Berkshire Hathaway and the Pay of Bigshots

From vox, in a piece on "pay ratios" the comparison of the pay of the CEO and the pay of the median employee in the company.  Some ratios are over 1,000.

Not all of the pay ratios released so far are so gaudy. Warren Buffett, the CEO of conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, makes less than twice his company’s typical employee. 

[Updated:  Jeff Bezos earns 59 times the median Amazon employee according to this article.]

Some Good from Trump?

Whatever else happens in the next four years, Trump's election and administration will act like a bowling ball (no, not a gutter ball), knocking the pins around and disturbing past patterns.  Any change of political party does that, but he will do so more.  In that sense, voters who wanted "change" will get it.

What do I mean:  take the farm bill, for example.  For decades it's been an omnibus that served the interests of those liberals who wanted food stamps (SNAP), the greenies who wanted conservation, and production agriculture who wanted farm programs and insurance.  This alliance has been stressed at times, most recently in the House during the consideration of the last farm bill.  This time around is likely to see more changes.

Another example: it looks as if the intra-party coalitions which comprise both parties are under strain. The Democrats are debating whether to change the Clinton/Obama formula to be more aggressively liberal and perhaps more class-conscious, a direction which may lessen their support from the professional upper classes.  The Republican coalition of fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, libertarians is now figuring out whether it can accommodate a renewed appeal to the "Reagan Democrats".  IMO the original Reagan Democrats tended to be Catholic working class who left the Democrats as a result of social issues, mostly abortion, and resentment of blacks. The new working class seems to be more populist in tone, which doesn't work well with Wall Street Republicans.

So if Trump is successful as a change agent, does that mean he'll be successful as a President.  My answer--no.  But are these changes "good"?  I'd resist that term; rather I'd say the changes are somewhat inevitable.  We shall see.

Asking [Debate] Questions

This site for submitting and voting on questions from the public for use in the second debate is, on the face of it, a good idea.  But I'm skeptical.  The Obama administration tried something similar.  My impression is they found many, perhaps mostly, crackpot issues--I'm using a broad definition of "crackpot".  It's IMHO a populist idea.  We shall see what questions actually come out of the process, hopefully not the ones with the most vote.

I spent a little time there and voted for one issue (legalizing pot, not because I think it should be, but because it's a valid issue and probably not one which would be asked in the usual way.)

I'm From Wall Street and I've Got a Deal for You

ProPublica studies the tobacco bonds.  Last century (1998) the state attorneys general and the tobacco companies reached a settlement, which gave states money over a number of years with the amount dependent on how much people smoked: the more they smoked, the more money since the logic was to cover the costs/externalities of smoking.

Wall Street came along and persuaded states to securitize the settlement, to sell bonds based on the stream of anticipated income from the tobacco settlement.  States would get more cash upfront (to be used as the politicians desired).  That's not a new idea but surprise, surprise, the deal is turning out to be better for Wall Street firms than for the states.

There were a lot of fancy deals made during the 90's and 00's; I hope someday there's an overview study which shows how many turned out okay and how many were snake oil.  The KISS rule also applies to finance.

A Blast From the Past--Price-Gouging on Rail Cars

Back in the 1800's farmers complained bitterly about freight rates charged by the railroads.  There was some justice to the rails' pattern, but because farmers depended so much on the rails to get harvests to market, any exploitation was too much. The result was our first independent regulatory commission, the ICC (Interstate Commerce Commission) and a strong impulse to the populist movement.

Fast forward to today, and this excerpt from Farm Policy:

What’s more, rail car rates than ran $300 to $400 a car a year ago have ballooned to $3,000 to $3,500 now, he says [Jerry Lehnert]. Eventually, those excess costs get passed on in bids, eroding farm incomes in the process.”

A 500K Mercedes?

Who knew, but this piece via University Diaries on the rich kids at GWU shows a fancy student car which retails for over $500,000.  


To the barricades.

Let All Populists Rejoice

According to this blog post of a study, Harvard Law students are no good (i.e., their free representation of indigents didn't help, and actually delayed decisions).

Some Academics Are Not Sensible

See this review from Treehugger of the latest vertical farming missive. Just because someone has a PhD doesn't mean they have common sense.

The Wingnuts on Both Extremes

At least every other day I think the wingnuts on the right and those on the left show the same symptoms (i.e., crazy).  This article in Slate pointing out both right and left are anti-H1N1 vaccine is an example of the anti-government, anti-science populism.  Read it all, but I particularly like the last sentence of the last paragraph:

"Still, the current political climate is a veritable petri dish for swine flu fears. For one thing, the debate over health care reform has already stirred up suspicions that the government will use medicine to hurt the American people. (The charges range from well-intentioned negligence to conspiratorial world domination.) Meanwhile, post-Katrina, lack of disaster preparation is unacceptable. Politicians would rather overreact than underrreact. Then, of course, there's the Internet echo chamber and the vague paranoia surrounding Obama. A caller recently told Glenn Beck that "if this were five years ago, I'd probably say definitely, I'll take it [the vaccine]." Perhaps there's a simpler, more elegant explanation for why members of both political extremes refuse to get vaccinated: natural selection."

Is Michael Moore a Tea Partier?

