From CNS News.
Excerpt:
It turns out that the top 10 CEOs have an average salary of $43 million, which pales in comparison with America’s top 10 celebrities, who earn an average salary of $100 million.
When you recognize that celebrities earn salaries that are some multiples of CEO salaries, you have to ask: Why is it that rich CEOs are demonized and not celebrities? A clue might be found if you asked: Who’s doing the demonizing?
It turns out that the demonizing is led by politicians and leftists with the help of the news media, and like sheep, the public often goes along. Why demonize CEOs? My colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell explained it in his brand-new book, “The Thomas Sowell Reader.” One of his readings, titled “Ivan and Boris – and Us,” starts off with a fable of two poor Russian peasants.
Ivan finds a magic lamp and rubs it, and the jinni grants him one wish. As it turns out, Boris has a goat, but Ivan doesn’t. Ivan’s wish is for Boris’ goat to die. That vision reflects the feelings of too many Americans. If all CEOs worked for nothing, it would mean absolutely little or nothing to the average American’s bottom line.
For politicians, it’s another story: Demonize people whose power you want to usurp. That’s the typical way totalitarians gain power. They give the masses someone to hate. In 18th-century France, it was Maximilien Robespierre’s promoting hatred of the aristocracy that was the key to his acquiring more dictatorial power than the aristocracy had ever had.
In the 20th century, the communists gained power by promoting public hatred of the czars and capitalists. In Germany, Adolf Hitler gained power by promoting hatred of Jews and Bolsheviks. In each case, the power gained led to greater misery and bloodshed than anything the old regime could have done.
Let me be clear: I’m not equating America’s liberals with Robespierre, Josef Stalin and Hitler. I am saying that promoting jealousy, fear and hate is an effective strategy for politicians and their liberal followers to control and micromanage businesses.
Tom sent me this article that shows that raising taxes on the wealthy doesn’t even produce more revenue.
Excerpt:
All this nostalgia about the good old days of 70% tax rates makes it sound as though only the highest incomes would face higher tax rates. In reality, there were a dozen tax rates between 48% and 70% during the 1970s… the individual income tax actually brought in less revenue when the highest tax rate was 70% to 91% than it did when the highest tax rate was 28%.
[…]President John F. Kennedy’s across-the-board tax cuts reduced the lowest and highest tax rates to 14% and 70% respectively after 1964, yet revenues (after excluding the 5%-10% surtaxes of 1969-70) rose to 8% of GDP. President Reagan’s across-the-board tax cuts further reduced the lowest and highest tax rates to 11% and 50%, yet revenues rose again to 8.3% of GDP. The 1986 tax reform slashed the top tax rate to 28%, yet revenues dipped trivially to 8.1% of GDP.
Why would a Christian care how much money other people have at all? If you see someone who is poor, help them. If you see someone who needs a gift, give them a gift. The Bible teaches individual charity – you choose who to give your money to and how much to give, after you’ve paid your taxes to Caesar. I think it’s time that we took the Bible seriously on money… there are an awful lot of people sinning by breaking people into groups based on how much money they have – or what the color of their skin is. You do the best you can with what you can earn, and stop being concerned about taking money from people who have more than you do. The purpose of life is not to make everyone happy by making the secular government allocate everyone an equal amount of stuff – how unBiblical.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
I desperately wish I still had the article which contained a study asking people about their salaries. The people (whose salaries were under $100K) were given 3 scenarios and asked which was most preferable to them.
1) yours and everyone salary to stay as it currently is
2) for your salary to rise to 300K but everyone else in the country to be at 500K
3) everyones salary to be 150K
Overwhelmingly, like 2 to 1 people would rather have everyone the same at 150 rather than be at 300 but others higher than their own. Isnt that a pity that envy and jealosy would drive someone to take less just so others wouldn’t have more?
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I am especially concerned that Christians, who are not supposed to be into envy, coveting and theft, think like this. And it’s worse when they conflate redistributing wealth to pay for elective abortions with private charity. What goes on in churches where people can come out of that church and vote Democrat?
