This week I am reading this book:
I have been reading Easterbrook's football columns for years. Although some of his comments get a tad repetitive, they are still insightful and interesting. So a couple of years ago I bought his earlier book:
Which I also enjoyed and highly recommend to someone who just cannot turn off anxious feelings about the economy and changes in our country.
So when he wrote a new book I figured I would add it to my library qeue. And a couple of weeks ago he included this excerpt in his weekly football column (the column is never 100% football):
"Congress is considering legislation that would tie corporate bonuses very closely to company performance. Since many CEOs are overpaid, this is the kind of legislation that's easy to root for. But if corporate bonuses were tied very closely to how much money the firm makes in a given year, the unintended consequence might be to discourage research and development -- which cuts into profits in the current year and probably won't produce any benefits until the current CEO has left his post. Thus regulating bonuses by tying them tightly to corporate numbers could have an unpleasant unintended result: discouraging investments that result in innovation.
"My proposal for reigning in executive pay: limit a CEO's income to 100 times the annual income of the lowest-paid worker in the firm. Only an appalling egotist could claim to deserve, for shuffling papers and initialing memos, more than 100 times the income of a cafeteria worker. Taking into account the current federal minimum wage, 100 times the lowest worker's pay would be $1.4 million, and if a $1.4 million annual income isn't enough to motive a business executive, then the problem lies with that person, not with society. Formally stating CEO pay as a multiple of an underprivileged person's means might shame top executives into being content with millions rather than dozens of millions. More important, in the times-the-lowest concept, the CEO could make more only if those in most need got raises, creating a positive incentive rather than a perverse incentive."
Which definitely whet my appetite for the book. This is an indicator of the type of writing he uses, and his common sense approach to things. He's pretty even handed, like one of my favorite teachers, just when you think he's a left wing nut job, he says something that makes you think that maybe he's far to the right wing. Which makes for decent reading, a good balance.
This book is about how the pace of change and resulting stress are not going away in our culture. The pace of change and the economy are not going to slow down. Not that there won't be downturns, but that the pace at which they occur and speed of recoveries etc. will speed up. The reason being that increased globalization make it impossible to experience an isolated event any more, everything is rapidly becoming more connected.
And because of that increasing pace, and feeling more connected to everything in the world, will lead to an increasing sense of dread an unease. I haven't reached the point where he explains how to cope with that unease. I am looking forward to that portion of the book. But in the lead up I am learning a lot and finding his points very interesting.
To sum up, a good book for an in depth, pretty objective big picture analysis of the real effects of globalization and technological advances on our world and culture. It's not light reading by a long shot, but it will make you think, and help you get a slightly more objective view of the real effects of current events, which is often sadly lacking in our 24x7 news cycle. So I definitely recommend the book.
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