Labor Day
AlterNet: WorkPlace: It's Not Easy Being Ultra-Rich
On Labor Day we customarily give a nod to America's underpaid and overworked blue and pink collar workers -- janitors, flight attendants, forklift operators and the like.
But this year let's go a step further and salute the most reviled and despised of the people who make our economy happen, the mere mention of whom causes the average forklift operator to spit on the floor. You are thinking perhaps of telemarketers, human traffickers, and the fiends who answer the phone when you to try to make a claim on your health insurance. But I'm talking about our CEOs.
Just in time for the holiday, two liberal groups -- United for a Fair Economy and the Institute for Policy Studies -- have issued a gleefully malicious new attack on our CEO class. They point out that the CEOs of large companies earn an average of $10.8 million a year, which is 362 times as much as the average American worker, and retire with $10.1 million in their special exclusive CEO pension funds.
They further point out that the compensation of US CEOs wildly exceeds that of their European counterparts, who, we are invited to believe, work equally hard. . .
Comments
I dunno, Onegood, I think this was reaching a bit far for the columnist to make her argument. If she could have kept it a BIT more succinct, maybe....
So... capitalism is bad and all rich company heads are evil. Got it.
What the hell is the matter with you? The point of the article is that a system that lets someone making over 300 times the average wage is fucked up. You certainly aren't arguing for an unregulated capitalism, are you?
Haha, yeah, because nobody in their right mind ever argues for that. </sarcasm>
IMO, saying the economy works best without any appropriate regulation is like saying humans would be healthier without any appropriate medicine.
No, Norm, I'm not arguing for unregulated capitalism. I do, however, take issue with the generalizations and the tone of this article. CEO stands for “corporate executive officer.” The title of CEO is not somehow equivalent to the title of “corporate thief” or “robber baron.” A CEO is rarely someone who was born into their fortune.
There are plenty of men and women out there who aspire to lead companies without limitless greed and neglect of their employees. There are plenty of CEOs well deserving of their fortunes. I just feel the author could have been more effective if she had chosen a different expression than “CEO class.”
I know it may be silly, but the term “CEO class” is misleading. The expression sounds jealous, and almost bigoted (Coulter-esque, if you will). I understand what she means to say. But, to me, the article comes off as a misguided slam on rich, successful people. I don’t think movie stars and pro athletes deserve as much as they earn either, but in a capitalist economy, that’s how this stuff goes.
The distribution of wealth and the shrinking middle class in the US is an alarming problem. That is undeniable. However, let’s not imply that anyone who heads a company is somehow greedy, heartless, “scum.”
Steve, Sorry, but if corporate CEOs and other decision makers care about the manner in which they are portrayed (and I rather doubt that they do), then there is much they can do to remedy the situation. First of all, there is no reason at all that they can't go before their boards and ask them to reduce their outrageously bloated compensation. And look at some of these guys - the most outrageous recent case is the new CEO of newly privatized Chrysler corporation, Bob Nardelli:
He came to Chrysler after walking away from Home Depot with a $210 million golden parachute, after having been paid $124 million over 6 years. In 6 years at Home Depot the company's stock price was up 6%, and though the company grew rapidly, their competitor, Lowes, grew much faster. The man knows nothing about designing or building cars - he likes NASCAR. Sounds like an ad for Holiday Inn Express! What kind of idiots hired this asshole? (The same kind of idiots that fired Steve Jobs from Apple in the early 90's and replaced him with someone who ran a soft drink company.) If corporate decision makers don't want the proles to conclude "that anyone who heads a company is somehow [a] greedy, heartless, scum”, it is entirely within their power to correct that impression.
First, it's important to remember that stockholders are the ultimate controllers of these large companies. While people like Thomas Minder may be on the right track encouraging a greater connection between executive pay and shareholders' votes, if shareholders all agreed CEO's shouldn't be paid as much as they are, this "problem" would be easily correctable.
Secondly, when comparing European CEOs to American CEOs it is important to account for the extra risk taken by American CEOs (not all of whom have absurdly generous golden parachutes). The average European CEO is far less likely to be fired for single quarter's poor earnings. In other words, European stockholders are more forgiving and the performance of a company is not as directly placed upon the CEO.
