I recently went back through many of my older entries for editing purposes and I realized something, some of them are LONG. Now I'm not a big believer in condensing for the sake of format, and I'm a huge opponent of the TLDR mentality, however I do realize that I could perhaps benefit by being a little more into the whole brevity thing. So, today I am making some private resolutions to myself and to my audience regarding this blog. First off, I do not update nearly as often as I should, and I sincerely hope to change that. I also hope to get a plug-in counter that keeps a tally of how many times I've resolved to do just that. Second, I hope to abandon the essay format and keep the reading a little lighter, just a little.
Something else I've resolved to do is go back through some of my old entries and offer a personal commentary on them. I believe I mentioned in one of my recent posts (relatively speaking, of course) that my views have evolved greatly since I started this blog. Sometimes when I go back and read older entries I say to myself, "what the hell was I thinking?" Sometimes I read them and, even though think my logic was erroneous, think that they bring up valid points. At other times, I read them and think that they still hold up, but that the writing style or rhetoric I employed turned them into a very sharp and dangerous sword, but one brandished by a drunk, metaphorically speaking, of course. I've already gone back and deleted some of my more useless posts, and I am resolving right now go offer commentary on the ones I've decided to keep in order to get their point across better. When this will happen, though, only time will tell.
Anyways, I do love my last couple of entries. Accountability, it keeps coming up time and time again. You know, before 2007 I had a decent amount of respect for John McCain, at least more respect than I had for most other Republicans. I figured that he was just trying to, "electrify the base," as they say, during his campaign for Presidency. I assumed he revert back to his normal self once the campaign ended. Maybe it's the fact that Boehner, McConnell, and Steele can't seem to stop tripping over themselves, and that the party has no real leader so to speak of, but it seems like the election has just served to push McCain further towards the right and keep him there, although it's not that he was all that far left in the first place. Either way, his little rant on the hill the other week rubbed me the wrong way. If you didn't know, he criticised the federal removal of the GM CEO. Although I do consider myself a Marxist, I do not consider myself a centrist. I think some of communism's biggest failures came about because of too much centralization. However, I keep talking about accountability, I keep talking about how a lack of it has helped us into this crisis. The thing that keeps getting to me is how the people who are largely responsible for this economic downfall, the people whose increased fortunes came at the price of economic parity and security, are the ones who continue to profit.
GM has been spiraling since the crisis hit, and they were close to dire straights before the shit hit the fan in the first place. GM's CEO has seen a 96% decrease in GM's share price. These executives need to be held accountable for their actions, for the failure of their companies. Wagoner was making over one and a half million dollars a year, his company was seeing a steady decline that only got worse with the economic crisis. Why? What did he do that warranted that salary? These executives are supposed to make decisions that help their company's profitability. The new big thing right now is to blame the unions, say they're to blame for companies downfalls. If it's the union workers who are making too much, the ones who have families to support, mortgages to pay, who don't have wealth to fall back on, who are actually concerned about the success of the company they work for because their livelihoods actually depend on it, then why do CEO's who lose money, lose profitability, and put their company in jeopardy not only make almost two million dollars a year, but walk away after being fired like nothing ever happened. How long do you think Wagoner can last without experiencing even a noticeable drop in standard of living? How long before a union line worker who has lost their job starts having to choose between medical coverage or food for their family? Better yet, if Mr. McCain is so outraged over this, then what does he suggest? When the head of the company can pull down million plus salaries for years, and his company can be pushed to the point where it needs government intervention to save it, meaning all those workers are also dependent on government intervention, who is going to hold those CEO's responsible? They obviously aren't very willing to change their company to improve profitability, they aren't going to voluntarily step down, who is making sure they make the right moves not only for themselves and their portfolio, but for their company, their workers, and the taxpayers who are giving their company the money it needs to survive?
Mr. McCain, if the government shouldn't be overseeing them, who should? Should they be self-regulating, like the political right has been suggesting for years? That's obviously not enough. Why should we trust these executives to do the right thing? Is there any reason? These people can act in their own interests, they have no one they have to answer to, and executives, in the past, have shown a willingness to put themselves above their company. Why go on like this? We need someone to be looking over the shoulder of executives, they need to be held accountable the same as anyone else. They work a job, when they perform below the standards expected of them they should be reprimanded the same way a line worker would be. If no one else will assume that responsibility, if there is no system of checks set in place by the company, then it should not only be acceptable for the government to step in and assume the responsibility, it should be necessary. I talked last time about libertarianism and free markets, and it sounding good. It does sound good, but like I said it's not a simple matter of freedom and a lack of freedom. What is more important, economic freedom, or personal freedom? Free markets, or democracy? These companies have great influence in our lives. We stop spending money, they start losing money, they start laying people off. With that kind of influence in people's lives, there needs to be something that ensures it doesn't all fall apart, that people who work for a living will have job security. If that means firing a CEO whose company has tanked, so be it. Why is that wrong? Would any other employee be fired if they cost the company profitability? Absolutely. It should be no different for any employee no matter what their position in the company, and if that means the government needs to be the entity that enforces that, so be it, as long as it is being enforced.
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