In a delightfully written column for the Wall Street Journal, Holman Jenkins observes that baseball great Derek Jeter’s salary showdown has provoked none of the public outcry we inevitably hear when a CEO makes a lot of money. My favorite part:
Absent from the Jeter controversy has been envy or raillery about the horrors of income inequality. Absent has been the lethargic assumption that national income is a fixed sum, so more for Mr. Jeter means less for schoolteachers. Absent has been the psychological malady that, in a world not short of injustices, causes sociology professors to lie awake obsessing over the difference between their incomes and those of other people.
Said one fan on a New York paper’s website: “As far as the money is concerned, I really don’t care what they pay him. It’s not my money.” If it were catching, this healthy-minded attitude toward the paychecks of our fellow man would make the world a better, happier place.
There’s a lot to say about why the relatively high pay of superstar CEOs is reviled while the relatively high pay of superstar sports figures and celebrities is tolerated and even cheered.
One reason for this double standard is simply that few people have a clear idea of what it is a CEO does. We all can see what makes Jeter great (well, those of us who aren’t Red Sox fans), but just what does Larry Ellison do–and why can’t Oracle’s stockholders find someone to do it more cheaply?
I’ve often thought that a reality TV show based around a successful CEO who is not Donald Trump would go a long way toward remedying this problem. But, alas, it would not go all the way, for reasons I explain in my article (co-authored by Yaron Brook) “The Corrupt Critics of CEO Pay.”
image: flickr/keithallison
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