While 300+ times the average worker seems absurd at first, when considering the influence and responsibility of a CEO running America's largest companies (presumably the Fortune 500, given no further information), being responsible for tens of thousands of employees and billions of dollars in revenue, an average of ten million dollars becomes a less significant sum in the greater scheme (even less significant when considering the salaries of other careers in business, namely banking).
I found Tim's comment "it is entirely within their power to correct that impression" particularly interesting. I would tend to think that most American workers, in general, don't question whether they are overpaid. To imply that CEOs should be morally directed towards analyzing their compensation and asking for less if they calculate themselves to be overcompensated in comparison to the rest of the world (noting that such valuations can be difficult/subjective to begin with) also implies the American factory worker should question why he is paid more than those doing the same job in other parts of the world.
As a miniscule side note, the Lowes vs. Home Depot comparison is not entirely fair. Lowes grew faster than Home Depot due, at least partially, to the fact that they started as a significantly smaller company and did not face the same issues. It should be noted Lowe's, despite their impressive growth, has not surpassed Home Depot in market capitalization(the total value of outstanding shares). Home Depot stockholders made billions over those six years in question and that should certainly not be ignored.
CEOs may take home relatively large paychecks compared to the average worker, but their influence, responsibility and risk is proportionally larger. There is not only a disparity in pay but a disparity in value among employees.
OT Wiccan gods thanked for lottery win..sigh http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/World/2007/09/03/4466573-sun.html
Well done. Don't rebut my argument; just complain about my language choice. Maybe you can also get Joanne in here to protest that I'm attacking the writer because she is a woman....
To start one's own company and become a wealthy CEO is, for some, the American dream. You will surely lose other readers if you continue to post and defend such anti-capitalist, anti-American sentiment.
In the mean time, I'll be sure to unsubscribe from this RSS feed. Good luck with your blog.
Your "argument" was a Straw Man
You're leaving, how sad.
Maybe you can also get Joanne in here to protest that I'm attacking the writer because she is a woman....
LOL! Silly bunny. However, Jo Ann will point out that the so-called "American Dream" is a myth
@Steve (yeah, i know you left, but still):
So regulating such things would be ok with you? Ok, sounds good. No, it's not. It's an attack on CEO's who salaries have gone from 40x the average worker salary in the 1980's, to 346x the average worker salary in 2007. Is there really that much of a difference in risk between 20 years? The average salaried worker brought home less this year than last year, and the year before that, and the year before that.To some extent you are right. Here's the problem with the analogy though: athletes and movie stars are getting paid. If a club owner was making 45 billion dollars a year on lets say the Chicago Bulls, and michael jordan was making $5.15 an hour, we'd be having the same discussion about that "CEO". Not only that, it gets worse due to globalization. The owners of Wal-Mart probably have a trillion dollars between the 3 or 4 of em, but without the exploitation of third world conditions in places like China and Indonesia, and their own checkers and stockboys for that matter, would they be so rich? Is it fair to make an employee make $5.15 an hour while you make well over that EVERY MINUTE each year? (The Home Depot CEO made $39 a MINUTE for those six years, every minute of every day.)
It's exploitation economics. If the employees had a choice, you bet they'd ask for more. They don't get a choice though, and neither to the shareholders really. It's the "board" that makes the decisions about how much the CEO is worth. There are a lot of investors who buy stock in companies (the shareholders) who don't give a damn what company it is they are investing in. As long as it makes money, it's making THEM money. Damned if it's Nike with it's third world factories, or a mining company in nicaragua that is dumping billions of gallons of toxic chemicals into the local population's water supply.
I just would like to know what a person could do that would be worth $20.6 million ($20,600,000) dollars a year. Honestly, is any person deserving of such a lifestyle that would accompany such a hefty salary?
just as, in the real, companies don't really exist "to make profits," but, to do whatever it is they do, there is a sense in which ALL money is "the people's" money, and certain individuals have been selected by "the people", more or less collectively (wisdom of crowds and all), to be entrusted with more of it ("the people's" money). And others have been selected by the people, more or less collectively (wisdom of crowds and all), to be entrusted with less of it.
