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I normally agree with Dr. Sowell, but I think he must have stayed up too late writing this article and isn't making his usual sense.

There is an old Russian fable, with different versions in other countries, about two poor peasants, Ivan and Boris. The only difference between them was that Boris had a goat and Ivan didn't. One day, Ivan came upon a strange-looking lamp and, when he rubbed it, a genie appeared. She told him that she could grant him just one wish, but it could be anything in the world.

Ivan said, "I want Boris' goat to die."

A better analogy for the big three car companies would be Boris has been abusing his goat for a long time and now wants to stick me with its vet bills, so I wish Ivan would die and the goat could have a better owner.

The average pay of a CEO of a corporation big enough to be included in the Standard & Poor's index is less than one-third of what Alex Rodriguez makes, about one-tenth of what Tiger Woods makes and less than one-thirtieth of what Oprah Winfrey makes.

One huge difference. Woods and Winfrey both make their money based on their own skills. If Tiger decided that under par golf took too much work and aimed at a +5 score every round, his pay would drop like a rock. Similarly if Oprah lost her audience, her ad revenue and pay would drop. Corporate CEOs never seem to have that problem. Lose a billion a month and other CEOs on your company's compensation committee will decide you need a big raise. And guess what - since you are sitting on their compensation committees you vote on them getting big raises too at the expense of their shareholders. Sorry, CEO pay is just way to incestuous for my taste. I don't want government to get involved, but don't ask me to cheer for it as the ultimate meritocracy. Performance and reward have been completely divorced.

Then when those same CEOs come and rattle their tin cups and demand that I pay them a few tens or hundreds of billions to cover their failures, don't ask me to just comply quietly. That is what bankruptcy court is there for, to decide whether your creditors would be better off coming to more agreeable payment terms or selling your assets and closing your doors. Just as I felt the right, no the duty to complain about how welfare queens lived their lives on my dime and tell them to straighten up before they get money, I feel a million times more vehement about it for the gigawelfare queens of corporate America.