Web Letters: The Compensation Hustle

Undoubtedly, a restoration of progressive taxation is part of the solution to the problem of overly powerful executives overcompensating themselves. However, a much more appealing part of the solution would be to strengthen unions. The best way to keep top-end salaries down is to lift bottom-end wages up. This is especially appealing if it is not imposed by government mandate but won by the workers themselves, through their own self-organization.

It seems to me that this was broadly understood by previous generations. Our failure to recognize the value of unions today, which expresses itself in the gridlock over the Employee Free Choice Act, is surely a telling symptom of what Hayes rightly calls our "benighted" age.

Eric Paul Jacobsen

West Saint Paul, MN