It follows that if the wrong individuals are being entrusted with the wrong amounts of money,then, the people, more or less collectively (wisdom of crowds and all), are to blame.
Some evil thoughts about guillotines being far too humane pass through one's head, but,... if the people, more or less collectively (wisdom of crowds and all), are to blame, one's evil quest, graduating from pulling off grasshopper's legs, and feeding them to one,s turtle, to making oneself a tortoise-shell lyre, to cake-fighting, to dogs-in-a-pit, to (eventually),....one's absurdly Ahabian quest after the Great White Whale, well,...
it's all in vain. One burns one's self out in one's own Savonarole-playing .
After all the air is expelled, one feels less than pure as the driven snow, about one's job, one feels/one is, afterall, Indo-European, "Indo," as in "Indonesia," East, AND/or?, west. One's ancestral home is the Grassy Knoll of myth and legend, a Grassy Knoll "of myth," and...
IF, it's are own damned fault. It's no wonder we'd rather get high, drink the Kool-aid, inhale grass gas. One's/Our Ahab's quest after that Great White Whales seems increasingly surreal, whilst the advertissements virtually ARE our reality. If one, and the other, and the other, and the other, and the other, more or less collectively (wisdom of crowds and all), are to blame, one, and the other, and the other , more or less collectively, have
to snap out of it.
Snap out of it!
Not to seem like a product placement perpetrator, but "The Trap", book by Brook, Daniel, is a heck of a rat-trap, race-bait, eye-opening utensil, whatever: Barack is NOT beautiful, on the inside.
Re-Capisce?
(One exposes one's self.)
Grassy Knoll? Green Whale? Giant Pickle (veggie tales)? ...about guillotines being far too humane (bone-fire of the vanities, etc.), flaying? Using powerful electro-magnets? The tidal forces present in the vicinity of a black hole...
(One exposes one's self again.)
Giant Pickle.
:{
Why are my posts always followed by the ramblings of one evil axis?
:{ Indeed.
CEOs may take home relatively large paychecks compared to the average worker, but their influence, responsibility and risk is proportionally larger. There is not only a disparity in pay but a disparity in value among employees.
I have to take issue with this statement. It seems to me that every single position in a company from the janitor on up is integral to the success of the company. That in and of itself seems to me to imply that all employees have a relatively equal value, including the CEO. I understand that CEO pay has to be "competitive" in order to attract talent,and that generally the responsibility is more (though that could be debatable in some cases), but saying the "average workers" don't take risks and are not as valuable is just bullshit.
If a CEO gets fired for a bad quarter, I dare say he/she would be set for quite some time before they really needed to get another job (or they could just sell their summer house in the Hamptons).
If an "ordinary worker" lost his job, say because he had too many sick days because his company doesn't provide health insurance, sans unemployment, this person would have one pay cycle to get another job before they were in danger of not making rent next month.
Whose taking more risk here?
Also, I'll defer to Willey on this because he said it better than I could have: No, it's not. It's an attack on CEO's who salaries have gone from 40x the average worker salary in the 1980's, to 346x the average worker salary in 2007. Is there really that much of a difference in risk between 20 years? The average salaried worker brought home less this year than last year, and the year before that, and the year before that.
To clarify, I fully agree that CEOs are less at risk for serious life problems from being fired than are "ordinary workers." I intended to define risk in your quotation as financial risk to the company. My apologies, it was poorly worded on my part.
I'd also like to defend my point regarding the value of employees. It's undeniable that all members of a company are part of the team and important in their own right, but it's ludicrous to argue that the CEOs contribution to the net earnings of the company (after all, how else would you define value to the company?) through the decisions they make are equivalent to every other employee in the company. If a janitor doesn't show up for a week, the company's operations are far less likely to be disturbed than if the CEO disappeared for a week. Also, replacing a janitor creates far less chaos in a company than replacing a CEO. I'd like to make it very clear that I don't believe the CEO necessarily works harder than the janitor, I would think most CEOs would rather do their own jobs than the janitor’s even if they were paid ten million to perform janitorial duties. It is the set of skills and traits that the CEO brings to the table that make them valuable to a company.
