Friday, November 28, 2008
Greed
One of the liberals favorite words when it comes to free market economy is “greed”.
But what is greed? Merriam Webster defines greed as:
a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (such as money) than is needed.
The problem with this definition is it uses relative words like: selfish, excessive and needed. These words have no absolute definitions so they are subject to arbitrary definition by anyone who wants to make a point or further their agenda.
One of the favorite targets of liberal politicians and the liberal media are CEOs. But who has more greed, the CEO of Toyota (a fortune 500 company employing over 750,000 people) earning 1 million dollars annually or the president of The University of Chicago (a relatively small university probably employing only a few thousand people) earning 1.5 Million dollars annually? You could make a case that the university president is greedy relative to the Toyota CEO. It’s interesting that liberals never criticize as greedy liberal CEOs like Warren Buffet, the second richest person in the US, who made his fortune practicing free market investing.
Thomas Sowell said in his column today: “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"?”
Some people think that greed caused the recent mortgage crisis. I agree. It WAS greed that caused the recent mortgage crisis. It was political greed of politicians to grant their constituents favors so as to be re-elected, it was social greed of moderate/low income people to live in houses with mortgages they could not afford and it was financial greed of investors buying risky investments based on those risky mortgages.
Greed is relative like beauty – in the eye of the beholder or like pornography – you know it when you see it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Excellent post. I do believe that professional athletes and celebrities are greedy. Granted that I am not talented enough to be in movies/tv/theatre or to play professional sports, but still. They will probably make more money in one year than I will make in my entire lifetime.
I agree with you regarding greed in the mortgage situation. People got greedy and wanted to get a house that was way beyond their means, and the banks got greedy to turn a profit. Unfortunately greed won't be going away any time soon.
BTW, my word verification is "forkedly." Haha, that just sounded really funny to me and I had to share...
Greed is one of the seven deadly sins. There are other deadly sins about which we take pains not to condemn because some people would get their feelings hurt. It is OK to hurt the feelings of executives and managers, after all, as some people say, they are only parasites.
With regards to Sean's comment, I'm sure SOME professional athletes and celebs are greedy but, that isn't for us to judge. The fact of the matter is they earn their money. Their employers feel they are worth their salaries no matter how they compare to yours or mine. What's sad about all this is, like this post details, the liberals have allowed themselves the privilege of passing judgment on what amount of money certain people deserve. It is actually the market that decides. They have used the word greedy, which is something only the heart knows much like hate or envy, to demonize some earning more than others. There is no way to measure or track greediness and the liberals have used that word to control how people perceive the current market situation.
Post a Comment