Success is Simple… So Sayeth the Liberal
by John Reit (September 27, 2006)

Talking to a colleague recently, the subject of CEO salaries arose. Once again, I gained great insight into the liberal mind.

He started by stating his astonishment at some figures. “In England,” he began, “the salary of a CEO is 24 times that of the average worker. Here, it’s 416 (unconfirmed, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt)! That’s ridiculous.” Knowing industry is far more ambitious and less burdened here than in England – and finding myself more and more these days in the role as a defender of free market capitalism – I retorted, “Well, consider the fact that when Jack Welsh took over General Electric, the company was worth $15 billion. When he left after 20 years, it was worth over $300 billion.”

This person’s response was really not so much based in logic as it was in blind liberal belief. “Four hundred sixteen times,” he said. “End of story.”

I pressed on. “Well if you owned a company, what would that kind of growth be worth to you?” If GE paid Jack Welsh even one percent of the growth for which he was responsible, that would be $285 million. To this person, that might seem excessive. Then again, this person, in his liberal mentality, would fail to see the grand picture. He wouldn’t see all the jobs created. He wouldn’t see the growth in the economy and tax revenues. All he would see would be a $285 million figure and how “unfair” it was that he should earn so much while others earn comparatively little (even though for a great majority of us, that’s still plenty to live on).

Again, his only defense to my scenario was, “Four hundred sixteen.”

Attacking from a different angle, I asked, “Do you think you could make the decisions a CEO is faced with every day?” In retrospect, I should have elaborated here. I should have emphasized that the decisions a CEO makes every day are critical to the success of the company; and based on their soundness, they are vital to the creation of or elimination of jobs. So much hangs in the balance in these decisions – not just an inflated bonus.

I now realize that I gave my colleague too much credit. I should have known that this would have escaped his realm of reason; so illustrated by his response: “If I had the proper training.”

In other words, being a CEO has nothing to do with one’s personality; nothing to do with experience; nothing to do with that fundamental difference between humans that makes such a small minority of Americans excel, while the majority never realize their full potential. I certainly don’t pretend that the success that Jack Welsh brought to General Electric can be taught in a class or a four year program, for that matter. If it was, it stands to reason that dynamic CEOs would be a dime a dozen in this country.

But to the liberal mind, this is reality. If not for the conservatives who constantly deny the lower classes access to the wealth and success that is so readily available, most Americans would be on Easy Street right now. There is nothing stopping the ordinary man from achieving great riches; certainly not himself! It is the economic institutions of this country that are keeping him down. They do not want to share – plain and simple.

It’s at that point that I quit the conversation. I realized that type of mentality will not be fixed by me in the course of a few minutes. It takes a general understanding of economics and economic philosophy that cannot be absorbed in a brief conversation.

In truth, I have no problem with the fact that this person feels that CEOs are overpaid. I certainly feel that way about Hollywood actors. To get $20 million for pretending to be someone else for a few months seems absolutely absurd. In truth, the contribution they make to society is extremely miniscule. But many do make the studios big bucks. So, if they can get paid $20 million for a film… bully for them!