We saw Michael Moore's Capitalism this week.  I didn't like it much, although he had some good laughs, particularly when accosting the Wall Street firms over their receipt of TARP funds.  But the whole thing seemed rather disjointed and without a theory to link together his attacks.  The gist seemed to be the unionized General Motors of the 1950's and 60's of Moore's youth was the good life, and everything since has gone to hell.  But the best he can do to explain how the capitalism of the 60's, changed to the capitalism of 2000 is to blame deregulation.  Moore also gets himself caught in illogic--Obama's campaign is represented as the people rebelling against Wall Stteet but Obama's Treasury Secretary is depicted as a complete and utter failure (for his part in the bailouts).

Given the prominence of the bailouts in his movie, I was struck by the emphasis in this article on the role TARP played in angering the tea partiers. It's not unusual in American history to find both right and left wing radicals feeding off the same populist temper.

More on Banking Than on Food

Floyd Norris has an interesting piece on the revision of economic statistics in the NYTimes

"In the new treatment, it appears Americans are spending more on financial services and insurance — $823 billion a year at the current rate, or 8.2 percent of personal consumption spending — than they are on food and beverages to be consumed at home — $788 billion, or 7.9 percent."

Note the $823 billion is much more than we spend on national security. Where's William Jennings Bryan and his Cross of Gold speech?

Us Millionaires Are Too Damn Rich

From the Wall Street Journals blog, a report of a report on worldwide wealth:

Millionaire households (those with $1 million or more in assets under management) represented 0.7% of the world’s total and owned $33.2 trillion — or about a third of the world’s total.

I shouldn't claim to be a millionaire by this definition (though if you include the value of the house...). But it's obscene for less than 1 percent of the population to own a third of the wealth. (Remember this post when I appear to be moving rightward.)

A Question of Class

Recently (May 22, no longer available free) the NY Times was talking about the starting salaries for policemen on Long Island. They noted:

"Starting salary on the 2,692-member Suffolk force is $57,811 -- compared with $25,100 when entering the New York Police Department academy and $32,700 after six months at the department -- and rises after five years to $97,958 ($59,588 in New York). With overtime, many members of the Suffolk department routinely make more than $100,000."

As one might expect, the differential is causing NYC sergeants to become Suffolk patrolmen.

Then, on Saturday, comes a column on how college graduates should save money. The title is: "More Advice Graduates Don't Want to Hear". He wrote the same column last year:

"In droves, parents sent the column to their children. And some of those children wrote to me to vent. What I suggested was impractical, many said. How would you like to try to live on $40,000 a year in Washington or San Francisco, several asked."

In the bad old days (i.e., 1960), police departments were trying to upgrade their forces and get college grads. I'm not sure how well they've done, but the difference between the two pieces says to me there's a lot of unconscious arrogance among the college graduates who are coming to NYC to live. Makes my populist blood boil.

Why CEO's Earn Their Pay

John Phipps provides a quote from Davos, via the NYTimes . (The context is a clueless CEO trying to prep for a PR appearance.)

GOPR, Kinsley, and the Capitalist Hidden Toy Game

I invented GOPR (good old populist rage) yesterday, and revisit it today, inspired by Michael Kinsley's tirade today in the Post against capitalism. Kinsley takes off from the recent craze for leveraged buyouts to argue the capital markets don't work--witness the fact that companies have 3 different prices/values--one today's value as expressed in stock price; one the (slightly higher) price that people are willing to pay to take the company private through a buyout; and the final the much higher price asked when the company returns to public markets. It's good, Kinsley is always good, and seems convincing.

But I'm not convinced.

What Kinsley misses is the capitalist hidden toy game. For example, back in time (maybe late 60's) the craze was for conglomerates--assembling companies under one roof added value. That lasted for a while, then the conventional wisdom decided that more conglomerates were failures and they needed to be split up. That's just an example of the constant churn of capitalist deals. Remember GM used to own EDS? Sears owned a stock brokerage? GE owned many things, until Jack Welch decided he only wanted to be 1 or 2 in a field? Even today, Altria (i.e. Phillip Morris) is preparing to spin off Kraft Foods. But that's just one side. On the other you have the whole merger and acquisitions area of finance; so popular that it's known as M&A and doesn't have to be defined in stories.

It's the old story of boys and their toys. You hide a boy's toy for a while, then bring it back out and it seems new and different and worth more. There's nothing more attractive than a "deal", whether it's taking a company private, doing an IPO, doing a merger, or doing a spin off. Each is a "deal", a deal to publicized, exploited, envied, finagled, conned. It's all a part of "finance", which good old populists love to rage against.

Good Old Populist Rage

Why do I feel GOPR when I read a piece like Greg Mankiw linked to (Larry Lindsey in the WSJ complaining about high tax rates)? I don't really know. Possibly because I'm sure that most highly paid people treat money as equivalent to gold stars--it's the status and the competitition, not really the goodies the money can buy. (Which means that a 92 percent tax rate, as when I grew up, doesn't inhibit production.) Or maybe it's the arrogance of someone who thinks he's "atlas" and an "entrepreneur", when he's really a modern witch doctor. See his web site.

I realize that he's justified in his language, at least in terms of common usage in the circles in which he moves, and he may well be a nice guy. And how can I be opposed to anyone who got fired for a warning about Iraq? Historians have a concept called "producerism", which the old Populists and my mother fiercely believed in. That ideology said that those who produced things were morally superior to those who just sat around on their rears. You couldn't feel proud of earning a living by talking or writing, you had to do. That may be why Dr. Lindsey's piece touches a sore spot.