November 12, 2005
Leaders are like eagles
We don't have either of them here.
And there's a reason for that: the current cultural climate makes it impossible to be one. Our society's elites are ostricized, abused, vilified, and taxed to death. Recent accounting reforms have legally required CEOs of major corporations to personally sign off on their companies' quarterly statements. Sounds like a way to boost corporate accountability, right? Right?
Maybe, but it also means that anyone who wants to be a CEO - and we do actually need those people - is now taking a huge personal risk just by holding down the job. Which means that to interest anyone in taking on such a position, you have to pay them more. And as executive salaries are currently a hot-button topic, that dog won't hunt. These people just want to run a profitable business, which is hard enough as it is. The number of people who can successfully run a multi-million dollar corporation is vanishingly small. But now they have to deal with accusations of corruption, heartlessness, malice, etc. on a daily basis. Why put up with that? And more to the point, why should any corporate CEO want to show the slightest amount of compassion for the people that hate him? Loving your enemies may be a Christian virtue, but there isn't any money in it, and any society founded upon the premise that people will live like saints is a damnable hippie delusion.
Same goes for physicians. The malpractice climate in this country makes them susceptible to lawsuits if they look at a patient ascance. Which means that it's a less and less desirable position to hold. The vast majority of physicians are all about healing the sick and finding new ways of doing that. But the American population, envious of their salaries, thinks of them as evil, grasping, sadistic fiends. Why should this group of highly-paid individuals give a damn about them?
And strange as it is to say it, the same goes for politicians and high-level bureaucrats. No one has any faith in the political establishment in this country. This distrust is in no small measure well-placed, but it's also self-propagating. The less you trust political leaders, and the less you offer to pay them, the fewer people of quality will want to take up the positions. If you make out every politician to be a graft-ridden, beholden flunky, pretty soon the only people who are willing to take the job will fit that description pretty well. The Pennsylvania legislature recently tried to give itself a raise. The methods they used to do it were probably illegal, and the extent of the raise was pretty high (16% is a bit unreasonable, no?), but the hue and cry has reached the heavens. Just because most Americans make $40k or less seems to have fostered the idea that it's wrong for anyone to make more than that.
Well, it isn't. And if you want the people who rule over you - and make no mistake, there are and will always be people who rule over you - to be the kind of people that you want to rule over you, then you'd better be willing to pay for that luxury. Otherwise they'll stick to running major corporations, making out like bandits, and doing as much as they possibly can to hide their profits from the malicious masses.
Well, the discontent over the PA legislature pay-jacking is mostly because it was passed in the dead of night, without constitutionally-required public debate, and that it made PA legislators the second highest-paid state legislators in the country, despite the economic destruction that their policies have wrought.
Posted by: Ben at November 14, 2005 09:57 AMHey, I'm not saying it was done legally (in fact I think I said that it probably wasn't), but that doesn't change the fact that if they'd done it in broad daylight and followed proper legislative procedure the outcry would have been just as bad.
Posted by: ryan at November 14, 2005 12:21 PMRyan, perhaps I didn't express my intention clearly. I wanted to point out that I don't believe there's anything wrong with the public outcry over the legislative and judicial wage increase. Since their salaries, benefits, and expenses (unvouchered or not) are paid by the tax payers, the tax payers have every right to determine how their money ought to be spent.
Posted by: Ben at November 15, 2005 02:25 PM