I Don’t Really Care if Auto CEOs Fly in Private Jets
By Matt Zeitlin - Nov 20th, 2008 at 1:31 pmThere’s been a lot of controversy over the Big 3 automobile companies’ CEOs flying to Washington on private jets and then asking for huge sums of taxpayer money to bail out their companies.
But look, does it really matter whether CEOs fly private, first class, business class, or coach? It won’t really affect the bottom line of their companies, it won’t save any jobs, and it won’t magically reduce labor costs or improve the reliability of their vehicles.
Now, I think there’s a case to be made about real CEO compensation and any severance package or golden parachutes they could get, because those costs are much more real and contribute to an overall spiraling of CEO pay that is inefficient and immoral. But the jets themselves are something of a non sequitur. Look, the bailout has very little to do with the CEOs of these companies. I imagine that bailout or no bailout, they’ll do okay.
So I don’t exactly get what the point is of embarrassing them with trivialities about their transport.
How much time is lost by the GM representatives when they have to check in for a flight two hours early, or when the GM representatives are not to talk about business during the flight due to insider trading concerns?
The question is what is lost? When 12 people fly on a private jet it costs about $20,000. When 12 fly commercially to DC it costs about $12,000. Is a $8,000 savings worth the time lost?
Isn’t it really worth it in the long run?
http://nomedals.blogspot.com
November 20th, 2008 at 4:33 pmWince. The point is that it shows that they are utterly clueless about public perception, and have not the foggiest idea what it is like to be an ordinary person. They are coming to Washington, to US, us taxpayers who do not fly in private jets with 12-person staffs, to ASK US FOR MONEY. When they come asking for money via a method of travel that we cannot afford, it makes it look like they already have lots and lots of money, more than we do even, and yet they have come begging for more. It should be blindingly obvious why this is a bad idea at a visceral level.
November 24th, 2008 at 2:28 pm