Since everyone has been talking about the AIG bonuses, this post at a Nation blog draws on the legendary excesses of the Philippino First Lady Imelda Marcos to think about and question the culture of executive pay on Wall Street. When the revolutionary public had stormed the Marcos palace in ‘86, they found–among many, many other things–1,060 pairs of shoes.
What was so potent about those shoes? What did they symbolize? Gross inequality, corruption, the staggeringly brazen looting of public resources–for sure (all qualities also evident in the AIG bailout). But something else too was represented by that collection of ruby slippers, a kind of insane magic by which Imelda transformed herself into something more than human. She could never wear all those shoes. They were beyond utility or even fashion. They existed only to represent the idea of excess itself [my emphasis]
Ah, the sublime idea of excess itself! But instead of the becoming-more-than-human, I am actually more curious about what this may say about human nature itself. In any case, Kim would like us to think about what numbers can mean when it comes to the ridiculous millions that corporate executives receive in pay: “what kind of work could merit a $6.4 million bonus (what one AIG manager received)? What could a CEO do to deserve $25.4 million (the severance package that Liddy’s predecessor Martin Sullivan got when he left AIG, having lost 99 percent of the company’s market value during his tenure)?” No matter our understanding of the notorious complexity of today’s financial system, at some point these numbers cease to make much sense. Kim continues:
These are preposterous, abstract figures that have long since lost any relation to what even the most gluttonous among us might call “quality of life.” What the corporate elite seeks to preserve is not any explicable measure of work and worth, but rather the right to transcend with impunity any measure of value itself, for the right of kings to pin multi-million bonuses on princes as badges of relative privilege, for the right to hoard 1,060 pairs of shoes. (Richard Kim, “AIG and Imelda Marcos’ Shoes“)
The biggest lie that society tells us, especially societies appealing to the metaphor that has come to be called “the American Dream,” is that hard works pays: strive, and you will be rewarded accordingly. But like the old adage, that some men are more equal than others, the truth is: some hard work pays more than others.