If someone knows the source on the changes executive compensation with time, could they kindly post the link? It is certainly an interesting phenomenon. However as I implied originally, executives will be paid what the market will bear.
While I know it's heinous, I would like for you to imagine this scenario from the point of view of an actual CEO:
You will work at LEAST 70-80 hours a week. You will get into the office before anyone else, and leave after everyone else. You will probably have to go into the office on an aweful lot of Saturdays, and if your company has business relations in Asian markets, you'll need to go in on most Sundays to deal with beginning of the week stuff from Asia.
You will NOT ever go on ANY vacation without access to a phone and email. Most of your vacations will end short, and will never last more than a week. Very often, an emergency will force you to get a plane flight home that day, or come in early. Family dinners will be completely nonexistent, as even if you do get home in time, and have the energy, it's very likely they'll be interrupted by a phone call. Sleep, also, will be quite likely to be interrupted by a phone call.
You will get served subpoenas during dinner at your home on occasion, and are responsible for anything that happens to, or because of, any of your company's employees. If a buyout offer is given to you by another company, you will be personally sued by shareholders for either not selling when they think you should have, selling for too low of a price when there's a higher offer, or selling to a company they dislike for a higher offer. And if they don't sue you for not selling the company, don't worry, the employees will sue you for affecting their job security for selling the company. You will be deposed on a number of occasions when any random activist, customer, client, government agency, or other company feels you have wronged them, no matter how spurious the claim. Even if it's something your predecessor did, and you ended, you will still have to go to court over it. And if you don't pay enough attention to these suits, you WILL lose all your money, life, job, and possibly go to jail.
You will not be there to congratulate your son after his black belt test, or see your daughter's play. Your wife will teach your son to shave as you are overseas, and when your daughter fails out of college, you won't know about it for several days. In fact, you won't even know she is failing, because she won't be confiding in you in anything, as you're always too impatient to talk to. Where you live will not be flexible, as you will have to either live near your job, or live in two places so you can be near your job during the week. All of this will, of course, make almost all your family resent you, possibly even hate you. This assumes of course that you had a family, and that your wife didn't divorce you long ago, if you even were able to get married.
The stress of the 80 hour weeks, deteriorating family life, and lack of any substantive vacation will, of course, shred your immune system, and your cardiovascular system, which will be doubly fun because an illness will not be an excuse to stay home from work. If you can sit upright and muster some form of speech, you'll be at work. But, of course, you won't be having time to exercise pretty much at all, and will spend most of your day seated, and thus your joints and general fitness will plummet. Any old injuries will get worse, making it even harder to exercise on those rare occasions you have time.
Now, this is really just a start of what life as a CEO will be like. Ignoring how much the production of the job is worth, I ask you: How much would you demand I pay you for you to live that life? How much is losing your family, your health, and your sanity worth to you?
I hate my dad. I really do. For a lot of the reasons I mentioned above. And I agree, there are a lot of terrible CEOs who ARE lazy, do get overcompensated, and abuse their position. But all those things I mentioned above? They're true. They're things that I personally saw as the son of a CEO. Do you want the job? Believe me, if you can handle it, they'd be glad to hire you. I know I couldn't begin to handle that job though, a million a year wouldn't be compensation enough.
A:
Obviously, the import of CEO decisions is greater than those of workers on lower rungs of the corporate ladder and their replacement does cause a lot more problems. But please, don't get carried away – CEOs are almost never irreplaceable, and I expect that if a CEO drops dead from the one of the effects of ill health that RPW has described, (s)he'll be replaced. ("The graveyards are full of indispensable men." - Charles de Gaulle ).
I don't disagree with you concerning the undue emphasis that corporate boards may place on the role their CEOs play in the fortunes of companies - both their positive and negative contributions are undoubtedly exaggerated. Remember however, when you are making 400 times what your average workers make, even a single quarter's compensation is twice their lifetime earnings.
If you regard comparisons with European CEOs as invalid, Willey's point still stands. Has the CEO's proportionate share of risk, responsibility, and influence really changed so much in the last 20 or 30 years?
...However as I implied originally, executives will be paid what the market will bear.
