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November 26, 2008 6:00 AM
Ivan and Boris Again
We are all Russian peasants?
By Thomas Sowell
There is an old Russian fable, with different versions in other countries, about two poor peasants, Ivan and Boris. The only difference between them was that Boris had a goat and Ivan didn’t. One day, Ivan came upon a strange-looking lamp and, when he rubbed it, a genie appeared. She told him that she could grant him just one wish, but it could be anything in the world.
Ivan said, “I want Boris’s goat to die.”
Variations on this story in other countries suggest that this tells us something about human beings, not just Russians.
It may tell us something painful about many Americans today, when so many people are preoccupied with the pay of corporate CEOs. It is not that the corporate CEOs’ pay affects them so much. If every oil-company executive in America agreed to work for nothing, that would not be enough to lower the price of a gallon of gasoline by a dime. If every General Motors executive agreed to work for nothing, that would not lower the price of a Cadillac or a Chevrolet by one percent.
Too many people are like Ivan, who wanted Boris’s goat to die.
It is not even that the average corporate CEO makes as much money as any number of professional athletes and entertainers. The average pay of a CEO of a corporation big enough to be included in the Standard & Poor’s index is less than one-third of what Alex Rodriguez makes, about one-tenth of what Tiger Woods makes and less than one-thirtieth of what Oprah Winfrey makes.
But when has anyone ever accused athletes or entertainers of “greed”?
It is not the general public that singles out corporate CEOs for so much attention. Politicians and the media have focused on business leaders, and the public has been led along, like sheep.
The logic is simple: Demonize those whose place or power you plan to usurp.
We could confiscate "all" of the wealth of the top 5% who currently pay a lions share of the Federal taxes in this country and it would not run the federal government for very long....but of course a lot of people would "FEEL" better wouldn't they?
Kicking the crap out of the execs. is pointless unless you simply want to feel BIG.....the union influence is like a cancerous growth on business and government.....how can you justify paying 12,000 employees to play cards at full time pay unless you are bound and gagged by insane work rules...I hope they go bankrupt and rid themselves of these foolish contracts and work rules become competitive again by paying competitive market compensation rather than union negotiated foolishness....
have any of you looked at the Electoral map and noticed that most of the areas "in BLUE" are the areas of the country that are fiscally screwed right now and have been run by democrats legislatures and liberal ideaology for quite some time...yet they keep electing democrats in greater numbers and maybe an occasional liberal Repubican...huge populations of government dependents that can't take a crap without help from government....and they keep grabbing their ankles and asking for more......
like Rahm Emmanuel said " You never want to waste the opportunity of a good crisis to get things done that you might not otherwise be able to convince the public to accept" that's pretty close...
like this "CHANGE":
Argentina-
The Kirchner administration has been moving aggressively to counter the effects of the global crisis.
On November 20 it nationalized 26 billion dollars worth of private pension funds run by 10 banks, a move opponents believe is really aimed at preventing a loan default on Argentina's national debt of some 150 billion dollars.
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