"Robert M. Gary" wrote in message
news:fc821152-8b1d-4014-a385-

They paid what they needed to to get the CEO they thought they needed.
Its easy to Monday Morning Quarter back when you've not been in the
board room. Maybe you would have been a better chairman of their
board, who knows. Maybe you should apply for the position.

I wouldn't have been. On the other hand...what... I might have cost them
thousands of jobs, hundreds of millions of dollars, industry prestige and
leadership, taken 40 million just to leave, and gotten fired after just a
few years. Oh, wait...

I'd could wreck their company for a fraction of what they paid her to do it,
and for a fraction of what they paid her to stop. Doesn't take hindsight.

However, I would argue that employees in capitalist countries fair far
better than those in communist and
restricted socialist countries.

That's sort of a serious tangent, but, I bet plenty of employees in
communist countries fair far better economically than pilots trying to pay
off their school loans and survive for under $25,000 a year. Sure, the
primary purpose of a for-profit company is to maximize return to their
investors, but the laws against slavery, illegal labor, child labor, etc
demonstrate a developing sense in America that there is a higher value and
ethic than simply making money for investors. Otherwise, we'd still have
Chinese coolies dying on the job and doing backbreaking labor or kids locked
in New England sweatshops, which are two things that happened in America
when we let investors and executives run amok. The course has been set and
now, practically nobody would say that locking children into a firetrap
warehouse filled with sewing machines is acceptable. But it wasn't the
investors or clothing executives that slayed that dragon.

I'm not saying that government or union intervention is the solution. I'm
saying the people of the United States of America need to rethink their
priorities. America isn't just about what's best for the investors. (That
would be, what, China? Saudi Arabia? It's hard to keep track of who owns
our asses anymore.)

-c