All fine and dandy, but as far as I'm concerned that doesn't constitute any kind of rebuttal of Barbara Ehrenreich's article - it is basically a tautology - CEOs get paid what they can get. And as I said originally, I really doubt that they give a damn about their image as long as a poor image doesn't stand in their way of getting more.
A link for compensation data: http://www.ips-dc.org/
RPW:
Being a CEO can clearly make terrific demands on a person's time and personal life. But the time commitment you've described sound quite typical of almost every assistant professor I've ever known in top-tier science departments (and I've known quite a few) - and these guys work for 300 times less money and are often denied tenure after 5-6 years.
Partly out of habit and mostly out of curiosity, I decided to check up on the comments on this post again today.
As for the allegations of a straw man argument, you could be correct. Maybe I was wrong to criticize her generalizations. She fails to site any specific examples, but ok, perhaps "CEOs," as it appears numerous times in the article, doesn't mean "all CEOs."
Consider the paragraph:
"People of that class could not be trusted not to pocket the silverware or rip out the gold fixtures in your powder room. They might even make a lunge for your throat."
Perhaps this is me being "uncharitable" again, but that seems pretty harsh and insulting.
So what do you propose? Shall we cap how much any individual can earn in the United States? How much sounds reasonable for you? $2 Million per year? $500,000 per year?
So far, no one has refuted my claim that this was a mean-spirited commentary that offered no solutions. There are plenty of other ways to go about discussing this issue. A 4 page tirade filled with sarcasm is not constructive, only inflammatory (hence my initial knee-jerk comment). It is the stuff of Coulter and O'Reilly, not what I ever expected to see celebrated here.
Regarding Jo Ann's comment about the American Dream being a myth: The term has been with us for a long time. Certainly the goal of making a better life for oneself, or striking it rich, is not a uniquely American aspiration or opportunity. That doesn't make it mythical.
Norm, I know you won't miss just one faithful reader, but as I said, if you continue to post such unabashedly anti-capitalist sentiment I imagine you may lose more.
First remember I'm talking here about someone making a wage. I don't think a CEO should make more than say 17 times what the average employee makes. How do you accomplish that you tax the crap out of any wage or benefit income in excess of that.
I'm not anti-capitalist Steve, I 'm just opposed to unregulated capitalism. I think there should be more not fewer restrictions on the market, to protect all of us from the excesses capitalism necessarily allows when unregulated. One need look no further than our early history as a country for numerous examples. We are in my opinion moving in that direction again. As to losing readers, I'm not worried. I attracted a readership by expressing my opinions honestly. I'm not going to change or compromise on that. If that means fewer readers so be it.
Oh and welcome back if you're back. If not like I said so be it.
yay tim! representin' for sons of college professors everywhere, i wanted to say something similar to rfw.
but, as a non-capitalist who relishes his hatred of ceo's AND their offspring, i wanted to be the first to extend my hand to rfw and thank him for his thoughts and perspective on the matter.
that is, if they're for real. his post reads more like a magazine article than an "off the top of your head" blog post, especially with the well-placed twist at the end. if this guy is who he says he is (the son of a ceo) he can thank his father for providing him with a fine education.
rfw, are you sure you weren't commissioned by some heartless company to write that?
:)
sorry, that's rpw. my sight is going.
I respect and applaud that you express your opinions honestly. Furthermore, I’m sure a humble young person, such as I, could stand to learn something from your stance on this issue. I've taken much useful information away from this blog on a daily basis. Nevertheless, my concern is that you risk alienating readers like me when you post content with such a vicious and disparaging tone. I had hoped that the spirit of onegoodmove is not what was expressed in this article.
@Steve: Vicious and disparaging? Are you sure the word you're looking for isn't "shocked" or "angry"? Because that's how the facts that provoked that article make me feel. You compare it to O'Lielly, but do you have any idea how silly you sounded making accusations of "anti-Americanism" because of it?
Also, someone way up the thread was crying a river for CEO's because they might have to work late or cut vacations short. Do I really need to list off all the jobs that are like that - or worse - but have shit pay? There are people who have to mop up bodily fluids or do backbreaking labor to pay the rent, who would gladly "suffer" like CEOs do in order to earn their wages. And, a lot of hardworking but underpaid and disadvantaged people have never been on a vacation in their entire lives, so CEO's can maybe cheer up a bit while they enjoy their weekend stay at a 5-star hotel.
