Ben Affleck recently took to NPR to promote his latest movie Company Men, a movie about corporate layoffs (a tale certain to be captured accurately and with an absence of spin). During the interview, he lamented the fact that CEOs make 200 times the average worker, and this was the reason that America was in decline...the reason we'd lost our moral compass.
While he may have a point in his gripe about CEO pay-a topic worthy of thoughtful discussion- that is hardly the reason America is in decline. Perhaps Affleck should make a movie about how trash coming from Hollywood contributes to moving the needle on our 'moral compass.'
I'm looking forward to reading about Affleck's next film, when he demands to be paid the same as a sound guy on the set. Or be paid the same as the woman who cleans the trailers of insufferable actors.
I'm troubled by it too, but for different reasons. The rules these days give management and boards nearly absolute power at the expense of the true owners of the company...the long forgotten stockholder. If stockholders had the power this mortgage crisis as well as most of these companies even reaching the point they would need a bailout, never would have happened.
ReplyDeleteWe need to expose these executives to a basic tenet of liberal capitalism they've for over two decades been protected from, the right to fail.
Sally, you have a kindred spirit in your disdain for the vacuous, self-serving hypocrisy rampant throughout these righteously-indignant non-producers who make their livings performing deception. I don't deny them whatever they can make in their craft. I don't even deny them their hordes of worshippers who yearn to live vicariously through them (although I do pity anyone whose life is so thoroughly devoid of value that he or she turns to Hollywood for it). But I can tell you that, otherwise peaceful, unassuming fellow that I am, if just about any one of them ever came to my door seeking shelter in a storm, I'd take great pleasure in asking "Aren't you one of those Hollywood actors?" And upon confirmation, saying "Thought so" as I slam the door.
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