Lessons in Hypocrisy
LARRY ANDERSON
Larry Anderson
Election cycles are typically infested with accusation, lies, and hypocrisy, and this one is no exception. These features — political virtues to some — have reached remarkable levels of stink.
Let’s begin.
The Left loves to rip on corporate CEO’s as harbingers of economic doom for all who earn less.
Indeed, many salary and benefit packages for corporate studs are excessive, but there are explanations that the Left never mentions since reasoning tends not to align with accusation.
A recent article in USA Today described the startling salaries of several corporate heads and compared them to the struggle of retail workers targeting the $15 per hour minimum.
Larry Merlo, CVS Health, earned $13,914 per hour compared to Leslie Wexner of Victoria’s Secret who got $13,062 an hour based on a 40 hour work week.
Howard Schultz of Starbucks made $9,659 an hour and Douglas McMillon of Walmart received $9,323 per hour. McDonald’s CEO, Stephen Easterbrook, was paid $3,803 or $7.9 million last fiscal year.
CEO’s within the Standard and Poor’s 500 earned 204 times more than the median employees in their companies as of 2014, according to the report.
That’s a huge difference, but there is also a colossal disparity between a sophomore working a counter and a 60-year-old CEO who has kept his company profitable in this socialist era where it is considered criminal if a businessman is wealthy and successful.
The vast discrepancy between an unskilled laborer getting his feet wet in the workplace and a boss with the skills necessary to bring product to market, assess risk, evaluate competition and analyze technological and raw product costs is surely obvious.
Lefties, corporate critics unmatched, don’t mention many CEO’s start at the bottom and work their way up via a lifetime of hard work. They don’t mention the leadership skills necessary to guide companies that may have hundreds of stores and tens of thousands of employees, all of whom have wage and benefit demands, some mandated outside the corporation itself.
The Left rarely mentions that many companies in which the CEO is highly paid was founded by that person or a small group within which he/she was a member. Nor do they point out that compensation is often stock share growth rather than salary alone.
Lefties don’t mention a board of directors typically rewards salaries, bonuses, and benefits to CEO’s based on expansion, profit, and efficiency, the reasons they were hired in the first place. Performance is critical.
In most corporations, it is desirable for the stock boy to rise to management if they show the right stuff, but it is absurd to think companies can remain competitive through a political or artificial standard for reward. There has to be a learning curve.
The Left either doesn’t get these points because they’re too complicated or because they don’t fit with their political views and agenda. I suspect the latter.
The worst hypocrisy from Lefties regarding high pay is the fact their criticism is exclusively aimed at corporate CEO’s.
The Left does not criticize Hollywood types who make millions per film or per television season, as much or more as corporate heads. That’s because Woody is replete with liberals who give generously to Democrat coffers during election years and promote the liberal agenda from atop their pedestals.
Incidentally, Hollywood stars work for corporations but get a free pass for the reasons mentioned.
There is no Leftist criticism of pro athletes or coaches who make a killing. No one gangs up on broadcasters enriching themselves through corporate largesse.
No one jumps on Oprah! for being worth $3 billion or Michael Jordon for being, I hear, the wealthiest athlete in history. No Leftie dares to criticize rappers for raking it in or for music groups exploiting the poor with $150 tickets to concerts.
It is awful, you see, for the head of a corporation that provides jobs for hundreds, perhaps thousands, to be prosperous.
Work for profit is mighty bad.
It is okay, though, to make just as much money as one can demand in show biz while employing a handful or none.
By the by, George Clooney, member of the Hollywood liberal elite, recently did a fundraiser for the Democrat party and the fab Hillary Clinton.
Cost? $353,000 per couple.
Yes, Clooney explained with a straight face, that’s a lot, but the purpose was to raise enough to get Democrats back in the Senate so laws governing big money can be changed, as if that is despised by liberal money gluttons.
In other words, if one is a Leftist elite, any hypocrisy, any spin, any lie is as fine as champagne.
Ergo, I vote with chagrin.
