Cardinals, Wall Street and the Rules of the Game
You can not grow up in St. Louis
Would that life were a baseball game. When we consider all that has been going on with Wall Street and the protesters we see a game not being played by the rules. Faithful readers know that I am not in sympathy with the protesters. Their time would be much better spent trying to find a job or change laws they think are disadvantageous to them. These protests do nothing but provide a pseudo-dramatic format for people who like complaining more than solving problems. The fact that the protesters are being recruited and coached by the usual anti-free market and union touts does not make them any more attractive to me.
But neither am I sympathetic to companies or industries who worm their way through laws and regulations. Power, whether it is power to the, “people” or power to the, “man,” is a corrupting influence. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Power is only shared when it is mutually beneficial. It is only given up when there is no choice. Wall Street is a euphemism for the power of big business. I don’t like banks, I really don’t like insurance companies, and I have genuine contempt for snooty suits that were born on third base and think they hit a triple. If life were a ballgame, this team would be short on fundamentals. They would be counting on long ball hitters to take up the slack for poor fielding. They hope that a good pitch would make the opposition forget about paying off the umps. In real life, this never works.
If you could pass just one law, any law, what would it be? I’ve known for some years what my answer to that question would be. I would make all retirement plans, from all companies, large and small, the first and primary legal obligation of those companies. Nothing would be paid, nothing funded, nothing built, until retirement obligations were fully and irrevocably funded with fully liquid assets that could not be lost or depreciated. Retirement is worth working for and it should be a solemn, legally protected requirement for all employers. Since it is also a huge obligation for the companies, I would make those funds tax deductible.
Let’s take that idea and enlarge it. If a company provides its employees with health insurance that’s a deduction. If there is day care and schooling on site, that’s a deduction. Do you want closer parity between the salaries of the lowest and highest paid people in a company? Give companies that do those things another tax break. That which we want should be legally rewarded and that which we don’t fiscally punished. Think how desirable and competitive that would make those companies to work for. Think how those companies would have the pick of the crop of employees. Think how that would affect productivity. It would be good for business, workers and the economy.
You may or may not like my ideas, but I am coming up with ideas. It is easy to do when you aren’t wasting your time on posters, slogans, chanting and posturing for the media.
Think a little, and keep the faith.
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