gotten their take-over bonuses from the premium in stock price, which is paid for by the acquiring company, same as the bonuses this little family operation paid out.
And somehow this non-event is an indictment of Leftists like – let me guess – Barney Frank, somehow, someway.
As I said before, table-pound cluelessness is why you lost the election. No sense whatsoever.
Comment by B Moe on 11/30 @ 3:20 pm #
We might should listen to thor on this one, if there is one thing he is an expert on it is cluelessness.
Comment by cranky-d on 11/30 @ 3:49 pm #
Your guy won the election. Your work here is done. Go forward, brave warrior, and receive your reward from the man you tirelessly promoted as the solution to the problems of this country. Do not tarry further.
Comment by maggie katzen on 11/30 @ 3:49 pm #
um, bonuses are usually taxed at a higher rate than wages. last time I had to figure that kind of thing it was around 33%
Comment by Rob Crawford on 11/30 @ 3:49 pm #
How much would inheritance taxes have taken? That might give you a clue.
Doubt it, though. You have to want to get clues.
Comment by Lyndsey on 11/30 @ 3:58 pm #
That is technically correct, thor, because of corporate law. What makes this virtuous is that is was done sans legal requirement. It wasn’t required, it was KIND. Generosity. The worth of choices. Which some people can’t understand.
Comment by Jeffersonian on 11/30 @ 4:02 pm #
Which some people can’t understand.
Given liberals’ niggardly charitible giving, it’s doubtful Thor will comprehend.
Comment by Lyndsey on 11/30 @ 4:15 pm #
I only post knowing what I need to say. And I’m okay with it.
Comment by Darleen on 11/30 @ 4:20 pm #
#2 meya
see #11
(bravo, Lyndsey)
Comment by thor on 11/30 @ 4:40 pm #
Not really. It’s all too common, actually, and there could’a been a covenant in the actual purchase agreement for purposes of employee retention, that’s common as well, and the owners could be lifelong Dems or Repubs or a mix of both, actually.
No part of this example provides any well-reasoned argument for left or right political one-upsmanship banter.
When private companies get taken over they usually reward their employees with a bonus, though their not obliged by law, ya, common knowledge. Private companies also commonly pay a year-end bonus when they have a record year, ya, common knowledge, and so do public companies. It’s the methodology of pacifying and rewarding working class subordinates, ya, common knowledge.
I used to hand out bonus checks to my managers, ya, people loved me more when I handed them an envelop of cash, ya, then they gossiped on who got the biggest bonus and why, ya, and it did come down to who the fuck I liked bestest, ya.
Comment by Lyndsey on 11/30 @ 5:25 pm #
I don’t believe I brought up any left or right “one-upmanship- banter” argument..I believed I was was addressing an issue involving non-governmentally mandated “generosity”. The fact that you were at one time a lackey that handed out other people’s money really isn’t relevant to my point. Were they, in this situation, entitled to the bonuses? In this situation it appears that the answer was NO. So, then was it bad or good that they got bonuses? Do we care? Was your point that “required generosity” is more valid than “unrequired generosity”? I’m not sure that the latter actually exists.
Comment by SDN on 11/30 @ 6:11 pm #
Actually, maggie, the company I work for just pays out bonuses as an extra paycheck; all the payroll taxes, witholding, 401k deductions, etc. are withheld.
Comment by thor on 11/30 @ 6:43 pm #
I worked for a private (our owner had a family, so let’s call it a privately-owned family business since redumblicans like their nonsensical metaphors to be warm and fuzzy) company when I was a lackey handing out other people’s money. If you were literate you would have concluded my point was that bonuses are common practice in both privately owned and publicly owned businesses… and the age-old practice of giving employee bonuses has never been mandated by the government. Doh!
Comment by Lyndsey on 11/30 @ 7:15 pm #
Huh. I suppose literate people would spell “they’re” correctly, but whatever…first the strawman argument, then the anectodal evidence, then the bipartisan stuff…you’re amazing. Bonuses are typically given at the discretion of the employer, yes….they’re not a “given”. Your point seems to be that this story is a non-story, so why are you posting again? I was so enjoying the warm and fuzzy nonsensical metaphors…..
Comment by thor on 11/30 @ 7:21 pm #
“given.”
It’s the American way.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 11/30 @ 7:40 pm #
“Comment by thor on 11/30 @ 3:06 pm #
What’s the point, again?”
The top of your head, moron.
Comment by Spiny Norman on 11/30 @ 9:05 pm #
Not only is thor a drunken idiot, he’s a lying asswipe.
Comment by maggie katzen on 11/30 @ 10:51 pm #
I looked it up later… and it has changed since I was doing it (many, many years ago. I don’t really have to use my accounting brain anymores)… and you are mostly correct. There’s something about if it’s over a million it’s a flat 35%. anything up to that is basically taxed the same as wages. which I guess is better.
