For Romney, winning old-style was never enough
A lot has been said and written in recent days about what parts of Mitt Romney’s struggles — now verging on death throes — are the candidate’s fault, the fault of the campaign, or the fault of the modern Republican Party.
There’s plenty of blame to go around, to be sure. I’ve followed politics professionally for a quarter century and Romney-Ryan 12 is slotting in somewhere in the range of Mondale and Dukakis for sheer ineptness.
(See footnote below for why I’m talking about Romney in the past tense.)
The difference though is that nobody really truly expected those guys to win.
In 2012, a lot of pundits — and the GOP’s conservative base — thought they had an opportunity to kneecap a newly minted Democratic icon. After the 2010 mid-terms, the tea party tide seemed like a national correction.
It turns out not so much. And the time has come to look with a cool head at what portion of woe Mitt Romney has and hasn’t brought upon himself.
First, it’s only fair to point out that Romney is doing just fine among the voters who used to lift Republican candidates into office. He’s winning rural voters, whites, white men, middle class families, older voters, and military veterans, often by handy double-digit margins.
According to the latest Politico-George Washington University poll, Romney holds a commanding 15% lead voters in middle class families. We noted yesterday that a poll shows him up by similar, blow-out margins in rural parts of battleground states.
Romney also appears poised to capture at least two states – Indiana and North Carolina — that eluded John McCain in 2008, and he may well take several other states McCain couldn’t rally, including Colorado or Florida.
So give the guy credit.
The problem, of course, is that winning “old-style” isn’t good enough any more for Republicans.
Since the 1980s, the GOP’s foundational voting bloc has made up a smaller and smaller subset of the overall voting population. Which means that year by year, whopper states that were competitive — like, say, California, Illinois, and New York — have slipped out of reach.
Even safe-base states such as North Carolina and Virginia are tilting more and more purple, and may even be shading blue.
It’s not just that American demographics are changing, though that’s the biggest driver — those constituencies that lifted Reagan just aren’t enough to lift Romney to victory, unless they vote in really high numbers with nearly perfect discipline.
Also significant is the fact that modern politics are increasingly tribal, increasingly ironclad.
In their respective wins, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter both built interesting coalitions of open-minded voters.
Carter merged Northeastern moderates, blacks and southern Whites. Reagan cobbled together a weird coalition that won New York and California but lost Minnesota and West Virginia.
Romney clearly hoped to do something similar, hoping to expand the GOP’s southern and Midwestern base with wins in places like Colorado, Ohio and Wisconsin. He took a stab at chipping away the Democrats’ lead among women and Hispanics.
It just didn’t happen. And probably wouldn’t have happened, even if Romney ran a much smarter, better campaign. In fact, what would have been needed is a brilliant campaign, an over-the-top campaign. A second Ronald Reagan. A second Bill Clinton.
But you can’t run a political movement on the “Great Man” theory, hoping for a savior every four years.
So give Romney credit for doing about as well as Republicans have done over the last quarter century with roughly the same groups that powered the Bush clan to victory in three different elections.
This time around, it looks like Romney will be left holding the bag for a formula that may no longer be politically viable.
(A lot of national political journalists – folks several pay grades above me — are still arguing that this is a competitive race. Unless something unforeseen happens, I can’t find facts to support that narrative. Real Clear Politics concludes that Obama has 247 electoral college votes in his column now, and that’s without Ohio, Nevada or Virginia where the Democrat leads by more than 4 points and perhaps as much as 8 points among likely voters. Obama is also leading now in every battleground state, including North Caroline. There is also not, as some journalists have suggested, “an eternity” left in the campaign. There are 42 days. In an electorate that has budged only stubbornly all year, 42 days is exactly what it looks like…not much time.)
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The manufacturing sector is doing well in the US, we are still the world’s largest manufacturing country based on $. I know that they can’t find enough of the skilled labor in many of these fields to fill many of the positions. The old line work is gone you have to have relatively advanced training to work in manufacturing today.
The key is that we have to compete with the world, that means better education in the math and sciences, open markets, better R&D, better infrastructure and we have to be willing to work really hard. We also need more young people, we need more children, part of being productive is having a balanced work force having a labor force participation rate that is high not one that is low.
