Oh, please: “First, we must balance the federal budget. (Applause.)”
Moreover, a little admission followed by a serious fantasy:
“This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we’re in. Every one of us wishes this war were over and won. Yet it would not be like us to leave our promises unkept, our friends abandoned, and our own security at risk. (Applause.) Ladies and gentlemen: On this day, at this hour, it is still within our power to shape the outcome of this battle. Let us find our resolve, and turn events toward victory. (Applause.)
We’re carrying out a new strategy in Iraq — a plan that demands more from Iraq’s elected government, and gives our forces in Iraq the reinforcements they need to complete their mission. Our goal is a democratic Iraq that upholds the rule of law, respects the rights of its people, provides them security, and is an ally in the war on terror.
In order to make progress toward this goal, the Iraqi government must stop the sectarian violence in its capital. But the Iraqis are not yet ready to do this on their own. So we’re deploying reinforcements of more than 20,000 additional soldiers and Marines to Iraq. The vast majority will go to Baghdad, where they will help Iraqi forces to clear and secure neighborhoods, and serve as advisers embedded in Iraqi Army units. With Iraqis in the lead, our forces will help secure the city by chasing down the terrorists, insurgents, and the roaming death squads. And in Anbar Province, where al Qaeda terrorists have gathered and local forces have begun showing a willingness to fight them, we’re sending an additional 4,000 United States Marines, with orders to find the terrorists and clear them out. (Applause.) We didn’t drive al Qaeda out of their safe haven in Afghanistan only to let them set up a new safe haven in a free Iraq.”
You’ve hit my two favorite parts of Bush’s address: 1) a “plan” for a balanced budget (in someone else’s presidency) with no tax increases and a number of proposed spending increases, and 2) a near admission that his war has destabilized the Middle East and puts the world on the brink of a disaster.
But the Democrat response was also informative: concurrence that war is a morasse, and railing about the “unfair sharing” of the “national wealth.” In essence, the war is lost, so it’s time to wreck the domestic economy with income redistribution.
NPR did a story this morning that claimed there’s increasing disgust in this country with both parties, and characterized the growing number of independents as “fiscally conservative and socially liberal or libertarian.” I hope so…It’s a good time to keep harping on the intellectual and emotional bankruptcy of leftist liberalism and conservativism.
Agreed re Webb’s response; I also loved how he recounted his family’s military history for no reason (well, besides the obvious, cynical one).
I grimaced when Webb said the average CEO makes 400 times more than his average employee. Isn’t it reasonable to think that today, the average CEO’s job is 400 times more complicated than the average employee’s, and that it’s 400 times more important for a company to keep a specific person from jumping to another company than it is to keep a middle manager? (That, and who except CEOs really cares how much CEOs make?)
I wonder about Webb’s figures. The Economist just ran a spread on exec comp, and took the three highest paid officers from the 50 largest S and P 500 companies and compared their mean comp to average US wages. Their multiple (yes, slightly different in calculation) was just short of 180 times average wages, including stock options, bonuses, etc. Another interesting tidbit – 2 Chicago economists found a correlation between exec comp and relative stock performance versus the firm’s industry (Kaplan and Rauh).
A few thought experiments that should remain just thought…
1) Imagine what happens to the incentives & consequently behavior of top CEOs if they are paid the salary of the average worker.
2) Imagine what happens if CEOs are selected randomly from average workers (whatever “average worker” might mean).
Although the issue wasn’t exactly raised, it’s occasionally said that high executive compensation must be driving up costs and hence prices… another bit of nonsense, as high exectuctive compensation doesn’t drive up marginal costs of production. In the end, firm revenues must cover all costs, so the compensation had better be buying something that is worth the cost, but there’s no direct influence on the firm’s supply curve, so to speak.
Perhaps this is a silly idea, but looked at through the prism of history, isn’t it possible that the growing numbers of people who have great wealth a good thing? A few hundred years ago, there were very few people with any real wealth in each country – the monarchs. What do you suppose the ratio of income was between a monarch and a slave? Or even the typical free person?
So CEOs are the first “tier” of ‘workers’ to move to the ranks of the “really rich”. It used to be only business owners who could hope for that. The money paid to CEOs doesn’t come out of rank-and-file worker’s pockets, it comes out of the owners’ pockets (after, of course, it voluntarily comes out of customers’ pockets).