A number of my colleagues are up in arms today about how the Treasury Department's $500k cap on executive salaries amounts to socialism, or heads the nation down a path toward totalitarianism where the government will be dictating salaries and jobs for everyone.
There are a number of good rebuttals (among others Adam's point that executive salaries are a drop in the TARP bucket and we should really be worrying about whether the other 99% of the TARP money is being usefully spent), but the best I heard came from another colleague. She noted that when families or individuals come upon hard times and have to get cash payments from the government, we have no problem attaching onerous provisions on them- in order to get welfare, in many cases people can't get married or move or work too many hours or stop going to rehab. Society has had little problem reaching very invasively into the private lives of families that need bailouts, but once we try to do it to companies or rich people... "Woah, socialism!"
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