-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
David Siegel is the founder and CEO of Westgate Resorts, a privately-held national timeshare company and resort developer. Siegel recently sent an e-mail to his 8,000 employees stating that “if any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, as our current President plans, I will have no choice but to reduce the size of this company.” Siegel fails to provide an explanation how an increase in his personal taxes could be offset by firing employees. If firing employees brings in more money for Siegel, then his labor force is padded with the unproductive. Otherwise, Siegel’s actions would appear to be spiteful.
Siegel’s e-mail displays his bitterness at a perceived lack of appreciation and his profound sense of entitlement. The e-mail is full of strawman arguments and devoid of critical thinking.
Siegel writes:
The economy doesn’t currently pose a threat to your job.
The economy, after four years under the Obama administration, is keeping your job safe. Is there a better argument for his employees to reelect Obama?
Siegel complains:
[members of the press] want you to believe that we live in a class system where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.
Maybe that’s because income inequality is growing, as shown by the chart on the right. The media are simply reporting this fact.
Siegel then goes into a long spiel meant to show how much he’s under-appreciated. We see Spiegel’s bitterness when he writes:
Now, the economy is falling apart and people like me who made all the right decisions and invested in themselves are being forced to bail out all the people who didn’t.
Siegel contradicts himself. At the top of the e-mail, the economy wasn’t a threat and now it’s “falling apart.” Siegel also displays his lazy thinking by simplifying a complex set of circumstances into an easily digestible us-versus-them theme. Many people, through no fault of their own, lost everything because of decisions made by the 1%. Siegel continues:
The people that overspent their paychecks suddenly feel entitled to the same luxuries that I earned and sacrificed 42 years of my life for.
A classic strawman argument. Siegel just makes things up out of whole cloth.
Siegel isn’t much of an economist either:
Business is at the heart of America and always has been. To restart it, you must stimulate business, not kill it. However, the power brokers in Washington believe redistributing wealth is the essential driver of the American economic engine.
No, business is stimulated by demand. As Paul Krugman observes, “Now, however, we’re seeing a much more widespread attack on demand-side economics. More than that, it’s becoming clear that many people don’t so much disagree with the idea that demand matters as find it abhorrent, incomprehensible, or both.”
Siegel adds:
You see, I can no longer support a system that penalizes the productive and gives to the unproductive.
More lazy thinking. Siegel sees an American divided into two disjoint classes, but that’s where his ability to analyze the situation ends. Siegel doesn’t understand, or want to understand, that the bulk of the unproductive are where they are because George W. Bush, and his policies and lax regulatory oversight, caused a worldwide recession. That’s the same George W. Bush that Siegel credits himself with putting into the White House. Is it any wonder that Siegel is not appreciated?
Seigel is advocating giving the disastrous Bush policies another chance, just so he can save a few dollars on his income tax. Greed has no shame.
H/T: Michael LaBossiere, Think Progress, Gawker, The New Republic, Kevin Drum, Think Progress.
If Romney wins then I will liquidate my stock portfolio on November 5th. If you look at the DOW Index in the month that Bush left it was at a low of 9600 or so. Now it is up to 13500 or so. So. If Romney is like Bushie I will lose my ass if I stay in and take my winnings if I go out. If old fart wants to shrink his time share business if Obama wins then good for him. It is his choice. Maybe he will share some of his other assets like the bride in the photo.
In Alaska, in the primaries (I don’t know about the final vote) people are given an “I voted” card. The color of the card indicates whether you voted in the closed Republican primary, or the open all-others primary. Men are encouraged to put the card in their jacket or shirt pocket. Their open primary allows anyone to vote for a candidate from the Democrat, Green, Alaska Independent, Conservative, or any of the other parties. Each voter gets to choose when they go in to vote, which primary they will vote in. You don’t have to be registered Republican to vote for a Republican candidate and Republicans can vote for any of the others. One vote, you pick which line.
What Blouise and Tony C. said. I daresay that 90% of the commenters on this blog, not to mention our host, are probably smarter than David Siegel. And any one of them could do what he does. Most wouldn’t do it the way Siegel or Romney does it, because most of the bloggers on this site actually have a conscience.
Nobody EARNS a billion dollars. That is simply not possible. Listen to the TED talk by Nick Hanauer that I linked to. Hanauer knows what he is talking about, because he is an entrepreneur and employer, and understands both the economics of business as well as the influence of the tax code on employment.
