Archive for May, 2009
How others see us
by David Kowis on May.31, 2009, under politics
It’s always interesting to note how the other nations media (could call it propaganda, especially from how this article is written) see what’s going on in our country. The sad thing is, I tend to agree with most of the observations in that article. Our nations government has hurtled us down a rabbit hole that unfortunately, we do know the end of. It’s not good. Note to self: I should read that book Road to Serfdom (or from Amazon.) We are so very much losing the freedoms this nation was founded on. We’re losing what made this nation great. It wasn’t the government that made this country great. It was the limits on government. It was keeping government out of the way to allow people to do what they thought best. Now our government seems to know best for everything.
“If you think the problems we create are bad, wait until you see our solutions.”
Government Imposed Artificial Limits on Compensation are a Bad Idea
by David Kowis on May.13, 2009, under politics
It seems the Obama Administration has come up with a great idea. Lets artificially set limits on the amount of compensation that financial workers can make. That’s going to give them a great deal of motivation to work hard and do a good job. This isn’t going to fix anything at all. In fact, it’s more likely to produce corrupt individuals.
A truly free market will appropriately set salaries for people. The shareholders and the board of directors will pay the people what they belive they’re worth. The people working for these companies will believe they’re getting paid well for the work they do. Failures such as the one that has occured recently are a wake up call for the industry. They realize that they’ve been paying people too much, and agreeing to contract terms that result in CEOs leaving with a huge bonus regardless of failure, or success, of the company. That will be remedied, but not by artificially setting limits on compensation. Artificially set limits will only drive people away from the industry, or encourage them to find “creative” ways to make enough money. Some of those “creative” ways may have questionable legality.
This is another example of the government meddling in things they shouldn’t touch at all. They should only deal with enforcing private contracts. They should be ensuring that the contract that the company and the CEO is held up. Even if that means the company hurts badly, potentially failing. It will serve as an example to not form contracts this way anymore. It will cause pain to the shareholders that have agreed to the terms of the contract.
It will force the appropriate people to be responsible for their actions. Something that is severly lacking in the United States of America these days…