The following is an editorial by Richard Cohen that appeared in the Washington Post on September 17, 2002. What follows is a response written by me. Jack Welch And 'Class Envy' By Richard Cohen Cleverly using a computerized database, I have delved into back issues of the Wall Street Journal, looking for the phrase "class envy." The Journal's writers use it occasionally, always pejoratively, sometimes with Wagnerian overtones of dire days ahead. Back in 1997, a Journal writer warned that the AFL-CIO's "new agenda" includes "class envy," while its current editorial page editor, Paul Gigot, wondered that same year if Bill Clinton wants a legacy "bigger than [Treasury Secretary] Bob Rubin's class envy." Somehow I doubt that Rubin, a multimillionaire, is afflicted with class envy. But I admit that I am -- and I don't feel the least bit ashamed of it. In fact, I think class envy is healthy, a corrective -- and that many of us are feeling it at the moment. It's not that we begrudge the lucky or the industrious their wealth. It's rather that -- to quote that great economist, my grandfather -- enough is enough. Clearly, Jack Welch, the former GE chairman, knows whereof I speak. "The world has changed in the last year," he wrote in Monday's Journal. And so he has downsized his retirement package, which reportedly included a free apartment in New York, tickets to Knicks games and the U.S. Open, satellite TV at all four of his homes, newspapers in the morning and meals at night, flowers, laundry, toiletries, limo service, security and country club memberships. He settled instead for the standard office and staff. The details of the package were revealed by his (totally) estranged wife -- and, just for the record, Welch says she "grossly misrepresented" many aspects of his contract. I recognize that Welch's perks amount to a trifle for GE -- and, anyway, they're not coming out of my pocket. But they grate, they annoy, they suggest -- and here comes true class envy -- that a kind of royal court was being established. The cost to the stockholders was minimal; the cost to public confidence was much greater. It's no surprise that GE announced yesterday that the Securities and Exchange Commission was informally looking into Welch's severance package. The remarkable thing is that precisely at the time the Journal was on the lookout for class envy, there was not enough of it. Instead, during the 1990s we were told to love the rich and almost never, never question them. To be rich -- almost no matter how it happened -- was just plain peachy. The Enron thieves did not take their money and run. They took their money and stayed, building palaces all over Houston and donating to local charities. Being rich meant never being ashamed. Now, of course, there's been a reaction to the excesses. Partly, that's because some of what has happened is just plain criminal -- or allegedly so. But in part, people have just had enough -- and the politicians have heard them. The decision by the Bush administration to bring criminal charges against certain corporate thieves, to make them do the perp walk and to have the IRS concentrate on auditing the rich instead of you, brother, and me, is the sort of thing I'm talking about. "Get the SOBs," is the new cry. All of this is a form of class envy. And -- sorry, Wall Street Journal -- we should have more of it, not less. I do not mean European-style class envy, which can be senseless and destructive. I mean something totally American that can act as a brake on the whole Greed Is Good movement. The excesses of capitalism -- a mere economic system, after all, and not something handed down at Sinai -- need to be reined in by public opprobrium. Even the Wall Street Journal would concede that's better than government regulation. What's more, we do have classes in this country. We have an underclass, of course, but we have a moneyed class as well. Fully 150 of Forbes magazine's 400 richest Americans got their start by being born that way. In a sense, they are not all that different from a whole class of CEOs who rode the economic boom to unprecedented wealth and demanded credit for being in the right place at the right time. Somehow, envy feels a lot like bitterness. The real plundering class is represented by the imperial CEO -- the creator of nothing except, in too many cases, a raging sense of entitlement. Jack Welch at least created wealth for plenty of others, and his retirement package, as he himself wrote, represented a different era. But times have changed and, as Welch put it, "perception matters." After consulting some people, he changed his contract. "In the end, this decision may not satisfy everyone, but it sure feels right in my gut." Mine, too. Editor, Washington Post editorial pages: I reject Richard Cohen’s false premise that envy is good and that “enough is enough” concerning the earning of wealth. The flaw in Mr. Cohen’s logic is that he is unable to separate wealth earned through honest, productive work from the fractional amount of wealth that is gained (and soon lost) through fraud. Envy is an unhealthy and irrational emotion which leads to wasteful government investigations and subjective regulations such as the antitrust laws. As a result, there are no “excesses of capitalism” in America. On the contrary, capitalism and wealth creation are not permitted to flourish. I agree with Mr. Cohen that perception matters. Consequently, Jack Welch’s actions are worthy of condemnation. However, the actions to which I refer are Welch’s refusals to defend his moral right to honest compensation. To paraphrase philosopher/writer Ayn Rand: We have to save capitalism from the damned capitalists. -Bob Murphy Richmond, Va