Let's stop letting CEOs play by different rules than we do

When George Orwell wrote one of the most famous books of the 20th century, he took on a major target.

Orwell was a democratic socialist, and his novel "Animal Farm" served to educate the world about the difference between the ideals of socialism and the reality of Russian totalitarianism. It isn't the novel that most remember him by, but it was every bit as effective as the better-known "Nineteen Eighty-Four."

The book is an allegory about Russia, from Max to Lenin and Trotsky to Josef Stalin.

It begins with the animals overthrowing the farmer and declaring a list of seven rules, of which the most important is that "all animals are equal."

Eventually, of course, the more intelligent pigs set themselves above other animals and the seven commandments become one:

"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."

Now at the time, that was seen as a perfect example of the hypocrisy of Russian communists, but the world has changed a great deal since 1945.

The animals who are now "more equal than others"are the people who run major banks and multinational corporations. They don't play by the same rules as the rest of us. In fact, what they have done is create an environment in which profits operate under capitalism and risk under socialism.

And when it comes to losses, they are definitely more equal than others. J.P. Morgan Chase had to make settlements in the London Whale and Bernie Madoff scandals totaling billions of dollars, but at the same time, CEO Jamie Dimon awarded himself a 74 percent pay raise.

Dimon

Dimon also said that paying out the settlements wasn't really an admission of guilt, just an acknowledgment that fighting the charges in court for three or four years would have been "bad for business."

It used to be that captains went down with their ships, but these days they not only get to leave the ship, they take along everything of value with them.

Look at how many businesses have failed in the last 10-15 years, and look at how many of them allowed their CEOs to walk away with golden parachutes while wiping out employee pensions and health care.

Some animals are more equal than others.

It certainly seems to me that executives, and particularly CEOs, should be responsible for the things their companies do. I'm not saying they should go to prison, but they certainly ought to pay at least as great a price as rank and file employees do.

One thing that infuriated average Americans in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse was that so much of the bailout money went to pay inflated salaries and bonuses to executives.

People talk about oligarchies, but we have gone past that and appear to have settled into plutonomy. Recent statistics released by Oxfam International show that the richest 85 people in the world control as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion people (half the world).

In addition, seven of every 10 people in the world live in countries where income inequality has increased in the last 30 years.

There may be no solution to this other than worldwide cataclysm, but even if we can't reverse the process, we ought to be able to slow it down some. Maybe we could stop giving so many breaks to the rich. Maybe we ought to at least give them a chance to make it on their own.

Hey, that's what they want us to do.