Nobody should disagree with people being rewarded for hard work, but what the fuck! I am astounded when people who make tens of millions of dollars a year can mindfuck regular people into boo-hooing for them.
She clearly believes that Americans compensate CEOs unreasonably. She is against the American way of doing things, hence anti-American. I don’t see how that's silly.
To me, the affluent businesspeople in the US are as much of a symbol of America as Congress or the Statue of Liberty.
When I think of CEOs, the people that come to mind are folks like Microsoft's Bill Gates and Paul Allen, MySpace's Chris DeWolfe, Apple's Steve Jobs, Dell's Michael Dell, etc. In my opinion, those guys are American heroes because they were intelligent, shrewd, and hardworking. They managed to create wildly successful American companies. Is that not the essence of capitalism and American business? Are these not the type of people that Barbara Ehrenreich is so vehemently attacking?
Either way, I'm still waiting for those figures. What should the annual salary cap be for workers in the US? What would be fair? Anyone?
Already answered check the previous comments. Capitalism is an economic system, it is amoral, it generally works well, but without regulation it is easily abused. Ehrenriech is attacking the Enron crowd not the Bill Hewlett and David Packards, there are a few honest people working in business but it is my experience that about 80% of them are greedy bastards out for themselves and quite willing to bend and break the rules to make money. I've been associating with them for 40 years and run my own small business. My experience is if they can get away with something they will. Not always strictly illegal but more often than not immoral. You'd be shocked at how many small business owners routinely charge interest on interest. For example you have an unpaid invoice for the purchase of a product. You don't pay within the thirty days they charge interest on the amount of the purchase and send you another bill. Okay so far, you also fail to pay it the following month. You get another bill this one charges interest again, but not on the original purchase price but the total including interest which is illegal. Years ago I worked for a finance company that would request collateral for loans that they didn't need any collateral, just so they could sell the customer insurance on the collateral. They would list something like a fishing pole, it didn't matter what it was the point was to get something to right insurance on and make more money. Most people get screwed by businesses on a regular basis and don't even know it.
It's not so much about how much money the CEO makes in actual dollars, but how much more they are making than the workers who also are integral in making the company successful. I agree with Norm. 17x what your workers make is probably about right. Raise your workers pay if you want to make more money.
Take the example of the CEO of Whole Foods. Their company policy is to cap the salary at 19x the average workers pay. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/112/final-word.html
To me it seems like this prevents all kinds of problems. The workers are fairly compensated and have a stake in the success of the company. And the CEO gets compensated fairly as well. Not to mention the benefits to the local economy of people making a fair wage.
I don't study economics, so I'm sure there is all kinds of stuff I haven't taken into consideration. I am just an average worker who sees a lot of problems. This is just what makes sense to me.
She clearly believes that Americans compensate CEOs unreasonably. She is against the American way of doing things, hence anti-American
Well, I learned something new here. I didn't know that believing that U.S. CEOs are over compensated makes one an anti-American.
I suppose that to believe that to achieve affluence is not a lofty goal is also anti-American?
I wonder what other types of opinions qualify as being anti-American?
Steve,
If one wants to criticize Ehrenreich's article by saying that she has painted CEOs with too broad a brush, then I say ‘fair enough’. But you go too far:
This gambit would be more effective if I didn’t know the difference between the denotation and connotation of words. Taken literally, this argument would imply that I should never negatively compare the ‘American way’ of doing anything with the way it is done anywhere else because that would be “anti-American”. Since I know that the connotation of “anti-American” is little different than the connotation of “unpatriotic” (and I suspect that that you know it too) I think you’re being disingenuous here.
