Facebook Exchange: "How Much Resource Is It OK To Have Before It's Immoral?"

Alan Archibald

10 hrs · 

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  Zach Zimet How much resources is it OK to have before it's immoral?

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  Alan Archibald One guiding rubric would be to limit a CEO's total-recompense package to 100 times a grunt line worker's wage.
  
  My deceased friend John Lawson, the son of a British lumberjack and swineherd, was a top-tier executive at Feedback, a computer company traded on the London Stock Exchange.
  
  Throughout his 35 year career John limited himself to this 100-to-1 ratio.
  
  Notably, "Juanito" was a delightful, exceedingly generous man, a ballroom dancer and a fellow who was always planning his next party to which he would invite people all over the social spectrum, including illegal immigant latinos.
  
  Consider this analogous situation.
  
  If over the course of my adulthood I had been in charge of U.S. foreign policy, I would have saved the entire cost of the Vietnam War, The Iraq War and the Afghan War - not to mention the cost in lives and limbs.
  
  And... the world would be an immeasruably better place.
  
  Furthermore, I would have happily done that work for $100,000.00 a year.
  
  I see no reason to genuflect at the altar of high-ranking American executives and other kindred jackasses.
  
  More often than not, they reinforce "an economic system which is heartless" (to quote Woodrow Wilson) while exacerbating the ungodly wealth disparity which nearly every economist -- on both sides of the aisle -- admits is toxic for long-term economic and social well-being.
  
  I think it was a 20th century Chippewa poet who said: "Money is important, but nowhere near as important as you thought it would be when you didn't have it."
  
  One of my intellectual heroes -- the very imperfect G.K. Chesterton -- observed:
  
  "The merely rich are not rich enough to rule the modern market. The things that change modern history, the big national and international loans, the big educational and philanthropic foundations, the purchase of numberless newspapers, the big prices paid for peerages, the big expenses often incurred in elections - these are getting too big for everybody except the misers; the men with the largest of earthly fortunes and the smallest of earthly aims. There are two other odd and rather important things to be said about them. The first is this: that with this aristocracy we do not have the chance of a lucky variety in types which belongs to larger and looser aristocracies. The moderately rich include all kinds of people even good people. Even priests are sometimes saints; and even soldiers are sometimes heroes. Some doctors have really grown wealthy by curing their patients and not by flattering them; some brewers have been known to sell beer. But among the Very Rich you will never find a really generous man, even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egoistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it."
  
  "Pax On Both Houses: Best G.K. Chesterton Posts"
  http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/.../pax-on-both...
  
  Fifty ago, while walking on the shore of Lake Ontario with the wife of a very wealthy physician, Jackie turned to me and -- out of the blue -- said: "Alan, I've known a lot of millionaires in my time. But I've never known one who wasn't a sonofabitch."
  
  Of course, it's just an anecdote..
  
  .

  

  PAXONBOTHHOUSES.BLOGSPOT.COM

  Pax On Both Houses: Compendium Of G.K. Chesterton Posts

  Pax On Both Houses: Compendium Of G.K. Chesterton Posts

  
  

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