Comment by J."Trashman" Peden on 11/30 @ 11:44 pm #
Out moded social mores like higher wages and profit shares? Man the left hates that.
Probably because the Big Three Auto Makers in the U.S. are almost certainly going to have to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy because of such higher wages and profit sharing – via benefits, including unsupportable retirement plans, no doubt?
With no effective resurrection of jobs, wages, and benefits in view even with a Gov’t bailout? Hey, I guess the Unions were just trying to help by modeling your plan.
But I suppose Gov’t can do it better. Oh wait, the Central Gov’t itself is even more and more bankrupt – and now quite significantly moreso, thanks to the CRA, the threats from various “concerned” entities involving charges of “redlining” and bad PR stunts, and of course, the GSE entities Freddy and Fanny sucking up massive amounts of this bad debt in order to do their benevolent best to “help” the poor so that income can be redistributed. Again with no end to it in sight.
Related anecdote: once I let a Black Grandmother live rent free with her two small Grandaughters, which her daughter had dropped on her, in the first house I ever bought – for 12 years. She also received full Welfare benefits, including rent support. So what she was doing was probably illegal. But she knew how to get the right things done, which she did. And I was happy to help.
What about you, meya?
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[...] The kind of successful, family business [Darleen Click] [...]
Comment by donald on 12/1 @ 7:24 am #
Thor needs to start his own business and then use that magnificent personality to go gangbusters. I bet he’d be real successful.
Comment by datadave on 12/1 @ 7:54 am #
whoa, here Darleen Click, while working at a secure govt. job takes the most exceptional case and tries to prove a point that business people are generally generous.
Having worked in small business all my life, I take umbrage at the obvious contradiction here. Someone talking up business while working in a secure govt. job. The reality explained in this exceptional case is that Foreign ownership of a business is what is happening and when the new owners realize that they can’t make money in the ol’ USA (after Big Finance has ripped the country to shreds..) those people in that little company will lose their jobs. But of course the family that sold the business will be protected from having to work for a living for several generations. Good on them for sharing a bit of the big payoff for selling. But really, after working for dozens of small businesses, I can state from fact, (not from Darling’s blovating idiotic ideology) they are indeed a rare exception.
don’t you love those 401K rip-offs too? Small business’s pensions gone to hell in a hand-basket.
Again the former owners in this idiosyncratic case should be acclaimed for their generosity but they are a very rare exception.
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 12/1 @ 7:58 am #
What kind of pensions do your illegal-alien employees get, datadipshit?
Oh, right: you don’t even pay taxes, much less provide any benefits.
Comment by datadave on 12/1 @ 8:21 am #
ah yes, I guess I am the future of small business. sad, isn’t it? Who needs illegals, they’ll be plenty of starving natives willing to work for less. Thank You, Republicans for making the Labor Market so cheap.
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 12/1 @ 8:27 am #
Translation: you’re not going to answer the question.
As usual.
You’re a fucking cartoon character, datadipshit.
Comment by Slartibartfast on 12/1 @ 8:47 am #
I’m not sure if your paper route counts as a small business, dave.
Comment by B Moe on 12/1 @ 10:02 am #
Having worked in small business all my life, I take umbrage at the obvious contradiction here.
What? A confessed tax cheat ranting about government spending?
Comment by B Moe on 12/1 @ 10:03 am #
….don’t you love those 401K rip-offs too?
Those are just speculative at this point, dave. Pelosi still has to actually get the legislation passed.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 12/1 @ 10:41 am #
“Comment by datadave on 12/1 @ 8:21 am #
ah yes, I guess I am the future of small business.”
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH WE’RE DOOMED DOOMED I TELL YOU!!!!!!111!!!!
AAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!11!11eleventy!!!
-J. Henry Smallbusinessman
Comment by Rob Crawford on 12/1 @ 11:04 am #
B Moe, I think dickless dave thinks 401ks are themselves rip-offs. We are talking about a guy who publicly admits to cheating on his taxes.
Comment by J."Trashman" Peden on 12/1 @ 11:06 am #
…the obvious contradiction here. Someone talking up business while working in a secure govt. job.
That one should be memorialized somehow, perhaps as pathognominic of Progressivism qua dementia, or at least as a pardigm of pure trash? Not just called “Communist”.
Comment by J."Trashman" Peden on 12/1 @ 11:08 am #
p.s., <data, that was beautiful.
Comment by Tony LaVanway on 12/1 @ 12:16 pm #
When Danny Spungen dies.
God will send down,Jesus in his cherry red Super-Bee.to pick him up.
tony
south haven,mi
Comment by Rusty on 12/2 @ 4:38 pm #
#29
Lost another job? Maybe it’s you.
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[...] The kind of successful, family business [Darleen Click] [...]