Matthew Yglesias » GM Downsizing to Three Private Jets

Nov 21st, 2008 at 4:44 pm

GM Downsizing to Three Private Jets

I feel like crowing about how you’re going to sell two private jets in response to a jet-related PR fiasco is going to be counterproductive once people find out that you’ve still got three private jets. That’s way more private jets than normal people have. And it seems that GM CEO Rick Wagoner intends to keep flying private for all his personal and business travel.

These jets are not only a grotesque example of run-amok inequality in the United States, they’re an environmental disaster.

Comments
31

Filed under: Air Travel, Cars, Economy

31 Responses to “GM Downsizing to Three Private Jets”

Gabriel Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Listen, GM is a giant multinational corporation, at least for the moment. How is Rick Wagoner going to bring failure to all parts of the company at once if he doesn’t have the fastest form of transportation possible?
Just Dropping By Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Gabriel wins the thread.
Edward, the mad shirt grinder Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Gabriel wins the thread.

No kidding. That is industrial grade, high quality snark.
daveNYC Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 4:56 pm
He’s already infused all the regions with more than enough failure, I’m pretty sure that he could maintain the current level of failure with just the use of conference calls. It kills me that the big three CEOs are so bad at PR that they didn’t even consider jet-pooling (much less Greyhound) when they flew to DC.
Bob Oso Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Hey just sell the jets on Ebay- just like, oh I forget her name.

A good maxim: know your audience. On a smaller scale, I was filling up my old truck today and a lady in a brand new Escalade drove up and asked me for gas money. That did not go over too well.
gordon gekko Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Matt is becoming the Lou Dobbs of progressive populism. Even if you agree with everything he says wouldn’t it be nice if he at least tried to make a reasonable argument?
Ano Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Matt’s analysis is crap. You don’t run corporations with sybolism. You don’t solve global warming with sybolism. When we have cap and trade for GHG and price in the global warming costs of fuel, I’ll bet CEOs will STILL use private jets. Part of this is because their time (and their ability to work while traveling) is worth a ton of money to the shareholders of the company.

You may as well say it’s grotesque to have every employee have a $2,000 computer at their desk when a phone and a calculator will do most of what they use it for.

And the fact that Wagoner isn’t doing a good job adds nothing to the argument. The fact is, for whatever reason, the board thinks he’s doing a good job, so they should give him the tools to succeed, and time-saving devices like private jets are worth it for employees you pay $1,000 per hour.
Michigander Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 5:34 pm
This smells like a flag lapel pin issue for environmental regressives. Kudos, way to raise the intellectual level of the debate.

People seem to think that its hilarious that the primary symbol of an entire region of the country is going to die because coastal elites won’t give it a loan worth less than 1% of what the government gave . . . a bunch of failed coastal elites. Where are the snark ridden posts about California’s forest fires?
Mixner Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 5:44 pm
These jets are not only a grotesque example of run-amok inequality in the United States, they’re an environmental disaster.

…says the blogger who frequently jets around the country and over to Europe, spewing tons of carbon into the environment in the process, while half the world’s population lives on $5 a day.
Dilan Esper Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 5:53 pm
When we have cap and trade for GHG and price in the global warming costs of fuel, I’ll bet CEOs will STILL use private jets. Part of this is because their time (and their ability to work while traveling) is worth a ton of money to the shareholders of the company.

I am sure their time is indeed worth something to the shareholders.

BUT that has nothing to do with the reason they use private jets. They use private jets because they can. The Boards of Directors rubber stamp their perquisites, including this one.

Indeed, with blackberries and cell phones and laptops, it seems to me that the case for not buying or leasing a jet and making the CEO wait in the airport is stronger, not weaker now. They can do plenty of work in the Red Carpet Club. And yet more and more CEO’s are getting these jets.
jeff Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Did the Ceos of the financial institutions fly to Washington on coach?

Just curious?

Maybe, just maybe, a double standard?
Greg Arnold Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 6:27 pm
I don’t know what these guys make, but say it is $20,000,000. If so, they are being paid $80,000 per day. Assuming they are worth that, it is cheaper to fly them on a private jet than pay them $80,000 per day to waste their time on more humble forms of transportation. If they aren’t worth that, the problem isn’t with the jets but with their compensation.
Gene Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Has Fallows put in a bid yet on either one?
Mavis Beacon Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Matt’s talked a lot about moral hazard and I think these executives really demonstrated it’s absence when Wagoner and Mullaly refused to spend the next year working for the nominal salary of $1. In a world with moral hazard they’d be glad to work for $1 and repair their companies and their personal reputations. Instead, they figure that if their companies go bust they can just make millions elsewhere. And they probably can.
tomemos Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Gosh, by that standard the voters should have gone for Sarah Palin a whole lot more than they did.
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GM Downsizing to Three Private Jets

31 Responses to “GM Downsizing to Three Private Jets”

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