Tag Archives: jobs

Featherbedding?

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To paraphrase a Democrat’s remark, never let a tragedy go to waste.

The union for Amtrak’s locomotive engineers urged the railroad on Tuesday to put a second crew member at the controls of trains on the busy Northeast Corridor, where a derailment killed eight people and injured more than 200 others.

Of course. Never mind that an existing technology, cheaper than adding an unneeded employee, should have been in place, and will be in place after this accident.

The featherbedding contained in this union urging is made manifest in the union’s own statement:

Amtrak hasn’t had a second crew member in the locomotive of its Northeast Corridor trains since Congress ended the requirement in the early 1980s, the union said.

How many accidents caused by the lack of a second crew member has Amtrak had over those 30 or so years?

Those Are Some Bills, Bill

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“I gotta pay our bills,” says Bill Clinton about his $500k per speech fees. That’s nice work, and I don’t begrudge him a penny of it or the easiness of his earning it.

But is it really just to pay some bills?

Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton earned more than $25 million combined in speaking fees since January 2014, Fox News confirmed Friday.

Hillary, by the way, gets upwards of 200 large for her gigs.

Those are some bills.

The Ex-Im Bank

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The Export-Import Bank’s charter is up for renewal in our Congress this spring. The bank is alleged to help American companies by lending money to foreign buyers of and American company’s products so that buyer can afford the purchase, which in turns helps the US company, and its employees.

That’s a pretty good deal, right?

Maybe not so much. It’s American taxpayers who are on the hook—not just the one American company and its employees—if the foreign buyer defaults on the loan. But that’s not all. American companies trying to compete with that foreign buyer also are harmed, whether or not that foreign buyer defaults. See the graph below, from AEIdeas:ExImBank

Don’t renew the bank’s charter.

Regulation and Inflation

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Here’s one example of how regulation drives inflation, in the milieu of corporate CEO compensation. Charles Murray, at AEIdeas, provides it.

On multiple occasions the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] amended its rules to increase the disclosure of compensation data and to force boards to explain their rationale for the amounts. That, combined with the influence of the arbiters of corporate governance, created an inviolable requirement for compensation committees to be advised by consultants. A perfect recipe for increasing compensation.

Thusly:

In 70’s and even the 80’s the compensation of the CEO seemed to be mostly a matter arrived at between the board and the CEO that resulted from discussions and negotiations and the public disclosure was a matter of a few pages. But there was then nothing like the pressure to conform to best practices backed up by the reliance upon the advice of consultants and the concomitant availability of market data that there is today.
…
You can guess how it works. No board that isn’t about to fire its CEO really wants to admit that their CEO is a less-than-average performer by paying him or her less than average. But if the lowest-paid CEO’s are always being brought up to the average, then the average increases every year. Then for the high performers to be paid well, their compensation needs to be increased, but that raises the average…and so on every year. And the compensation committee and the board always have this market data before them, the recommendations of their consultants and “best practices” to adhere to. These influences are not easily resisted. You see the result.

It’s hard to believe the enormously intelligent regulators didn’t see this coming from the jump. The apparent abuse—that obscene CEO compensation—seems just another excuse to justify their jobs.