The Job of a Corporate CEO

     The job of a corporate CEO is to earn a profit for his stockholders through the cost-efficient production, allocation and distribution of goods and services.  This serves the interests of the stockholders, the labor deployed for these purposes, the consumer and the country as a whole.  A CEO who builds a factory at home in order to employ more American workers when he could build it in Europe more cost-efficiently can fairly be questioned by the stockholders.  He has no right to play Mr. Bountiful with their money any more than he has a moral right to loot the corporation for his own benefit. 

     For  over thirty years I worked with and around CEOs and other executives of corporations, mostly large ones.  From the standpoint of intelligence, character, personality and generosity top executives are, on average, a cut or two above the general population.  A few are crooks.  Some are skinflints.  Unfortunately there is a problem here with greed when it comes to outlandish compensation packages in too many cases.  On the whole, however, I would sight unseen bet  on the CEOs and other top executives of large corporations against those who never stop complaining about them but are typically tight-fisted with their own money, frequently with Scrooge-like tenacity.  Their generosity applies to your money, not theirs, in all too many cases.