It's not hard to find anti-free market writings at the Houston Chronicle. One only needs look.
It's also not surprising to see where the Chron's paid doodler doesn't like it all that much either. This is especially true when you view how the Chronicle, his employer, has been doing in it over the last several years.
Newspapers, by definition, are continuing to struggle as they try desperately to regain market share and (more importantly) ad revenue that has migrated to online sources. So, no, it's not all that hard to see why they would be opposed to, and in favor of policies that diminish, free markets.
What is amazing, to me, is that Americans care so much these days about what other people make. We've caught up with Europe in one area at least: It's now just as vile and disgusting to be wealthy in the US as it is abroad. Well, excepting celebrity that is. We tend to not begrudge them their money.
In fact, the only money that is portrayed as somehow dirty is that which is acquired through business. And by business I mean industry, or corporations or (shudder) banking. Whether or not you approve of the job Jeff Smisek did as CEO of United (I don't) it's not entirely his fault that the Board of Directors (who are supposed to have the company's (and it's investors) long-term health in mind) decided to ink Smisek to a contract that rewarded him for either success OR failure.
Yes, this IS the free market. Which means that companies are allowed to make decisions, both good and bad, regarding how they are ran, how employees are compensated and (to a point) how they're governed internally. When this free-market gets skewed, then you start to see poor outcomes as with Slolyndra, Tesla (currently) and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac.
Not that the government is ALWAYS the involved when things go tits-up, but they do play a rather large role. Left to their own devices companies that are managed intelligently are going to be a boon to all parties, their shareholders, the community at large and their employees. Unfortunately, in large part because of an anti-corporate attitude, many of the good things companies have accomplished are washed under a red-tide of rage and simple jealousy.
There was a time when watching the wealthy drive by in say, their BMW's we used to, as a country, say "I wish I had that car". Now we just say "I bet they got that car by being dishonest" or even worse "they should take away that car and give it to me". This is a very British way of viewing wealth and (to be honest) I'm not sure they are a country you want to be modeling right now.
A lot of this comes from the 100% incorrect, progressive, idea that wealth is a zero-sum game. In other words, if one person becomes wealthy then thousands of others must be poor. If America prospers then children in Africa are suffering as a result. What this idea ignores is that wealth is something that is typically created.
A company creates value, they create worth and (if they are smart) they create demand for their goods and services. This then creates wealth which, ideally, is used to create other wealth which.....you get the point.
The problem is when we start to decide that some people don't deserve their wealth because the cut of their jib is different from what we expect it to be. As horrible of a CEO as Smisek was, he deserves his payout because that was what the market bore for his services.
Here's the rub. The market for mine and your services has nothing to do with the market in which Smisek and United were negotiating. They are mutually exclusive. His compensation has an effect on ours to the rate of 0.000000000000000% It's true. The only people who are paying for Smisek's buyout are the shareholders of the company, who will see it reflected on the financial statements as a one-time charge.
Of all the mess America is currently slogging through one of the biggest problems we have is that people are no longer aspiring to be rich. We've believed the warped political talking point that the playing field is tilted and we can never achieve anything meaningful without cheating, or without the government intervening on our behalf. Those are lies that need to be loudly, and forcefully rejected. In fact, we should celebrate success, learn from failure and try to improve our business lives accordingly. We need to relearn to take calculated risks, and deal with both the consequences if they fail, and the rewards if they succeed.
In part, America is suffering because a large portion of people have sub-let their risk-taking to the Government, hoping to have the risk of failure subsidized away. We view bad business decisions as criminal (provided it's an industry we don't like) and we cheer when the wealthy get put in prison for making one. We celebrate actors in movies who make Millions of dollars for a film taking pot-shots at an executive who makes that over a period of years. We listen to ultra-wealthy Michael Moore tell us how bad the working man has it, and we lionize Al Gore telling us to get by with less while he's jet-setting to and from his extremely large mansion.
Then, in Houston, we get to see a man whose product is not considered valuable enough to be hidden behind the pay-wall gripe and moan that someone made a better deal than he. If there's anywhere that you should not be going for economic or business advice, it's to the Houston Chronicle who is revealing itself to be pretty poor at the actual execution of the same.
