Related to the previous post, via BL via Insty: Whose money? The new debate about freedom. One quote from Cianfrocca:
Because of the way the world is made, this means that some people will receive a lot more money than others.
But is there truly any injustice in this? Consider the alternative. If we say that a baseball pitcher, or a top movie star, a great trader, a gifted entrepreneur, or even a well-motivated and hard-working local beer distributor should submit to an arbitrary salary cap, then what happens? The extra value created by that individual will go to other people, who are quite likely to be politically favored. The inevitable outcome is pervasive corruption.
Another:
I’ve said from the beginning of the current bailout mess that government-assisted companies are necessarily to be deemed as failures. This includes everyone from Bear Stearns to General Motors to AIG to Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac to Citigroup. It’s simply not just to expend public dollars to prop up failed enterprises. I’ve said many times that we simply can’t let them fail in an unordered way, because the collateral damage is too great. But neither can we let them continue to operate indefinitely.
Common shareholders of assisted companies need to be wiped out, and the operations should be sold off or liquidated in an orderly fashion. That’s what I had hoped would happen to AIG, Fannie/Freddie, and GM. Instead, our current government acts as if it can run these businesses indefinitely, even as it says with its lips that it can’t and shouldn’t.
That’s a true injustice, and that does amount to rewarding failure with taxpayer dollars. That makes me mad as hell, mad enough to take up a pitchfork and march. But I won’t be marching to the neighborhoods where CEOs reside. I’ll be marching up Capitol Hill and the White House.
