What do you mean by “basically capitalistic?” Capitalism does exist. There’s no “ism” - no ideology. You’re either free to buy, sell, and trade as you please or you are not. Whether you do wise things or stupid, or even whether you do right or wrong, isn’t part of the equation.
Second, what do you mean by “rules”? I can imagien a society with powerful social bonds that constrain the free market. I see little evidence that America is one. I can imagine a society where the government was dominated by the elite; America is that, but it isn’t business or social elites who dominate the government. It’s an entirely separate class of lawyer-politicians.
You may, perhaps, wonder ifthe two mix. It certainly happens - and yet somehow it’s always passionate liberals who donate lots of money to Democrats who get saved. Republicans get raided by SWAt teams. Then when the economy weakens all the entrenched liberal interests complain about the rich, only now they are the best-off clas and start fighting amongst themselves for the last shred of pie.
Finally, one must consider that CEO’s may be materially better off, but as a proportionate change are doing worse. The rich and super-rish are in fact losing much more than anyone else, though of course it doesn’t pinch them as it does us.
For one, economics IS what happens when we tinker with it. Government is the outcome of nature: a strongman gives orders and hurts anyone who doesn’t obey. Economics is quiten unnatural and artificial: humanity in evidence.
It has happened, but is almost certainly not the real issue. The rise in CEO salaries started when the tax laws were changed in the 70’s, which meant that CEO’s could benefit more from cash than lots and lots of untaxable perks. American companies give out very few perks these days, compared to competitors around the world. On the toher hand, this actually works out to the indirect benefit of the nation through a bigger tax base.
However, even if your proposition is always right (it isn’t) were so, what’s it to you? Unless you own stock in the company, the CEO’s pay has no real relationship with the employee’s pay. Both are ultimately trying to drive the best deal possible. If the CEO gets more, it doesn’t mean the employees get less, and vice versa.
How so? Nobody forces you to work, and you can work for anyone which will hire you, more or less. Yes, quitting is tough, especially now. That doesn’t mean you have shown a point.
You miss the actual history of government intervention in the market.
First, the anti-trust laws are almost inevitably too little and way too late. They have the almost uncanny ability to get a judgement right about the time some new technology or competitor is absolutely destroying the old guard. AT&T gave up, and was followed by wild swings in rates and the landline business being supplanted by the already-developing cell market. Microsoft didn’t outgrow IBM because of anti-trust, but because it had something people wanted, and IBM didn’t even twitch in that direction. the Internet Explorer antitrust did jack squat, despite the money it cost.
Sure, you can point to the internet, but DARPA’s project did almost nothing to create it. It simply connected two systems at a distance. WIthout that, the internet would still exist because people were already thinking about doing something like it. It would simply have had a different seed.
Wow. You don’t actully know what the word ‘Duress’ means, do you?
Here’s a hint: It doesn’t mean that people who don’t give you lots of money for small amounts of easy work are evil.
Agreed and it should be obvious. Liberty is a luxury good, though a commodity spread more by the free market than any government on earth.
Now having told everyone what I don’t agree with, here’s my position:
I don’t particularly like high CEO pay. I think companies are in many cases overpaying for talent. However, many cases is not all cases, and we can show that numerous forms of firms are paying more-or-less the same rates, even in the face of contrary factors. So we have family firms, private companies, and public ones all paying top-dollar for talent. They may guess wrong.
Guess what? Not your business. In the end, who cares? If firms overpay for CEO’s, they’ll lose money and opportunities to other firms.
I do sometimes worry about he role of money in politics, but not how you think. Legislators have an awfully easy time making money while in office, and it isn’t bags full of cash. The, when they leave, they get cushy jobs persuading their old friends and colleagues. That is worrisome. It’s not the open corruption that worries me so much as the implicit quid pro quo - much harder to detect and harder to stop.
I once half-facetiously suggested that we allow open, legal bribery. Anyone could post bounties for legislators’s votes, who could take the money or not as they pleased. Half goes to the Treasury in any case. I’m no longer sure it wouldn’t be a good plan.
Now, socially speaking, Americans like money and respect those who made lots of it honestly. They also just like to whine about people who make lots of money on general principal. Guess what? Not your business, either. They don’t magically owe you a red cent because they did well, nor it is “fair” for them to give an even greater percent just because. There may be good reasons for doing it, but fairness isn’t one. A much better reason is that they can afford it, but even then we must recognize that a vast discrepency exists between people who nominally earn the same.
Finally, I do love the notion of the board’s liberals and leftists complaining about the role of money in politics. It ain’t Republicans dominating Wall Street. It ain’t conservatives pouring piles of money campaign coffers. They’d rather whine aout the Kochs excercising their First Amendment rights than their pal Obama’s elitist buddies. Today’s leftists don’t ignore the plank in their eye - they ignroe the whole redwood, and then are surprised when the big tree sticking out keeps them from going out the front door. (To which we respond, “Duh!” but are not heard.)