While liberals and liberal-minded Republicans such as Crist are using their power to increase the cost of living in America by raising taxes, fees, energy prices, and causing inflation, they are also attacking American prosperity from the other end: they are trying to reduce executive salaries and compensation. Fortunately, the administration is aware that the American voter cannot take much more of this big government approach to the economy and their daily lives, and instead of directly putting a “cap” on executive pay, they are looking for ways to pressure them into disclosing all the details of their salaries and give shareholders the ability to have a “say in pay.” While this approach may not work, what bothers me profoundly is that the liberals believe that they have the right to dictate how much a company can pay its employees. Why? If a company wishes to give its executives high salaries or big bonuses, why do liberals think that the government should step in and stop it? Isn’t it the American Dream to be able be as prosperous as one can, without government interference?

The administration’s “say in pay” proposal does more to anger constituents than actually produce results. For those that advocate some sort of pay limits on exec pay, this proposal does nothing to stop companies from awarding large salaries or bonuses since the shareholder opinion is nonbinding. In other words, the rich get richer and that angers the socialists to no end. For those that prefer freedom over government authority, any effort to limit compensation for the end of mere control will make America less competitive and will undermine the American Dream. Talent seeks out compensation, that’s just the way it is… to limit the amount of compensation limits the amount of talent that America attracts. To burden America with unsustainable debt and then, adding injury to insult, to reduce our ability to attract business and talent is to wage internal war on this country. We Americans do not believe in class warfare because we are not an envious people, we believe that through personal effort we can achieve any level of success. We cannot allow liberalism or any other -ism take away our spirit of achievement.

-AG