I am totally with you. As the market began to turn sour, managers at my company raced to hire all of their friends into management jobs, sometimes creating new management jobs for them, and not bothering to hire any of the people who would actually do the work. As a result, every org chart looks like an "inverted pyramid" with a dozen paper-shuffling managers at the top, and six or seven poor saps like myself who are doing the work. As the equation goes, more work done by the same amount of people = more efficiency. Damn the morale of the employees... It fell from 54% to 27% since last year and the message to us was "be glad you have a job."

So I get your point. But I'm not making generalizations about anyone, I'm talking about direct experiences I've had with people who are living way beyond their means just because they thought they had a spot reserved on the gravy train.