Yes. A CEO’s contribution can well be 1000 times greater than mine at a corporation. It’s measurable. Contribution has to do with profits for the owners of the company (shareholders in corporations). It’s not only rational for profitable companies to reward their leadership, it’s pragmatic. If rewarding every employee with higher salaries, benefits, or profit sharing is shown to increase bottom-line profits for a company, they should do that too. Making a profit is not evil, it’s successful.

Healthy markets are an evolutionary soup of business models. The successful models naturally propagate, and the unsuccessful models die off (when allowed to). This keeps companies competing for both customers and employees. It keeps employees competing for employers. It rewards the best, and we get more of it.

Bailouts reward the worst, using resources expropriated from those who are “not worst” (all the rest of us). We end up sustaining and creating more of those failed models.

But beyond all that pragmatism, I agree with Stephen:

It is simply not constitutional for the Federal Government to run private industries.

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” There is no enumerated power to “set what the President thinks are reasonable salaries for CEO’s”. That is what dictators do, not Presidents of the United States.

I appreciate your contribution, even though it is usually antithetical to the general philosophy at The Liberty Papers.

Your points are often the type of foil that encourages further discussion and exposition of libertarian principles. Basically, without reasoned and reasonable discourse on these topics, readers who disagree, but prefer not to post, would not have their convictions aired for discussion here.

Of course, you’re usually wrong, and Stephen is usually right, but that’s just me ;-)

Don’t you work for a salary too? Do you sit on your ass to get paid? Is your contribution 10, 100 or 1000 times less valuable than the top managers or CEO.

1. “one might be able to attain that something for nothing.” Do you have any examples of this? I know that those in upper management in my company work well over 40 hours a week (try 60 plus) and are paid a flat salary (meaning if they work 1 hour or 100 hours in a week they are paid the same amount). This is typical across American businesses and industries. How is this “getting something for nothing” ?

2. Even if the compensation is “too much” ITS STILL NONE OF THE FEDERAL GOVENERNMENT’S DAMNED BUSINESS! IT’S NOT THE GOVERNMENT’S PLACE TO DECIDE HOW A PRIVATE COMPANY RUNS ITS BUSINESS.

It’s clear to me that you haven’t learned a thing from The Liberty Papers despite being a regular reader (or frequent troll at least).