This Puts Me in League with Bernie Sanders

    Maybe Bernie Sanders isn't the only socialist around these parts. Some might see me as keeping him company. If you think back long enough (it was April 25), I contemplated whether we should place a limit on how much company executives can make.
   That's right, place a cap on their earnings.
   Well, by definition, socialism is where the company is owned and operated by the community as a whole. This idea doesn't quite go that far. So, calling me a socialist might be a little much. Still, some would say otherwise. Some would say this easily places me in within the boundaries of being a socialist.
   First, note I am not fully ready to endorse this idea, though I am giving it serious, serious consideration.
   The heart of the program would be in its exception: If you were the creator or the provider of the product, there would be no limit to how much you could earn as the company executive. There would be no capping the salaries of Henry Ford, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. I noted in my April 25 blog that the creative geniuses are at the top of the companies when industries are new. Thus, the inventor of the Ford automobile, Henry Ford, was the company executive when the automobile industry was young. And, even so, as the computer age came in, the creative geniuses, including Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, were the company executives. By comparison, look at today's automobile industry, or today's most-any-other industry. The creative minds -- the product development people -- are not usually the executives. They rank reasonably well down the scale. The idea is, they might know how to create something, but it takes a business person to grow the company and make it a financial success. As the logic goes, being a financial success is a completely different matter.
  Then, along comes my plan. Suddenly, the financial genius is outlawed . . . unless he or she is also the creative genius. You no longer have a non-productive layer at the top of the business, not in the situations where the creative geniuses remain in charge. And, in cases where the financial exploiters do take over, you have limited them, capping how much money they can drain off the company.
   Now, some businesses are service businesses. A person who mows lawns is the person providing the product. My economic model allows him or her to make however much they will. But, if an executive is placed over them, he or she is not allowed to make a large check off the other person's work.
   That would be strictly against the rules, against the law. Very socialistic, you say, very Bernie Sanders.
   Fine. But, for all his ideas, I don't think Bernie has had one quite like this. This idea steps forth as a new and revolutionary economic model. It borrows from both socialism and capitalism and mixes them. Well have to think about it, but maybe it captures the best of both.