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WSJ: We read it so you don't have to.

4/9/17       
cabmaker

In commenting on outrageous Executive Pay the WSJ wrote: "Rewards for mediocrity or even failure appear common. In part this is because pay benchmarking, which sets packages purely in relation to what other leaders get, has created a ratchet effect whereby long-term executive pay has been hoisted ever higher by its own bootstraps."

It also noted that US Companies with CEOs paid above the median total of their peers have underperformed those companies whose CEOs got less than the median.

How does this effect show up in our own shops? Would our crews become smarter and more competitive if pay was keyed more to productivity?

Another article commented to Pat Gilbert how Pittsburg is starting to extract more public services from UBER. In exchange for using their city as a testing ground for driverless automobiles Pittsburg is now requiring the UBER provide free transportation for some groups of Senior Citizens. When the UBER people complained how Ayn Rand would never approve of fettering capitalism , Pittsburg responded by saying "Life isn't Fair!......suck it up"

4/9/17       #2: WSJ: We read it so you don't have t ...
Pat Gilbert

Wut?

Is there a point in there somewhere?

4/10/17       #3: WSJ: We read it so you don't have t ...
cabmaker

I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the Wall Street Journal has articles and information in it that many, if not most, of the people on Woodweb do not ordinarily come into contact with. The WSJ is, however, widely read by many of the people who create policy that affects all of our businesses and most of our daily lives. Since woodworkers tend to hang out here this looks like a good venue to spread the information.

Who would have thought, for example, that the WSJ would turn out to be such a bastion of populism?

The article about performance being indexed to what is being measured is something we face every day in our shops. There is a reason that you have to constantly explain how commerce works to the very same people who are become Albert Einstein when they are doing side work.

4/12/17       #4: WSJ: We read it so you don't have t ...
Economics 101

You're probably right that the WSJ "has articles and information in it that many, if not most, of the people on Woodweb do not ordinarily come into contact with."

However, I would suggest that it matters not.

I started reading the WSJ in 1965. (It was $11 for 6 months and I talked my father into it, I was 13.)

The "news" pages/side of the WSJ are no different and have never been any different than any standard liberal paper, e.g. NYT, Washington Post, LA Times, plus a hundred lesser but equally liberal papers. How could they be? The same people move from one to the next.

By "news" I mean their 3 daily features (far left, center and far right column on a 5-column front page, last time I saw the layout) which usually contain a lot of opinion and conjecture disguised as news, not standard news items about earnings, mergers, etc., etc.

The editorial page/side is entirely different, or was for decades while Bob Bartley ran the shop. Almost entirely conservative/a little libertarian, mostly along the lines of cut our taxes and leave us alone. Smaller/less government is better government.

Since he retired, it's become much more libertarian, i.e. open-borders, globalist, etc.

No part of the WSJ has even been the least bit "populist," some article about how various Board of Directors' corporate compensation committees cover their butt with averages or medians or whatever notwithstanding. All of which has little to do with or meaning to the average wood shop owner, never mind any employee.

Maybe to a Fortune 1000 or 2000 company. Usually stuff like that has the underlying agenda of criticizing "income disparity" (see! the evil CEO is overpaid!) even though no one can identify any concrete ill effects outside of jealousy. CEOs who don't perform tend to get fired fairly rapidly.

The WSJ open-borders editorial schtick become so tiresome that I cancelled my subscription over 20 years ago.

I was no longer interested in supporting an outfit that could be so nonchalant about allowing our CULTURE (not politics -- that's downstream from culture) to be changed wholesale via massive legal and especially illegal immigration.

I run across and read plenty of their stuff here and there but my opinion hasn't changed.

I wish you luck in your WSJ mission. Don't quote them too liberally (no pun intended,) they seem to be touchy about copyright issues.

4/12/17       #5: WSJ: We read it so you don't have t ...
Pat Gilbert

Hehehe

Tim can't quote anything but liberally. It is a tint that he had installed on his glasses


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