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Don’t people realize that some jobs are more specialized than others, and that supply and demand come into play?
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Wouldn’t it be logical to assume though, that if *everyone* else’s salary rose to be approximately 170% more than yours, then you’re 300K, despite how incredibly high that may be in our current climate, would then be not worth as much, due to the abundance of funds everyone else has. Therefore, no matter how much more money I would have, if everyone else had a lot more, my raise would be essentially worthless, and probably even a detriment from my current condition, where I may be above the mean, where as after number 2, I would certainly be in the lowest of the lowest percent.
Similarly with number 3, while not as bad for me, would simply equalize everyone, essentially socialism. My extra education/work/etc would count for nothing, and again my “raise” may end up being detrimental if what I had before put me above the average – (for instance 99K is a nice sum comparatively), but clearly preferable to number 2 where I essentially became the only person below the poverty line.
Number 1 is clearly the best option for someone who believes capitalism is the most beneficial economic system. I would continue to reap my own rewards in reference to everyone else.
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I agree with Francine.
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i said it wrong in my example, it was within the same company, not in the whole country.
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I’ve went over this article a few times and as much as I hate disagreeing with conservative males in public, I have to say something. Let me start where Williams gets it right. The observations are perfect. There is a difference between how lefties treat celebrities and how they treat CEOs of corporations, but why? His conclusion makes sense and his arguments show a pattern, “Demonize people whose power you want to usurp” (the removal of the establishment has in the past produced powerful dictators), but is this pattern a happy accident of the left, a tactic, or as Williams suggests, the agenda of the left because of who’s doing the demonizing. This is where I have to part ways with him. Of course I believe that some people are lured by power, but lefties function on a whole different plane than most conservatives can grasp. They are obsessed with poverty. They worship it. It is this worship of poverty that results in the demonization of wealth.
Wait, I know you what you’re thinking, how can they be jealous of other people’s money if they only want to be poor? Thomas Sowell can’t be wrong? Well of course Sowell’s right, and of course they’re jealous. They’re jealous and angry that there are people in this world that can live without being tortured about being poor. They believe that wealth is evil and that if you have any you are doing an injustice to someone. They believe in a limited pie. As in Sowell’s anecdote, when a leftist sees a man with a goat and a man without a goat it never occurs to them that there might be more goats out there somewhere, that goats have baby goats. Leftists see a limited supply of wealth. They believe they are righting injustices by stopping people from having more money than they need for themselves.
So why pick on CEOs rather than celebrities? Well now that is where the politics comes in. Firstly Lefties don’t like the fact that Oprah makes a lot of money, but can you see Obama criticizing Oprah? Celebrities are friendly enemies. Celebrities are lefties, for the most part and they have the money to donate to leftist causes. All leftist suffer from a condescending attitude toward the poor and so if a lefty finds themselves in a position where they are wealthy they just tell themselves that they are not “greedy capitalists.” Celebrities have money, but capitalists MAKE money and that is bad. Lefties convince themselves that they have a prescription that needs to be followed, that they know best what to do with those funds (re-distribution of wealth vs “laissez faire” capitalism). Leftists are control freaks that want to solve all the worlds problems with money (that isn’t theirs) and bring everyone to a equal level (which means the elimination of business which of course would mean everyone would be workers with no one to work for).
The fact that this demonization has been going since before the time of Robespierre should give us an idea that there is something sinister and wrong occurring here. Demonization is the correct word. This demonization of wealth creation is demonic, it is actually the demonization of creation. The left is about limits, the right is about abundance. The worldviews are polar opposed to each other and emanate from polar sources. The left has been sold a lie that is in contradiction to reality itself, because it is opposed to creation in every sense of the word. This is why the worldview of the right leans towards socially conservative policies while the leftist worldview leans toward destructive policies. This demonization is far more than a simple political power grab.
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