“…the bullies do not control your vote … you do.” -Blouise
Let’s hope that we, the people, control the vote:
Published on Sunday, October 14, 2012
“Will E-Voting Machines Owned by His Buddies Give Mitt Romney the White House?”
by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/10/14-4
OT –
Baby-faced Republican scum/operative fraudulently posing as honest voter registration worker on JMU campus — but he’s really throwing away the registration forms he doesn’t like. Legal eagles, shouldn’t this be a Federal crime???
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/10/colin_small_virginia_gop_voter_registration_fraud.php?ref=fpnewsfeed
http://firedoglake.com/2012/10/20/come-saturday-morning-republican-voter-id-laws-dont-stop-republican-voting-crimes-just-ask-nathan-sproul/
Employees take note … the owners can’t track your vote once you enter that booth.
You may have the “bad” luck to work for one of these bullies but you have the “good” luck to be a citizen of the United States of America and no matter how hard they try, the bullies do not control your vote … you do.
http://billmoyers.com/segment/bill-moyers-essay-when-bosses-push-their-politics/ “Bill Moyers Essay: When Bosses Push Their Politics”
October 19, 2012
“It isn’t “working hard,” either, nobody works harder than an oil field hand, or an M.D. intern.” (Tony C)
If one can’t see the sense in that statement then one will never get the point of Tony’s post which has some very real and very deep “philosophy for living a good life” embedded in it.
We are going sooooooo backwards. -lottakatz
Oh, “sooooooo” true.
———–
Will E-Voting Machines Owned by His Buddies Give Mitt Romney the White House?
by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/10/14-4
lets try again without the security code.
The first job I worked at was for Ralston Purina, the Danforth company business- yea, the Danforths that gave us John that gave us Clarence Thomas, those Danforths. I started working there late in 1967.
They would provide their employees Republican campaign literature at their desks and work sites. The ladies I worked with said that they also previously provided donation envelopes for political contributions and the supervisors would collect them but there were complaints and they had to stop that practice. They were a politically connected family and their son John started running for office in ’66 or ’67.
One of my friends there became a supervisor in early ’68 and was invited to a management party with the Danforths and senior management. My friend didn’t know what to do, she felt she had to attend but didn’t have ‘extra’ money to give his campaign but knew that it was expected of management employees and felt, feared, it would have job-related repercussions if she didn’t.
So for me it’s a circle of life thing: the kind of direct political shakedown that had been off limits regarding wageslaves (but not management) to support John Danforth that I as an employee working for the Danforth family was protected from, now becomes a specter haunting wageslaves under a ruling that John Danforth’s hand picked, utterly corrupt, Supreme Court Justice voted for.
One wonders how it would have gone for John if everyone shaken down for contributions and votes in the chain of command in St. Louis and other Ralston Purina offices had just refused, but they didn’t because they couldn’t. People don’t work that way.
We are going sooooooo backwards.
Shoot him with a Silver Bullet………. in the ass! Oh, sorry… he’s all ass.
Any person, let’s call him “E,” has a right to proposition another person, let’s call her “EE,” for sex.
Any Employer has a right to fire any employee.
BUT if E is EE’s employer and he propositions her for sex and makes it clear that she may be fired if she doesn’t “consent,” it is defined as sexual harassment and she has a cause of action against him and he may have even broken the law.
It was not illegal for E to use his free speech rights to proposition EE; it was probably tortious or illegal for E to use his ability to punish EE for non-compliance with his desires that was the problem. It is really easy to distinguish between free speech and the use of speech to impose conditions upon another person that very obviously and efficiently deprive that person of her constitutional rights, including the right of free speech.
enochw: “Regarding speech, it still seems to me a cat that needs skinning. I cannot agree that employers should want any freedom to express their political beliefs that other, non-employers have. Do you agree with that view? If not, can you tell me why? And if you do agree with equal rights to speak, how do you propose to afford that right and still avoid undue influence from its exercise?”
I see it like this. My rights end where your rights begin. I have the right to free speech as an employer(I have owned/operated small businesses btw) and you have the right to vote without intimidation or fear of reprisal(and, of course, free speech and all other rights). I shouldn’t, as an employer, be able to use my position(power to fire/promote) over an employee to influence an election.
