Vol. 2 No. 82 Jan 18, 2008
The Bogus Economist
Money Talks

We live in a monied age. I was reading about Steve Jobs, the fabled co-founder and CEO of Apple Inc. (formerly Apple Computer), biggest stockholder of Walt Disney Corporation, former head of Pixar (“Finding Nemo,””Ratatouille”) and number 95 on Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential Americans. One would expect a man with such a resume to collect a substantial paycheck. Yes and no. For the record, Jobs earns a dollar a year – a salary barely enough for a real apple, let alone a 24-inch super-duper iMac with iDisk, iPhone, iTouch and iWant. But Forbes Magazine last spring declared Jobs the highest paid CEO in the United States. Factoring in a little thing called “stock options,” the right to buy stock at a future time at a fixed price, Jobs' yearly income totaled $646,000,000 or, roughly, one million, eight hundred thousand dollars a day. That's a lot of apples.

Forbes figured the CEOs of America's 500 biggest companies, including some whose companies actually lost money, got raises last year averaging more than seven million dollars. Meanwhile a Pew Charitable Trust report shows just six percent of American children whose family income ranked in the bottom fifth in 1976 were able to work their way into the top fifth in 2006. Forty-two percent of kids born into that lowest fifth were still stuck there, having been unable to climb a single rung of the economic ladder in the same time period. Either we have an awful lot of lazy people among the poor or the American Dream has become the American Mirage.

It's one thing to know in your head that something is true. It's different when you start sensing it in your innards. Like many Americans, I feel something's wrong with the promise of the country – that's it's a little off kilter – there's something out of whack. I think the Pew Trust report helped me nail it down: we're burying democracy with the shovel of unrestrained greed.

Think about it: in America today, which is more important, money or people? I've asked that of folks ranging from doctors to garbage collectors and not one has picked people. I've read countless examples of decisions which impact the lives of families and were justified by “Nothing personal – it's just business.” Two months ago, a couple committed suicide after their house was foreclosed. Just business? Nothing personal?

While doing our income tax, my wife and I discovered the government is willing to allow forty-four and a half cents a mile for business travel, but only eighteen cents for medical travel. Why is it more than twice as important to drive to a stockholders' meeting than to take your kid to the doctor? We also found that federal penalties for copying a commercial video tape range up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, a harsher penalty than some states demand for manslaughter. We entrust the lives of airplane passengers to highly-trained professionals and pay them in excess of $100,000 a year. We entrust the lives of our children to anyone with a bus driver's license and pay them ten to twelve dollars an hour. Do we have a priority problem?

What else is for sale? How about our privacy? Remember the Bush decision to wiretap citizens without warrants? Well, the telecom companies have turned off the tap, so to speak. The FBI hasn't been paying its bills. "It seems the telecoms, who are claiming they were just being 'good patriots' (sic) when they allowed the government to spy on us without warrants, are more than willing to pull the plug on national security investigations when the government falls behind on its bills," said former FBI agent Michael German, national security policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Is the presidency itself for sale? The estimated tab for this year's campaigns on both sides is approaching one billion dollars. With five major corporations owning almost 90% of the nation's media, should we be surprised if they want to maximize their profits via the publicly-owned airwaves with a wave of sponsored debates?

In a column three years ago, I proposed adding “Anything for a Buck” to our list of national mottoes. This was truly dumb since it implied our willingness to push aging Aunt Mabel off the nearest cliff for her insurance. So how about “Money Talks?” We've all heard the tune: If you're in the class labeled “the working poor” or “the retired poor,” you're going to have a hard slog. Them that has, gets. People who have the gold make the rule. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
That's not the way we were meant to be. That's not the way most of us are.

A wise person once said it's not money that's the root of all evil – it's the love of money. The older I get, the more I agree with him (or was it her?). Money talks, but sometimes we find when we listen to it too much, we can't hear anything else.
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Before I end this, I want to wish good luck to Gail Kimberling, who is leaving for better days. She's been my mentor and my editor and I'll miss her.

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The Bogus Economist ©2008