CEO pay none of your business

Selkirk Journal, Carman Valley Leader, SaskLifestyles.com: I could not believe William Dascavich’s February letter to the editor calling for limits in CEO pay. He calls for governments to limit CEO pay by citing that in 2009, the top 100 CEOs earned 155 times as much as the “ordinary Marthas and Henrys in our country,” as he puts it, up from 104 times in 1998.

It’s none of his or my business how much a CEO makes in a private company. That’s only the business of the individual who owns stocks or shares in the company of that CEO.

CEO pay is essentially the private internal workings of private enterprise. Activists and the Dascavich’s of the world, outside of corporations, want to stick their noses into these private enterprises where they do not belong.

Corporations are not social agencies. Businesses exist to make money. That’s it. The more the better, and history has shown time and time again that this is best accomplished if government meddling is kept to a minimum. The very financial survival of every country utterly depends on the success of any business making money.

Want a robust economy? Instead of attacking CEO pay let’s tackle public sector union compensation that strangles everyone.

One of the most important economic battle in the U.S. going on right now is the public school teacher unions who took over the Wisconsin Legislature in a huge sit in. The left-wing media has the nerve to call this the “Left’s Tea Party Movement.” They want more money for the educational oink sector.

This is the opposite of a Tea Party. This is a fervor for increasing big government, more socialism and bankrupting tax hikes. Public-sector union contracts break government budgets. Public sector unions don’t have hostile management on the other side of the table like unions in the private sector. The bosses of government unions are their pal politicians, who are on their side to fleece taxpayers.

The richest counties in the U.S. are in or near Washington, D.C. That capital city is a one- company town entirely made up of public sector unionized workers.

Unions call contract negotiations “collective bargaining.” Yet when public sector unions deal with left-wing pro-union politicians it should be called “collusive bargaining.” Their members are in the unique position of voting for their employers — the politicians that ultimately determine the wages for public-sector employees. When government unions sit down with the politicians they put into office, taxpayers pay dearly.

Worse still, any grassroots political action calling for lower taxes or more importantly- less government always will have an organized powerful backlash from public sector unions. Every effort to increase statism, more government, more draconian legislation to bully and micromanage our lives will have public sector union support behind it.

The ordinary Marthas and Henrys have no real representation at negotiation table and cannot withhold their contribution in these union contracts, but Dascavich doesn’t mind.

Stanley Reitsma

Carman, Manitoba

http://www.sasklifestyles.com/article/20110314/ESTLIFESTYLES0303/110319995/-1/estlifestyles/