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Quote by P.J. O'Rourke

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Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics

This book delves into the principles of economics, examining how wealth distribution and economic policies affect societal structures and individual lives. more

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P.J. O'Rourke

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“The pay strategy for those at the top is to find a way to pay them as much as possible. In larger organizations there is a special section or person in charge of executive compensation. Their task is to design pay packages that will retain top executives. They work with the full menu of pay options. Special tax-deferred retirement plans, stock options, corporate living arrangements, low-interest loans, termination guarantees, plus bonus plans where 30 to 50 percent bonuses are feasible. In contrast, there is a separate compensation unit that is responsible for non-executive pay practices. Their focus is on pay strategies for people at the middle and bottom. The goal there is to attract and retain good people, but to do it by paying them as little as possible. The common way of talking about it is to say that we need to work hard at controlling labor costs. When we say that, though, we are only thinking of low-power people. It is this class distinction that results in the incongruence of massive layoffs and record profits and executive bonuses all in the same year. Our beliefs about pay systems reinforce the inequitable distribution of wealth and sanction the belief that Wall Street is our primary customer and it is fine with us if our leaders are more interested in building a career and personal wealth than in building a human organization.”

“The Labour Together Project was thus a major hidden hand driving a crisis that would have devastating consequences for not just the British left but also the very fabric of British democracy and those people in Britain who needed a redistributive, democratising government to help them get by. In addition, as I show later, the 'antisemitism crisis' would also frame and haunt the Labour Party's response to Israel's destruction of Gaza.”

“The opposition between false limitless desires which only bring suffering and the authentic spiritual desire for well-being thus appears problematic: sensual desires are in themselves moderate, constrained to their direct goals; they become infinite and self-destructive only when they are infected by a spiritual dimension. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling knew that spirituality is self-destructive in its longing for infinity, which is why evil is much more spiritual than our sensual reality. In other words, the root of evil is not our egotism but, on the contrary, a perverted self-destructed spirituality which can prompt unnecessary personal self-sacrifice.”