The universe -and human stupidity -are infinite
Posted By THOMAS CZECH
A man with lunch box in hand walks to his front door, hugs his wife and kids, walks outside and looks at his old truck. "I hope it starts," he quietly says to himself as he gets in.
As he drives to work he sees many other people like himself, people who punch the clock on a daily basis with calloused hands and the Canadian dream of a better future for their kids.
Across town, a man gets up and has a shower in one of his bathrooms. After he finishes he goes to his bedroom and dresses in his Armani suit, then goes downstairs and has breakfast as he reads the business section of the paper. As he heads out the door with his Blackberry in hand he hugs his wife and kids and steps into his hundred-thousand-dollar imported car and thinks of how great it is to be living the Canadian dream.
Both of these men work at the same company, one on the assembly line barely making enough money to make ends meet, the other in his air-conditioned private office at his mahogany desk and leather chair. His assistant is busy making plans for his boss to take the company jet to the Cayman Islands for an "important" business meeting.
The company is applying for government money to help bail them out of the financial trouble they got themselves into; as well as plans to give some of the top brass hundreds of thousands of dollars in severance pay and some of the assembly line workers a pink slip of paper, laying them off without a penny in hand.
Boy, it must be tough making these decisions while sitting in a leather chair at a mahogany desk over a mocha latté.
I ask myself why do the people at the top of these companies not take a pay cut and trim the fat off of areas that can afford it, like cutting out expensive business trips? If they have to take a flight, then fly economy like the rest of us. They can also cut out expensive business dinners. If the bosses at the top really want to save the company, then they need to make cuts at their level, not at the bottom.
The people at the so-called bottom, those who sweat on the assembly line, who struggle to pay their bills, drive old vehicles - those are the people who keep these companies running. Without hard-working people like these, the top CEOs and such would not be able to afford their big houses, fancy cars and expensive five-star holidays.
I don't have a problem with anyone making a lot of money, the problem I have is when people make a lot of money at the cost of another human being. In other words, don't line your pockets while someone else goes without; such as you get a pay raise on top of your $200,000 a year salary plus hundreds of thousands in bonuses while another is barely making it to the end of the month.
I know that not every CEO is foolish with money or behaving in an unethical manner, however on www.nypost.com,it mentions that Citigroup is burning through a $45 billion taxpayer-funded rescue with the purchase of a new $50 million Dassault Falcon 7X corporate jet. Apparently Merrill Lynch spent $1.2 million upgrading executive suites. These are only two companies out of several that received bailout money.
So when one hears about such incompetence and stupidity, one must wonder if Albert Einstein is right when he said: "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
