Mmm, executive pay package...

Here's an interesting story about how Wal-Mart changed gradually from a gritty small-town operation with a nuts-and-bolts manager who drove around in a truck, to a huge global company that skimps on worker benefits and gives its executives flashy private jets...

To me, this parallels America's general and inevitable transition from a small-business nation built on personal relationships (clientelism) to a big-business nation built on incentives and contracts. Some may decry the fact that Wal-Mart doesn't provide health benefits for many of its workers, but the fact is that health expenses are only going to go up and up, and committing to providing health benefits far into the future can doom a company in today's economy (although some promising alternatives are coming into fashion). So, much as the egalitarian in me would like to see Wal-Mart (and all large companies) treat its employees more like valued family members, I realize - especially after seeing what's happened to Japan's lifetime employment system in the last fifteen years - that that's just never going to work.

But for a company like Wal-Mart, there's no excuse for hurling mountains of cash and luxury at executives. First of all, executives are overpaid anyway. But second of all, it occurs to me that if companies want to foster an attitude of pride in the company, they should work to create the impression that the executives are working hard and making sacrifices just as much as the lowliest store employee. If you can't bring the masses up to the level of the executives with generous benefit packages, the least you can do to recapture some of that gritty American work ethic would be to bring executives to the level of the masses.