Private Sector Opportunities
We are told by Moses to “love your neighbor as yourself”. Jesus said that love should be even more extensive: “Do good to them that hurt you”.
Many company executives make salaries that run into the tens of millions of dollars. Their workers make between 15,000-80,000. Surprisingly few mentions are made of the disparity. Obviously, those at the high end are able to order media minions to keep reasonably quiet about it.
In the recent past, senior executives had salaries that may have been 20 times greater than that paid to workers. Now, most executives get paid as much as they can. Many believe that to be respectable.
Some wealthy executives use their fortunes to do good. Others just keep piling up masses of programmed entities. While not so blatant as to have bumper stickers on their many cars that read “Whoever Dies With the Most Toys Wins!”, that sentiment is not far from their hearts.
Viruses of Vanity and Greed
Automation helped put executives in a position to amass so much. When, for instance, there was a largely urban population served by a bakery on every block, no single baker made an excessive amount of money. When The National Biscuit Company built huge ovens and automated production facilities, most of the modestly paid bakers were put out of business.
The owners of the bakeries were no longer there to be paid. Much of their salaries were put into the pockets of a comparative handful of executives of The National Biscuit Company.
The process of excessive executive enrichment is repeated with every centralization of economic activity. The problems produced by the vast incomes thereby generated are manifold. The worst problem is that many people who have vastly more than their neighbors begin to think “I’m worth it!” That insane vanity is precisely why there should be excessive salaries. People have to have an equal opportunity to be saved, even the wealthy. Vanity manifested in wealth is a test of their faith. That test is administered by God.
It is not a sin to be rich. It is pure vanity to take excessive credit for it. It is a sin to ignore the needs of Church and neighbor. It is a sin to take pride in self for what was a gift freely given by a loving God.
I know one company owner who fixes his salary by simply multiplying the annual wages of his lowest paid employee by ten. He is concerned that even that multiplier may be excessive. It’s hard to believe that someone making a hundred or a thousand times the wages of his or her lowest paid employee is not so wracked with guilt, and so separated from neighbors, as to be unable to think straight.
When we think of the hostility engendered by such disparities, we see that vanity and greed not only destroy individuals, but also, disrupt entire societies by allowing the viruses of envy to enter.
The Loving Programmer programmed things with a sense of fairness. Rich and poor are equally vulnerable to viral invasions. Even that knowledge is not enough to bring temperance to the excessively paid nor peace to the envious.
Private Sector Opportunities for the Viruses of Vanity and Greed was brought to you by Catholic Fundamentalism, we provide you with frequent readings from the Bible.
