New School Politics

Do these points relate?

Ryan | 4 09 2007

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No. But they are two of Thomas Sowell’s “Random Thoughts”:

A recent study showed the median income of major corporate CEOs to be about $8 million a year. That’s less than a third of what Alex Rodriguez earns and less than one-thirtieth of what Oprah Winfrey makes. But no one is denouncing them for “greed.”

It is amazing how many people who want us to get out of Iraq want us to go into Darfur.

While I’ll leave readers to chew on those questions themselves, I have a couple of pithy comments on the issues.

First, Oprah and ARod are less likely to be denounced for “greed” because they are in the public eye and thus people feel a connection to them and to their success (because they watch them entertain and provide their riches by doing so). Executives on the other hand are assumed to be greedy and lazy men working in big offices. They are demonized, in part, because their work is enigmatic. While people make them rich by buying whatever they help produce over the course of the day, the process is anonymous and absent of any feeling of connection with the CEOs. And of course a lack of economic learnedness may also contribute to this antagonizing of Executives.

Leftists hate the war in Iraq because its rationale is “self-defense”; leftists love the idea of intervening in Darfur because its rationale is “altruism”.