Earnings
Earnings used to make sense.
Our next door neighbor in Scranton was a Master Plumber who could afford to buy a new car every two years when the old one got dirty. We kept our 1950 DeSoto for twelve years until it broke down. My father said, “You couldn’t pay me enough to wiggle through crawl spaces and clear grease from clogged pipes. Our car is old, but it is clean.” It made sense that a skilled worker doing a dirty job would make the big bucks.
It also made sense that the first three Air Products CEOs were among the company’s first five employees. “Dexter Baker should make thirty times more than I do. He has forgotten more about the business than I will ever know.” When a subsequent Air Products CEO was making 240 times what I was even though he started at the company the same day that I did, it was harder to swallow. Yes, I’m talking about you, John Paul Jones. Your acquisition of Stearns-Roger and your failed merger with British Oxygen worked out about as well as the Trump casinos in Atlantic City. And I was the one who got “downsized”? Not that I’m still bitter after 23 years.
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It makes absolutely no sense that shareholders approved a one trillion dollar pay package over ten years for Elon Musk. That’s a cool $100 billion per year. Putting that in perspective, the 1.4 million American elementary school teachers combined will make $97 billion this year. Is Elon worth more to America than its elementary educators? Comparative compensation would say, “Yes”.
Nothing is worth more to America than Law and Order. ICE agents were paid during the shutdown while Air Traffic Controllers weren’t. So what if your flight is cancelled or delayed for hours, those sketchy-looking Latinos looking for day work in the Home Depot parking lot are safely in prison in El Salvador. The 700,000 police officers patrolling America made a combined $53 billion last year. Elon will make almost twice that much.
Speaking of public safety, the 330,000 American firefighters earned a combined $21 billion last year. Elon will make almost five times that much. I guess he can put out a fire five times faster than the people trained to do it.
Earnings do not make any sense at all anymore.
By Ed Dufton