I’m perfectly willing to consider the merits of any individual in deciding the extent to which I admire him/her or not. For example, if I were to rank the individuals you’ve listed from what I know about them it would go something like: (1) Jobs, (2) Gates, (3) Dell (~?~) Allen. Wealth isn’t inherently evil, but it has huge potential to corrupt. So far, I see Jobs as having not only ‘earned’ his wealth, but having used it to do what capitalism does best: making better products. Apple (and Pixar) earn handsome profits, but Jobs really seems driven to use the profits to make better products. I hope that he can sustain that focus as financial success continues and as some of his products (e.g., iPods) continue to dominate their markets. It seems to me that Gates was more interested in making money for its own sake – while Microsoft makes some nice software, Gates and Allen have also been willing to maintain market domination via near monopolistic power rather than via product innovation. Gates gets a lot of credit in my book for realizing that it doesn’t make any sense to make your biological descendents ultra-rich ‘old-money’ assholes – he’s going to give most of his fortune away. Maybe I don’t understand enough about the details of Michael Dell’s contribution to the PC business, but I have the impression that his biggest achievement has been in finding more efficient ways to assemble components (rather than designing or manufacturing them) and selling the computers – big deal. (I’m happy to be corrected here if my impression is incorrect.) I know nothing about DeWolfe.
Give it up. In trying to draw people into this all-or-nothing trap you remind me of the humorous passage of “Sicko” in which the seven dwarves song “Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, it’s off to work we go…” runs into a Bolshevik marching song. (You have to do a better job baiting your hook, the hook is way too apparent.) Norm is right – the graduated income tax never killed American capitalism, supply-side economic propaganda notwithstanding. After Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy in 1993 and all the supply-side Cassandras predicted economic doom, the US experienced the longest economic expansion in modern history. (Argue all you want about cause and effect, I’m only arguing that the higher taxes did nothing to prevent it.) And maybe if all compensation, including capital gains, were subject to a steeper graduated income tax, corporate boards would rethink their decisions to waste corporate profits on enormous executive compensation packages and instead reinvest the profits in their businesses.
"vicious and disparaging tone."
How exactly, Steve, would YOU tune a guillotine? How's that again? The whole gamma...ut?
"hose-guys are American heroes because they were intelligent, shrewd, and hardworking..."
Please,
Perchance you could open your albino rose-colored eyes a tad wider if you thought a thought or two about Mega-guys of ages past. How many concubines is "enough" for a harem? Mohmout himself allowed himself merely 12. Yet Bin Ladin pere, had 54 "kids", and mega-queso/hidalgones-con-cojones, Mulai Ismail (1646-1727), in 1703 had at least 342 daughters and 525 sons and by 1721 he was reputed to have 700 male descendents. With cloning,...
Why not Bill-ions/Gateses? Has'nt he earned it, the autistic frog? Speaking of Nero, Fiddles, Frogs: Why don't YOU kiss my ass? Personally, Steve, when it comes to this particular concept, I think you are letting yourself off the hook too easily, and you're letting your heroes off too. Some people (e.g., you)seem as dense as neutron stars, sometimes (e.g.,now).
["heroes"? my favorite hero is Adolf Schicklgruber, not really!!!, but depending on who I am, it well COULD be boys (billions) from Brasil, why not?].
I, neutron star, or neutered eunuch that I may be, under the current "System," can at least vaguely imagine something better. Suppose USA IS the world's greatest, yadda-yadda-yadda-yadda-yadda-,...
All that proves is that it's high time for some high water. Noah what I'm sayin'?
shrewd-shredders, cunning-cutters, those would be inventions worthy of patents. Not your one-click "ideas" of a one-click mind.
"this was reaching a bit far for the columnist to make her argument."
The entire USA seems to be a kind of nursury-school-like protected sphere in some ways. Europe took disasterous World Wars, Holo-grisliness/insanity. What will it take to wake you fools up?
I have a one-click "idea," and a one-click name for what I fear it might be:
"The Holoclast". Or spell it with 2 "S"es.
"So... capitalism is bad and all rich company heads are evil. Got it."
No, Steve, you DON"T get it. Yet.
"bigoted (Coulter-esque, if you will)."
You are a self-loathing anti-bigot bigot. Everyone grows out their giant mustache over SOMEthing or the other. Coulter isn't just out of tune (singin' the Blues/blues-notes). She is tone DEAF. And born into a classless "class" that is seemingly willfully blind to the facts. You know who the real "temp" workers of our time are? A classless (unclassy) CEO "class" that is, must be, willfully in "denial". Rotam fortunae non terret.