Immigration is the key to our future, unless we can convince people to start having more babies that live here now and I don’t see that happening. Vibrant, growing cultures need children and young people (in the right balance of course). So anyway I am not sure marginal tax rates are that important in the grand scheme of the major external world forces that impact us today, sure massive changes would have an impact. But capital gains at 15% or 20%? I don’t think so.
Paul,
Don’t you worry about me. I’m doing just fine.
“Immigration is the key to our future, unless we can convince people to start having more babies that live here now and I don’t see that happening.”
Mervel, if what we need is workers who are well-educated in math and science, it’s not clear that immigration in general is the answer. Rather, we need to substantially improve our educational process, or increase the immigration of well-educated people, or both.
It strikes me that, in talking about being competitive in world markets, we’re always saying that our labor costs are too high. Yet somehow, we never talk about our management costs being too high. Surely we would be more competitive if we paid our CEOs and other executives less astronomical salaries. There are straightforward ways we could use tax policy to discourage high salaries, starting with making stock options taxable. Don’t hold your breath, though. The lobbying against such proposals would be intense!
Walker,
Although it’s getting tedious, I’m compelled to point out yet again that executive compensation is set by Boards of Directors and approved by stockholders. Profits go up and down, stock prices go up and down and stockholders adjust accordingly. Management costs are carefully considered by analysts and are adjusted according to the objectives and requirements of the Board of Directors. It’s private enterprise. On the other hand, we could artificially make labor and management equal and see where that gets us. Whether you call that crypto-socialism, socialism or communism, it doesn’t work. By the way, stock options are taxable. When and how depend on several factors, but they are absolutely taxable.
Mervel,
Immigration as it exists today is killing us. We are being flooded with unskilled, uneducated people who contribute little in the way of taxes but who consume services. You think we need more children and young people? We have more than we need already. Take a trip downstate and check out the hordes of young immigrant men waiting on street corners for day labor jobs that pay less than minimum wage and produce no tax revenue. Then see how many of their children are in schools their parents don’t financially support. And what has Obama done about immigration? Here’s an opinion piece on that topic:
http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/commentary/article/Obama-won-t-admit-immigration-mistakes-3896878.php
“Management costs are carefully considered by analysts and are adjusted according to the objectives and requirements of the Board of Directors.”
Yeah, right. Larry, I have a bridge you might be interested in.
One of the problems is those “objectives of the Board of Directors.” Board members are generally CEOs themselves, and the executive whose pay they’re setting is liable to be sitting on their board, setting their pay. It’s called “interlocking boards of directors.” Their objectives aren’t necessarily well aligned with those of the stockholders.
CEO compensation and tax policy is a hugely complicated subject, and what it says in the intro text books and what actually happens aren’t all that closely related. Here’s a cople of links: ABC News: Taxpayers Subsidize CEO Pay, Report Says, Forbes: 26 CEOs Who Made More Than Their Companies Paid In Federal Tax , and a really big (but good) one Economic Policy Instutute: Taxes and executive compensation
“By the way, stock options are taxable.”
Not to the company that pays them they’re not. That’s a big part of the problem.
Larry, I doubt anyone is going to dissuade you of your hallucinatory views of corporate executive compensation but here is yet another study that shows salary negotiations between the CEO and the Board is not the objective process it should be. And that directors are derelict in their corporate fiduciary responsibilities for among other things using an inflated and irrelevant peer-group benchmark to determine CEO pay rather than the typical arm’s length negotiations the company utilizes for its other expenditures – like materials, services and lower-level employees
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/business/ceos-and-the-pay-em-or-lose-em-myth-fair-game.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
That you call my views “hallucinatory” is laughable on the face of it and dangerously misleading. The points I made are matters of fact. You can dislike them and have every right to do so, but they are indisputable.
Walker, stock options, like any other compensation, are taxable to the recipients. You can check the IRS Code if you don’t believe me that that’s a fact. You may also believe that we should revolutionize the tax code and tax people on both compensation they receive and compensation they pay out, but that’s a radical suggestion that is part of another debate entirely.
Myown, if you actually understood the article you cited, you would know that it criticized the executive compensation process from the perspective of shareholders. It proves exactly the point I made: executive compensation in private enterprise is solely the business of shareholders and their Boards of Directors. That’s also a fact. (It goes without saying that I am referring to lawful means of compensation.)
