Category Archives: jobs

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.
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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.

Get Off My Lawn

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The union looking to organize workers at Boeing’s South Carolina plant has put its plans in a holding pattern, claiming workers are so opposed to signing up that they chased labor leaders off their porches at gunpoint.

Poor babies. That’s private property you’re trespassing on. Get off. Stay off until you have the owner’s permission. How is that so hard to understand? Even by a union hack.

More importantly, though: how did those union hacks get these workers’ home addresses? Who gave up that private information without the workers’ permission?

It also appears the union is making all of this up. The police say they’ve received no reports of any such behavior either in North Charleston, the location of the plant, or in the surrounding areas.

The hacks did go crying to their momma though.

The union filed an unfair labor practice with the National Labor Relations Board in which it alleged that “two organizers were threatened at gunpoint and others reported hostile and near-violent confrontations,” according to a union press release.

It’ll be interesting to see President Barack Obama’s NLRB make the case that ejecting trespassers from private property is somehow unfair.

Wages

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Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has been making a big deal about what she claims is the outrageous pay of company CEOs compared to their employees. Here’s a graph, via AEIdeas‘ Carpe Diem and Mark Perry that indicates how well she’s walking that talk.ClintonWage

Or is this fact just another of campaign season distraction and attack from the Hillary Truth?

Hmm….