The Trunk

jeffmiller:

Earlier, I noted that Mr. Buffett’s secretary only makes $60,000 a year—not a bad living, but pretty meager when compared to her boss’ $50 billion net worth. As the chart above shows, the average CEO secretary makes more than this; indeed, $60,000 would place Buffett’s secretary around the 25th percentile. And I think we all know that Buffett is not the average CEO—he’s the richest CEO in the United States.

Isn’t there something fundamentally weird about a man who is willing to use his secretary’s economic situation to make a political point without any embarrassment whatsoever about his responsibility for her income? Again, she’s been his secretary for two decades; she’s been at the company for 38 years. Instead of crusading for his own taxes to be higher, maybe Buffett could try to pay his employees a little bit more.

Someone should start a petition.

The irony of a Libertarian stating that anyone other than the individual is ultimately responsible for their own income is too rich too pass up. Seriously? She’s a secretary in Omaha who clearly likes her gig enough to remain there for nearly 4 decades. He must be doing something right by his employees. She can walk anytime she wants. Hell, if she played her cards right she could walk into any other high-profile CEO’s office and ask for 5x that salary, probably.

Should the pay for a given position be based on, or evaluated in light of, the personal wealth of the person doing the hiring (or even the overall financial health of the company itself)? Or should it be based chiefly on the task for which the employee is being hired and the comparative wages in the workplace for similar positions while being considered alongside the relative value the company places on the tasks it needs performed?

Perhaps my tongue was not planted clearly enough in my cheek. Do I think Buffett has a moral obligation to pay his secretary more?—of course not.

My point is this: Buffett wants us to feel bad for his secretary by claiming she pays a higher tax rate than he does. The math behind his claim is suspect; for example, he’s willing, I suppose, to include the employer portion of her payroll tax, but not the corporate tax paid on his companies’ incomes prior to distribution. But whatever—he’s making a political argument, and people lie with numbers all the time to make a political argument. What I find to be troubling, however, is that he drafted his secretary into this battle—asking that everyone feel sympathy for her, even though he has far more power over her economic circumstance that anyone else. If Buffett really is worried about wealth inequality in this country, perhaps he could lead a little by example before lobbying for coercive redistributive measures.

Source: jeffmiller