The bottom line here is that both of you have a well demonstrated antipathy to private enterprise and capitalism. If you believe we should follow some variation of communism, that’s OK with me, but let’s be honest about it. If you think I’m an idiot, say so; I won’t go crying to Brian about it. You don’t need to resort to smug comments and thinly veiled insults to maintain an appearance of propriety you clearly don’t believe in.
Immigration is not killing us. We have been getting a broad range of immigration, I am talking about both skilled and unskilled. Who do you think is fueling our engineering and math doctoral programs? They are not in general from the US they are from India, China, Africa, Russia, Indonesia, etc. We need to convince them to stay and make it possible for them to do so. Yes we have immigration on the low end of the wage scale also, but we need them, they fuel many of our industries, you can’t be a large dairy farmer-business for example today without using immigrant labor.
So yes immigration is very important. Education is very important also, much more important than marginal tax rates, the lowest taxes in the world won’t make up for a country made up of uneducated workers who can’t do basic math or read or write very well.
25% of US students did not even finish high school last year. So are we going to rely on them for our high tech jobs?
Yeah, right, anyone who thinks CEOs earn too much is a communist. That’s good Larry. Agree with me, or be branded a communist. I thought that kind of thinking went out in the fifties.
Walker,
You need to get a grip. I never said you were a communist or that anyone who thinks CEOs earn too much is one. I said that if you thought we should follow some variation of communism you should be honest about it. Besides, when did communism become such a dirty word? What do you call a philosophy that does not believe in capitalism and wants to artificially influence the relationship between labor and capital? You tell me.
Not only is immigration not hurting us, but immigration is what will keep us a strong and viable nation well into the future. Immigration will keep our average age relatively young once the Baby Boomers fade away into the mists of time, and the immigrants will keep Social Security solvent far into the future once we resolve the short term problems that we have created by robbing the trust fund.
Uh, Larry, isn’t someone who thinks we should follow some variation of communism a communist?
And communism became a dirty word in the fifties. Remember Joe McCarthy?
But to be perfectly clear, I believe in well-regulated capitalism. You can “artificially influence the relationship between labor and capital” without becoming a communist system. Communism is characterized by collective ownership…
“Communism is a revolutionary socialist movement to create a classless, moneyless, and stateless social order structured upon common ownership of the means of production…”
That’s a whole bunch of orders of magnitude further left than what I would advocate.
I agree that immigration is not hurting us at present. But I do sometimes wonder what will happen if we keep squeezing our educational system till it bleeds. We get plenty of uneducated immigrants, and we have a goodly home-grown crop of ill-educated folk, and if our work force is calling for more and more skill, we could find ourselves in a difficult position.
Illegal immigration is “killing us”. My son is a BP agent. 100+ cross his sector a day. And that’s just 1 sector and those who are being processed. Do the math.
I also agree with Walker – management costs are too high – including government. Too many regulations and too many regulators bringing in the big bucks.
Another one: 501c(3)s.
Far too many in managerial and government positions have crazy salaries and perks that are over the top. How to deal with that without government control, I don’t know. Perhaps let the cards fall and not bail businesses out or reform bankruptcy laws.
Oh, one more thing. Why is it that Bush gets blamed for everything that is wrong during Obama’s presidency, but I just heard a liberal give Obama credit for the stability (until recently) of the middle east. Hmm.
Most of the immigrants we are getting today are illegals with no education, no skills and no chance to contribute, which I think they would gladly do, if able. Thanks to Obama, the children of this tragic underclass will be in the same position as their parents but will have all the benefits of American citizenship. All that, without contributing a dime.
“Well-regulated capitalism” notwithstanding, why is it anyone else’s business what ownership pays its management? If you don’t like it or if it offends you for some reason, take your business elsewhere. That, I understand, but don’t tell me what to do with my business.
Funny, not one comment on the criticism from the Latino community of Obama’s immigration policy. Not one comment from all those who love posting links. Not one.
You guys forget about all the communism talk.
“Their objectives aren’t necessarily well aligned with those of the stockholders.”
Of course they are – to make money.
Remember the owners of the company can vote them out. Now I know you will give me that little shareholders don’t have a say business. The bottom line is even large shareholder blocks (things like public sector union pension funds) have the same goals as the guy that owns one share – to make money. These are the folks the really run the company.
One problem you have is poorly performing companies need the most skilled management help. That is why those managers entertain the best salaries. That is why you also often see well paid CEOs at firms that are doing poorly. They are there to hopefully turn things around.
