Category: Nocera

I couldn’t help but laugh when I read New York Times’ op-ed columnist Joe Nocera’s piece on Monday, “What Is Business Waiting For?”  In it he suggests that U.S. business leaders should consider hiring more people because that, in the end, will help the economy and thus, their business. “If enough companies started hiring — while wrapping their actions in the mantle of patriotism — even Carl Icahn might have trouble complaining about it,” Nocera writes.

I proposed a similar idea deep in a column I wrote last December for The Charlotte Observer, “Is the U.S. entering a ‘hate the rich’ era?”

I wrote: “If you’re a ‘rich person,’ especially if you run a company, should you be worried? Who knows? The wealthy still seem to have Congress in their pocket. But maybe now is the time to start heading off rising animosity. I know that some wealthy people truly do care about their country and their community. So prove it: CEOs could decide it’s an act of patriotism to start hiring workers. Why not challenge fellow CEOs to a patriotic campaign to fill jobs, akin to Warren Buffet’s push to get billionaires to give half their wealth to charity?” 

The commentariat, both online and in my email inbox, beat me up severely for saying I hated the rich – even though I specifically said I didn’t – and for being so ignorant about business as to suggest such a dumb thing. Maybe I was just too far ahead of the curve?

And speaking of hostility toward the rich, check out Pulitzer-winning Steven Pearlstein’s “Blame for financial mess starts with the corporate lobby” from the Aug. 13 Washington Post. It’s blistering.