Dumphuckleberrymiddlefingerbrowser...
"Mega-guys of ages past." should have read:
"Mega-dudes of ages past."
I too am tone D,E,A,F (nice melody, actually, Beatles is it?)on rare occasions ("Mega-dudes" is more mellifluous).
D,E,A,F,... "dark is the sky above, bright are the stars," no, that's not it..."close your eyes and I'll kiss you",...no,...never mind...
How many concubines is "enough" for a harem?
giggle :)
"Why are my posts always followed by the ramblings of one evil axis?"
Sorry Willey, scroll on (past the ramblings, please, just... scratch my tummy?). "is any person deserving of such a lifestyle that would accompany such a hefty salary?" What you mayn't "get" is that these mega-dude guys are NOT really persons, as a practical matter. The proverbial anthropologist from Mars would have to conclude that they are something very akin to...pharoahs, GODS, sacred. Above ("high" classification), beyond [we're arguing angels-on-pinsheads here*], Resented maybe, but still...
"Lords, (some, one, of us) was born a rambling"
(Seriously,) man, you're so, "I'll defer to Willey on this because he said it better than I could have:"
No, but, more like, "defer to Willey on this because he said" was utterly self-evident (not that there's anything wrong, exactly, with that, but you just may be the omphalos-contemplator here, if you zoom out just a leetle... I mean) I believe the "serious" ones are the real joker-dealers here, special pleaders, vs. (our) nervous jokes, jumpiness, but not about nothing, quite to the contrary, is our contrariness, rambling or no.
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Got it, "D,E,A,F,", "Round Midnight, by T.S. Monk, 1982, heck of a year... transposed up a major third, minus some superfluous ornamentation. To that Theolonious Sphere (Harmonia Mundi), I commit...Steve., A., FRW, you son-of-a-b...ut I only meant undisputably indispensable CEO., Nobody's ever heard your side of things before, how novel, maybe someone will ring the doorbell next and witness about, I don't know, Christ (Nobody's EVER heard those things ),
"an alarming problem," understatement of the century, you self-fooling fools (not Willey, pace, scratch tummy?) still see the blobs of paint, not the impressionist painting, the pixels, not the picture, I do NOT feel sorry for youse all...but why not rely on some good ol' primate innate.. morality, detail-devils, sand grain satans, time is running out, stitch in time, 11th hour, ...
"D,E,A,F," volume set to 11.
;{
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*no one here of course
"The Trap" by Daniel Brook. A non-fiction "Fountainhead," with hindsight.
And, he ain't no Allman Bros.
For the most part, corporate officers of publicly held companies are not risk takers; they aren’t even capitalists in the truest sense of the word. They are closer to socialists than anyone else in our society. Individual stockholders have almost no say in the matters of CEO compensation; this is usually decided by the board of directors who are in cahoots with the company executives. I think that way to reign in this abuse is to have CEO salaries readily available to all those who wish to buy the stock. If a CEO is making $10 million a year I would think that this would water down the value of the stock and I wouldn’t want to be a part of this scam in the same way I wouldn't want to buy into a company that pays too much for any other asset.
I found a picture of Steve while surfing the net this morning.
Regarding the pictograph of Steve, it IS possible to get too fat for your own good.
The Stevian (A., TRW, etc. whoever)arguments are most excellent*, it is their premises that are psychotically unrealworldly. Economics, at its best is, relative to its smart twin, ecology, a near-astrological pseudoscience. Dawkins oughta do an Enemies of Reason segment on it. Our highest towers are not capitalist office towers, they are towers of sophistry. America the Babel(s in the Woods. If one falls will anyone know or care if it makes a sound or not?).
What the hell is wrong with, say, a Golden Ratio? A certain ratio(Phi?) that ties the maximum wage to the minimum wage? Impossible? Let's get some of those CEO geniuses at the far right of The Bell Curve, put 'em to work on it. They can do the impossible, they've already sold (most of) us on it.
If you are not a radical at this point, you have your head up your ass ponsinorum:
"Intellectual curiosity should not be subsidized"
"Intellectual curiosity should be subsidized"
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*credits to their future professions (lawyer, flack, hack).
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