Walker, so what other than tax policy do you suggest to get to your objective of lower payed CEOs? Obviously if you just tax these guys more then they need higher salaries to attract good managers to the companies that need them. Or is the idea that they will just go there out of the goodness of their hearts? What will you do and how will it be aligned with the objectives of the firm? I don’t get it?
Well, something’s got Larry riled up about latino’s and immigration policy. Too bad there isn’t some sort of link showing what to hell he’s talking about.
Paul, read this: NYT: C.E.O.’s and the Pay-’Em-or-Lose-’Em Myth.
PNElba,
Read my post of 8:56 this morning. The link is attached. Now I know why there were no comments.
Again I ask: why is it anyone else’s business what ownership pays its management? How do you justify interference in private enterprise?
Here’s a study from NCSUGetting Executive Compensation Right. It’s summary:
Larry, you ask why is it anyone else’s business what ownership pays its management? Because we live in a democracy. When the citizens of that democracy find that one class of citizens is enriching itself unjustly at the expense of all others, it can pass laws that attempt to rectify the situation.
By law, we are a democracy. I don’t think you will find the word “capitalism” in the Constitution. We the People have a right to regulate capitalism as We the People see fit. We’ve been on a Magic-of-the-Marketplace binge for a long while now, and people are beginning to see that the Magic isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Your dedication to collectivism (no code word there!) and sense of entitlement to tell other people what to do is truly chilling. No wonder you went wild when I used the word communism. You haven’t got a clue what democracy actually means. It does not mean that my neighbors can vote on what color I can paint my house or how much I should pay the guy who plows my driveway or what I should spend my money on. All of those things are none of anyone’s business but mine and the people I do business with. If you think the CEO of Ford earns too much, buy a Toyota.
I was so taken aback by your take on democracy I forgot to comment on your reference to class warfare. As I said earlier, why not be honest about your philosophy? I think you’ve gone far beyond well-regulated capitalism. It’s rather like calling fascism “law and order”.
“The points I made are matters of fact. You can dislike them and have every right to do so, but they are indisputable.” Larry, your points are opinion, not fact. And you never provide any data, references or studies that might support your opinion.
Your view of how CEO compensation is determined is just naïve, as the study reported in the NY Times link above documents. CEO pay is the biggest scam going. Further, Boards of Directors are often comprised of other CEOs and business contacts of the CEO. This is the “good old boy” network and they belong to the same “club” that utilizes contacts with money and power to promote and protect their positions. There is hardly any serious arms-length negotiation over CEO pay and perks with a bunch of your buddies who will want use the same inflated peer-group benchmark to boost their own pay.
“…why is it anyone else’s business what ownership pays its management?” Because Larry, many of these companies do business with the government such as defense contractors, health insurance, pharmaceutical, banks, etc. Look at the big banks and Wall Street. They took huge gambles with over-leveraged positions and crashed our economy. The government had to bail them out. Did the CEOs take a cut in pay – hell no, they got bonuses. It’s the public’s right and duty to question outrageous CEO pay when those dollars are coming from taxpayers.
But you don’t have to accept my opinion. A former Republican Congressional staffer argues there is a massive governmental redistribution of income taking place. Not to the poor, but to defense contractors and their CEOs whose salaries are even more obscene than the Bankers. (so you will likely consider Mr. Lofgren a Communist).
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11781-meet-the-welfare-queens-of-the-1-the-moochers-mitt-missed-work-for-the-pentagon
I don’t think we can determine CEO pay, it has too many implications.
We as in our shared government) can say if your CEO is overpaid you won’t get this government contract you won’t get to build b-2 bombers or nuclear subs, if your CEO has this much pay. We can say if your CEO is overpaid you will not get the tax credit from the US government etc (such as the oil companies do).
Sorry, Larry, it’s your self-delusion that is chilling.
Mervel, no one wants the government to determine CEO pay. But we can influence it via tax policy. It is, and has been so influenced for a long time, now, but in not very effective ways. And yes, we could use the other approaches you describe, though they depend on somehow defining what you mean by “overpaid.” It’s better to simply make it disadvantageous to pay CEOs excessively.
Myown,
The points I made that I referred to as facts are:
1) Stock options are taxable to the recipients. You and Walker can both check the Internal Revenue Code if you don’t believe me.
