Shame on you – I don’t know how many times I heard those words growing up. You took that ball away from him and he’s so much smaller – shame on you. You ate the last cookie after you had already had one and she hadn’t – shame on you. It was drilled into me – I was personally responsible for my actions and there was not much worse a feeling than shame. Well I don’t know what lessons our current crop of leaders learned but I’ll bet they know that shame is not a good thing to be associated with so I’ve got a couple ideas.
Why do we have the faces of Washington, Lincoln, Jackson, etc. on our currency – because we want to celebrate what they did in their roles as leaders in our country. Well here’s a crazy thought – why not put the faces of the presidents whose policies took us into deficits onto every US note, bond, or debt vehicle issued so they too could be recognized for what they did in their terms.
If a president came into office with a balanced budget or surplus and his policies resulted in deficits then his face would go on all debt issued by the government until the government returned to a balanced budget or surplus again. Let give credit where credit is due! It would highlight the shame the individual should feel even if they are shameless.
Next comes personal responsibility. We all watch and complain about CEO pay and how they’re making millions while laying off countless Americans and moving jobs out of the country. Well it’s time we as Americans take responsibility for our own selves. We need to mandate that CEO pay, Company Mergers, Bonuses, and buyouts all are based on at least 60% (or even 70%) of all outstanding voting shares of stock. But – here’s the catch – we absolutely MUST eliminate the right to cast proxy ballots. To many Board members hold proxies and pat each other on the back at various board meetings and CEO’s are rewarded by doing anything they can to drive the short term profit of a company instead of long term growth. There is no reason to do anything else – they don’t answer to anybody but others out for the quickest buck possible. As stockholders we need to take our ownership in companies personally and by eliminating proxy voting we are again the ones who CEOs and others must answer to – and ones who are truly responsible for a companies decisions.
Okay – I’ll shut up now but I wanted to throw these ideas out and see if there is enough interest to try to take them somewhere.