I would bet $1000 that there is somebody among his 8000 employees that would be willing to run his organization, for one third his pay, while paying the higher business taxes he is worried about, and would consider that an astonishing windfall.
Take any thousand people working for a living, and you will find at least a few talented people capable of being the CEO of the company they work for. Being a CEO does in fact require certain personality characteristics, and not everybody has them (or wants them), but finding them is not exceedingly rare, probably 5% of working adults can do a competent job (50 per 1000) and certainly 0.5% would be exceedingly good (5 out of 1000). Which means Mr. Siegel could be replaced tomorrow by about 40 of his employees and his company would do BETTER.
Siegel’s mistake, like that of many of the rich people, is failing to recognize the role of luck in their success, and therefore that they did not really “work” for their wealth any harder than the common lottery winner, slaving away in an office cubicle for fifteen years before buying their winning ticket, was “working to win.”
Wealth is not “earned,” it is won. A typical M.D. earns $200K a year or so, and that is really earned with, half a normal career spent in school and training and then seemingly endless hours in the office or clinic. Typical lawyers and professors, also holding the highest degrees attainable, on average earn less than $200K.
If enormous wealth could be simply earned by working hard, then our smartest people would do it, and all of our enormously wealthy personages would be brilliant tacticians, logicians and negotiators. I think Siegel himself is the proof that is not true.
Enormous wealth requires an enormous dose of luck in the mix. For some musicians, the luck of being able to achieve ascendant talent with practice (not all can), the luck of personal beauty or charisma (like many actors), the luck of physical skill (like sports stars), the luck of superior intellect (many scientists and inventors and famous investors), or (by far the most frequent case) the luck of favorable circumstance: Stumbling into a magical confluence of the right deal, with the right knowledge and experience, with a ready market and enough financing to exploit it, and betting one’s time and money on that.
That is just luck, and a big bet, and winning when the dice comes up 11. When you WIN the bet, betting $50K and winning $30M isn’t “sacrifice.”
It isn’t “working hard,” either, nobody works harder than an oil field hand, or an M.D. intern. If we were paying for the brains it takes to make critical life and death decisions, we wouldn’t pay those people any more than we pay surgeons or defense attorneys or Harvard professors.
The excess money, above those salaries, is not earned, it was simply won by a bet. It is theirs, but the idea that they “worked and sacrificed” to get it is so ludicrous it makes me angry. I will stack his hardships and work up against those of half a hundred of the people I grew up with, and I will bet all fifty would trade their lifetime of “hard work and sacrifice” for Siegel’s with glee, even if Siegel KEPT his money.
Blind – a slightly different take
enochwisner wrote: “Frankly, though, the hand that feeds you should certainly be able to express the terms it thinks best and most necessary to continue doing so, and any ruling to the contrary is a violation of reason if not of law.”
So the hand that actually make the profits that feed the business, those of the workers, are the ones that feed the owner. This means they should be telling the owner who he should vote for.
Our masters are forgetting their place. They think because they get the lions share of the profit from our labor that gives them special powers. It should be the other way around. They should be humble and thankful for the efforts of their workers who make their obscene wealth possible.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/12097-romneys-six-billionaires-this-is-what-plutocracy-looks-like They are obsessed with defeating Obama and preserving a marginal tax rate.
Otteray Scribe – You write as if employment were a public service. It isn’t. When an enterprise achieves what its owners intended on given terms, those terms aren’t likely to change. When the outcome no longer is what the owners intended to achieve, they have several options – adjust their intentions along the lines of outcomes; change the terms to pursue the same outcomes; or, quit altogether. Be pissed if the owner’s choice hurts your interests. What he owns, though, he doesn’t own to make YOU happy, but to make HIM happy – and if he chooses to consider your happiness along the way, all the better for you.
Blind Faithiness – To a degree, you’re right: employee and employer need each other mutually. The relationship is not symmetrical, though: it is easier to find an employee than to find a job; it is easier to be hired by a successful enterprise than to create one. In that context, I believe it’s fair to say that enterprise is the hand that feeds, at least much more so than employees feed their employers.
Regarding speech, it still seems to me a cat that needs skinning. I cannot agree that employers should want any freedom to express their political beliefs that other, non-employers have. Do you agree with that view? If not, can you tell me why? And if you do agree with equal rights to speak, how do you propose to afford that right and still avoid undue influence from its exercise?