2) Executive compensation in private enterprise is set by shareholders working through their Boards of Directors. Doesn’t matter what you think of that or if the process is unfair or even if you think there should be a law against it. That’s how it works today and anyone with an elementary knowledge of corporate governance knows it.
Are you so accustomed to confusing opinion with fact that you think everyone does it? I can assure you that I don’t. I’ve about had it with people who make unfounded comments without reading posts, or worse yet, resort to the blogging equivalent of sticking your tongue out at people when you’ve nothing substantive to say. Yes, I mean you and Walker.
Walker,
Right it is very hard to come up with what does overpaid mean?
But we have some baselines. For example other Aerospace Companies, including those out of Europe; what is the world average in this industry for CEO pay? You can look at what these averages are around the globe with like companies and like industries and determine if some of these guys are way way over the average.
When w donate to a charity you can look at the 990 which reports executive pay for all not for profits who file 990’s, which is most legitimate NFP’s. We say as donors if the ceo pay is objectively high when compared to the budget or other not for profits, no I am not going to give to that charity.
We could do the same for all of these corporations who are getting our charitable tax dollars. We could set some baselines based on averages and common sense.
The actual pay though I think should be left up to the company and the owners and I am not really comfortable with taxes that manipulate that decision.
” I’ve about had it with people who make unfounded comments without reading posts…”
Speaking of which, would you care to quote the post in which I state that “Stock options are not taxable to the recipients”? How about the post where I state that “Executive compensation in private enterprise is not set by shareholders working through their Boards of Directors.”
You’re tilting at windmills Larry. I never said anything that contradicts either of these statements. So proudly presenting them as facts that you have “pointed out” to us is foolishness.
“I’ve about had it with people who make unfounded comments without reading posts, or worse yet, resort to the blogging equivalent of sticking your tongue out at people when you’ve nothing substantive to say.”
Yeah, right. A perfect description of your behavior here.
I mean, gee, Larry, re-read myown’s 7:58pm post. He doesn’t say that boards of trustees don’t set CEO pay, he says that when they do, it’s not an arms-length negotiation, it’s a good-old-boys club. So your while your fact is certainly factual, it completely misses the point.
And you provide zero factual information in support of your contention that it should be no one else’s business what ownership pays its management. So fine, your opinion is that government shouldn’t attempt to interfere with executive compensation. Big deal. I disagree. It’s a difference of opinion. In order to convince, one must make convincing arguments. Myown and I have attempted to do so. You have simply fumed.
I think there are constitutional issues surrounding the government telling private organizations what they can pay their employees.
I think when the company wants to receive government contracts and work directly with the government, that however would change. Every funding agency be it the government or private foundations have a right to decide who to grant money too, one of the determining factors in that decision may indeed be executive compensation or in this case over-compensation.
That being said there is something wrong with executive pay in the US. It has become separated from performance for the shareholders. I am not sure how to fix that or if the government can fix it?
“I think there are constitutional issues surrounding the government telling private organizations what they can pay their employees.”
FDR instituted wage and price controls during WW II, and Nixon did the same in the 1970. (Wikipedia)
And then there are minimum wage laws.
FDR was never one to worry about constitutional niceties (see his internment of Japanese-American citizens or his attempt to “pack” the Supreme Court). Nixon’s approach to constitutional issues is much better known.
Yeah, let’s not worry about those pesky constitutional issues. After all, we have a socialist dictator and an out-of-control megalomaniac as precedents.
http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/reference/timechoosing.html
Reagan’s 1964 “A Time for Choosing” speech. Good reading and as relevant today as it was then. Not much has changed in almost 50 years.
Larry, I’m not proposing wage controls, I’m just addressing the constitutional question. Nixon’s controls were in place for almost three years– if it was unconstitutional, you’d think it would have been challenged.
But it should be clear to anyone who has actually read what I’ve written that I favor using corporate tax policy as a disincentive to high CEO compensation.
Walkers is “myown” a HE? Funny, I thought that was a “she” like you and me!
Walker, I still don’t get it? The market determines what a CEO can fetch as far as salary. With your “tax policy” idea you are only going to push that higher. It already is “disadvantageous” to pay CEOs and “excessive” amount. Bottom line the tax you want to use is only going to make it more expensive to do business and it would be passed onto the consumer anyway. Where do you think the money comes from?
Larry – I read the opinion article on immigration that has your victimhood all riled up. Take away message is that no matter what Obama does, deport or not deport immigrants, he will be criticized by conservatives.
