How was your 2010? John Paulson's wasn't too bad. The hedge fund manager pulled in a personal payday of $5 billion. This comes after his 2009 pay of $2.3 billion, $2 billion in 2008, and $3.7 billion in 2007.

Average it out, and the guy has made about $100 per second over the past four years. Every second. Of every day. Of every year.

Here's how Paulson's 2010 pay compares to other professions:

Profession Average Salary (2009) Time It Took Paulson to Earn This Much in 2010 Biomedical engineers $82,550 9 minutes Computer hardware engineers $101,410 11 minutes Elementary school teachers $53,150 6 minutes Registered nurses $66,530 7 minutes Surgeons $219,770 23 minutes Family and general practitioners $168,550 18 minutes Microbiologists $71,980 8 minutes Firefighters $47,270 5 minutes Police and sheriff's patrol officers $55,180 6 minutes Petroleum engineers $119,960 13 minutes Education administrators $80,140 8 minutes Engineering teachers $92,970 10 minutes Emergency medical technicians and paramedics $33,020 3 minutes Average Goldman Sachs employee $430,700 45 minutes President Obama $400,000 42 minutes Total GDP of the bottom 10 nations in the world $1.4 billion 3.3 Months

Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Reuters, CIA World Factbook, author's calculations.

As is well known, Paulson made his money first by shorting the housing market in 2007, then switching that bet around with huge bets on Citigroup (NYSE: C) and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) in 2009. He's also long and strong gold, with big stakes in Kinross Gold (NYSE: KGC) and AngloGold Ashanti (NYSE: AU) .

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with Paulson's pay. If he isn't smarter than most people, he's obviously bolder. He's figured out capitalism, and good for him.

Still, I think this comment from Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) (NYSE: BRK-B) vice-chairman Charlie Munger sums the situation up nicely:

A big percentage of Cal-Tech grads are going into finance. I regard this as a regretfully bad outcome. They'll make a lot of money by clobbering customers who aren't as smart as them. It's a mistake. I look at this in terms of losses from the diversion of our best talent going into some money-grubbing exercise.

Paulson deserves whatever money he can make, but there's something tragic about our best and brightest -- the people who should be engineering airplanes and curing cancer -- choosing instead to trade derivatives and short financial bubbles.

What do you think?