Listen to Fred Smith, the CEO of FedEx


A different and much needed perspective
The Weekend Interview at The Wall Street Journal is with Fred Smith, the CEO of FedEx. The whole thing is worth your time, but I'd like to stress this bit.

Next I ask Mr. Smith about the class warfare theme of the political debate. "The politicians deplore the fact that we have a disparity of income," he says, but "the only way to make a blue-collar person earn more is to invest in capital, training and infrastructure. So the more you tax capital, the more you hurt workers." He estimates that about 70% of the return from FedEx capital expenditures is captured by workers in the form of higher wages as their productivity rises.

He sees a big problem in that so few Americans now pay any income tax. "We're now at a point where a very large part of the population pays no federal income tax at all. When you have a majority of the population that realizes that you can transfer money from the productive to themselves, that's one of the great questions for the future of civilization, as far as I'm concerned."

Go read. FedEx is about as "in the trenches" as you are going to find. When they have high tech and expensive capital expenses, it's because it raises their ability to do the job.

Good stuff.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Sat - October 25, 2008 at 01:16 PM  Tag


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