“Feed Me, You Greedy SOBs!”

I find the controversy over limits on executive pay interesting.

I don’t care to argue either for or against limits on pay to executives who receive government funds. My argument is that in a free society, no business should receive government funds. I realize we’re way, way past that now — but it’s still my argument. Many will say, “But the economy will collapse without government aid to failing business.” This is the same as saying: “Rewarding failure brings success.” If your electrician blows up your house, do you keep hiring him and pay him still more? If your doctor pokes out your eye instead of putting stitches in your hand injury, do you pay him more? It’s insanity. Plus, we had the biggest bailout in history last fall, at the close of the Bush Administration. The purpose of the bailout was to improve the economy, and quickly. Look how well the economy is improving, based on latest unemployment figures and other numbers.

But here’s what I find most interesting about the executive pay limit: The amount. The amount is figured based on the salary of the U.S. President. In other words: Nobody in business should make more than the President. The premise here is that no successful business person–who could make as much as billions by taking a chance and doing something really, really well–is more important than the President.

Now think about this for a minute. If there were no big business in America, there would be nobody making billions of dollars in the first place. If America were a Third World, impoverished country–or a stagnant, severely socialized country, as in Western Europe or Japan; or a poor ex-Communist country, like Russia–then the U.S. President wouldn’t matter so much. There would be no massive and impressive military force, either, if what remained of BIG business was not around to finance it. There would be no trillion dollar stimulus package to spread among howling political pressure groups, either, were it not for the evil BIG business people who, in the eyes of statists, have no right to earn big bucks even if they don’t accept government funds.

Did you ever hear the expression, “Stop biting the hand that feeds you”? Who feeds the President? Who feeds the special interest programs of Congress that keep these petty little people in office? The very ones they denounce the most. The very ones they seek to destroy, at least verbally. These statist “liberals” are beside themselves with drunkenness over power, at present. I’m betting they will never let it go, regardless of what happens in future elections. They should keep in mind another famous expression when it comes to destroying the hand that feeds you: “Careful what you wish for.” Because, as a favorite author of mine once said: “Atlas Shrugged.”