If you want to understand why a lot of America’s youth embrace socialism today, just look at this small but revealing story about General Electric. Former CEO Jeff Immelt apparently didn’t just fly around the world in a corporate jet, a fairly standard practice, he had an empty spare corporate jet follow him around just in case anything happened to the jet he was actually using.
“GE under-performed during his tenure, but Immelt’s pay and perks sure didn’t underperform.”
Now that the news has come out, supposedly the board wasn’t informed about this, and even Immelt himself says he didn’t know. How convenient. The plane had a bogus passenger manifest designed to make it look occupied, and everyone was instructed to keep it hush, hush.
Immelt was flying around like this with the shareholders’ money, not his own. GE under-performed during his tenure, but Immelt’s pay and perks sure didn’t underperform.
Will anything bad happen to anybody as a result of this stupendous waste of shareholder money? Not likely, unless some junior people need to be offered up as scapegoats.
Is it any wonder more and more people are less than impressed with today’s corporations?
This piece appeared on NewGeography (originally at Urbanophile)
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Aaron M. Renn is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal. Follow him on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in NewGeography