Victimhood? Hardly. As usual, PNElba, you haven’t a clue. Go ahead, we’re due for more outraged shrieking; it’s what you do best.
Actually I have never seen any “shrieking” coming from PNElba. Sound like you got up on the wrong side of the bed again. Try pushing it up against the wall.
“I’ve about had it with people who make unfounded comments without reading posts,”
That’s a laugh!
“The market determines what a CEO can fetch as far as salary.”
Paul, you still don’t get it because you’re not reading the links myown and I have put up. The market doesn’t determine CEO pay, a good old boys club of board members on interlocking boards set pay based on recommendations of executive compensation consultants who know that if they want to keep getting hired, they’d better recommend high. And since no company wants to say publicly that they’re on the bottom end of their peer group, there’s a fabulous Lake Woebegone effect. And since each inflated salary increases the average, the average that each company has to match just keeps going up and up and up.
Paul, there are plenty of articles that explain this if you’re open to understanding it; here’s one from the Economist, hardly a liberal rag: Are they worth it?
Take a look at the comments on the article, such as this one: “I see this “Sockholder Spring”, whilst long overdue, as a sign of hope. Not only for changing the egregious reward system of CEOs, but also empowering stockholders to influence practices they feel harmful to the general good of society. (Think BP)”
And “Why hasn’t globalization brought US executive compensation down to global levels? Because corporate boards are a farce.”
Open your eyes Paul. Things don’t work exactly like they’re supposed to. As another commenter put it, “[CEOs] must have really improved a lot from the Sixties, to deserve the raise they got.”
Here’s a piece from the WSJ: Firms Resist New Pay-Equity Rules “Wide gaps in pay can affect employee morale, productivity and turnover, several studies have found. In the 1980s, management guru Peter Drucker advocated capping the ratio of CEO pay to average worker pay at 20 to 1. Beyond that, resentment creeps in, according to the think tank Drucker Institute. In 2010, a joint study by Northeastern University’s business school and Bentley University found that employee productivity decreases as the disparity between CEO and worker pay increases.”
And “an AFL-CIO analysis of CEO pay across a broad sample of S&P 500 firms showed the average CEO earned 380 times more than the typical U.S. worker. In 1980, that multiple was 42.”
It’s a real issue, whether you choose to see it or not.
The reason people don’t get it, Walker, is that you are advocating something that goes against long-standing American traditions of private enterprise. No matter how many times you “explain” it the bottom line is the same: it’s incipient communism. You and your fellow travelers (especially myown) will scream, but hey, if the shoe fits….
Another thing, Walker, you need to stop speaking to people as if those who don’t agree with you are just too stupid to “get it” or perhaps haven’t taken the time to read your posts. It’s that high-handed, smug attitude so common to liberals that turns people off. No amount of clever rhetoric can hide the disdain most liberals have for those who challenge or oppose them.
“Walker, Although it’s getting tedious, I’m compelled to point out yet again that executive compensation is set by Boards of Directors and approved by stockholders.”
“Myown, if you actually understood the article you cited, you would know that it criticized the executive compensation process from the perspective of shareholders.”
“Are you so accustomed to confusing opinion with fact that you think everyone does it? I can assure you that I don’t. I’ve about had it with people who make unfounded comments without reading posts, or worse yet, resort to the blogging equivalent of sticking your tongue out at people when you’ve nothing substantive to say. Yes, I mean you and Walker.”
“As usual, PNElba, you haven’t a clue.”
High-handed? Smug? Disdainful?
Pot, meet Kettle.
“The reason people don’t get it, Walker, is that you are advocating something that goes against long-standing American traditions of private enterprise. No matter how many times you “explain” it the bottom line is the same: it’s incipient communism.”
Larry, what I said Paul wasn’t getting had nothing to do with what I am advocating. It was, rather, talking about the process of setting CEO compensation as it currently exists. Now you may think my account of that process is wrong, in which case it would seem to behoove you to show how that is the case, as myown and I have tried to make our case. Simply restating that it works in the textbook fashion is not making your case.
And you can claim that crafting regulations aimed at trying to influence CEO pay is communism, but it isn’t. It has nothing at all to do with abolishing private property or government seizing the means of production or any of that other good stuff. It is, rather, a matter of regulating capitalism, something this nation has been doing since its founding.