I went to the Twins' game last evening for a lawfirm client event with folks from Allianz, the large German-domiciled insurance company which owns several American affiliates, including Questar (which is based in Golden Valley).  While watching the Twins manage to get a win against Cleveland, I struck up a conversation with an Allianz employee who is working in New York, but originally was in the Munich headquarters operation.

It wasn't long before we were talking about how the German parent was operated-- including the fact that every year the entire management board publically sits for questions from any shareholder about anything related to the comapny, which is certainly NOT what happens in the U.S. 

But perhaps the most intersting difference that became obvious quickly was the difference in executive compensation between the large German companies and those in the U.S.  The Allianz person asked me if I though it was right ("moral" was the term she used) for American CEO's to make so much more than what most of the workers made, especially since in Germany the difference was so much smaller.  Sensing the premise of her question, I had no trouble agreeing that it was wrong-- in some sense, "morally" wrong-- for us to have a system that seemed to reward those at the top in such a disproportionate way.

I'm not sure how we got to this point, especially since the difference in compensation 50 years ago was much smaller and more in line with what the difference is these days in EU companies.  But when Pope Francis is talking about structural problems with capitalism, I'm pretty sure this is one of them.

As I was driving in to work this morning I heard a story on MPR about free and reduced-cost lunches, and the fact that an entire school district could now qualify for the program if more than 40% of the kids met the criteria.  The story focused on Dallas, where that is the case, and the narrator suggested that the "weak" economic recovery was the reason for that percentage.

But when the story cut back to comments from the folks in Dallas, you had to wonder whether the "weak" recovery is really the story, because the Dallas folks pointed out that most kids who qualified for the program came from families that had jobs.  The jobs just didn't pay enough to really take care of a family.  So it isn't an economic recovery issue-- there are jobs but the compensation structure is broken.

It seemed to me there is a connection between the moral issue of how much we pay people at the top, and the fact that folks working entry-level positions can't even make ends meet (do the math on a minimum-wage job).  

It is fashionable in some conservative circles to critize Pope Francis's view on economic topics as uninformed and radical.  The next time you read about the compensation structures of CEO's and others in the "C-suite" you might do the math and figure out how much more the rest of the folks could get paid if the "excess" went to the real bottom-line-- the folks with the lowest paying jobs.  The math will startle you.