John Mackey on Unions, the Fed, Capitalism, and CEO Pay
Saturday, October 3, 2009Stephen Moore writes about John Mackey in the Wall Street Journal today. He discusses the boycott from left wingers who were intolerant of the position Mackey took in his health care op-ed a while back. Mackey, after all, committed the crime of the century by offering free market alternatives to a disastrous, government-run, single-payer health care system. But Mackey also doesn’t have unions in his Whole Foods stores, which is why every time I am at my local store(s), I am greeted by happy, motivated people who love their jobs and do anything they can to give you, the customer, the best service possible.
Mackey is always interesting. He blames the Fed for “debauchery of the currency,” advocates for the humane treatment of animals, resists the unions, and thinks CEO pay is too high. I find his statements on CEO pay particularly interesting because, over the years, I have diverged from many other Austrians/libertarians on this issue. Though in the past I have disagreed with Mackey on the whole “shareholder-stakeholder” argument, I think he is absolutely correct concerning the CEO pay issue, and where the problem lies:
Well, that’s not exactly true. Mr. Mackey has been vocal in his opposition to recent CEO salaries. “I do think that it’s the responsibility of the leadership of an organization to constrain itself for the good of the organization. If you look at the history of business in America, CEOs used to have much more constraint in compensation and it’s gone up tremendously in the last 30 years.”
He bemoans the trend that once a Fortune 500 CEO made about 25 times the average worker pay, and now that’s climbed to 300 times average employee pay. He says this violates the principle of “internal equity—what your leadership is getting paid relative to everyone else in the organization.”
cousin lucky says:
October 3rd, 2009 at 9:36 pm
When America Collapses The well paid executives, as will all of the wealthy, will just become targets for kidnappers. When the Anarchy comes Mayhem will rule the days and nights for a long time.
Tom Osborne says:
October 3rd, 2009 at 11:21 pm
In my view, the issue of CEO pay has to do with whether these CEOs or other very high level executives were the company’s entrepreneurs and founders like (to take just the computer industry) Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates, or the two Google founders “Brin” and “Sergei”…or maybe I should look further into the past to people like Henry Ford or J.D. Rockefeller, or else are they simply “employees”, hired like everyone else in the company “to do a job”. In Capitalism, the risk-takers ought to get the highest rewards possible; they started with absolutely nothing but a vision, whereas “workers” of every level are working in somebody else’s already realized and functioning vision, and therefore workers are to be treated with a more “internal equity”, as Mr. Mackey says. I don’t think these “hired CEOs” are as important or crucial to these companies as they, themselves (and weak, vision-less boards) think. In all honesty, as a worker “one level down from the top”, I feel that we who really DO the work could do perfectly well WITHOUT any of them (who seem to be much more about interference and change for change’s sake rather than actual accomplishment) who just get all the glory. What you have nowadays are people in power on the Boards of Directors voting themselves these huge salaries and it is nothing but pure corruption and has nothing to do with the legitimate spoils of creativity and risk.