The families of kindergarten teachers make less in a year than the average top 25 hedge fund manager makes in 15 minutes. Photograph; Blanton Elementary School kindergarten teacher Amy Collins, left with her class on Monday, August 20, 2012 in Lealman, Florida. (AP Photo/The Tampa Bay Times, Scott Keeler)
By Sam Pizzigati | Originally Published at Too Much. May 10, 2014

The latest annual hedge fund industry pay stats have suits smiling — and ordinary mortals worrying about public education’s future.

Pharrell Williams has reason to be happy. The singer and music producer has had the world’s hottest pop single over the past six months. His Happy has been topping the charts everywhere, from the United States to Lebanon and Bulgaria.
If this bouncy ditty keeps selling, Williams might even end up 2014 as happy as Taylor Swift, the most lavishly compensated musical artist in all of 2013. Swift took home $39.7 million for the year.
But Pharrell Williams, if he should hit that lofty mark, probably still wouldn’t be feeling nearly as tickled and giddy as the over 3,000 power suits who were swaying to his Happy last Monday.

A hedge fund manager in 2013
had to take in $300 million
to make the top 25.

Those suits — an assemblage that included most all the major domos of hedge fund America — were attending an annual high-powered investment conference in Manhattan. At the conference close, reports,Businessweek, the attendees all rose as Happy’s infectious beat filled Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall.
What had the hedgies so happy? The rest of us found out the next day. In 2013, the trade journal Alphaempathyeducates – Hedge Fund Titans Hum a Happy Tune, ‘Public Education Is For Sale’: