The Free Market 7, no. 6 (June 1989)
Quick: what do the following world-famous men have in common: John Kenneth Galbraith, Donald J. Trump, and David Rockefeller? What values could possibly be shared by the socialist economist who got rich by writing best-selling volumes denouncing affluence; the billionaire wheeler-dealer; and the fabulous head of the financially and politically powerful Rockefeller World Empire?
Would you believe: hatred of making money and of “capitalist greed”? Yes, at least when it comes to making money by one particular man, the Wall Street bond specialist Michael R. Milken. In an article in which the august New York Times was moved to drop its cherished veil of objectivity, and shout in its headline, “Wages Even Wall St. Can’t Stomach” (April 3), these three gentlemen each weighed in against the $550 million earned by Mr. Milken in 1987. Galbraith, of course, was Galbraith, denouncing the “process of financial aberration” under modern American capitalism.
More interesting were billionaires Trump and Rockefeller. Speaking from his own lofty financial perch, Donald Trump unctuously declared, of Milken’s salary, “you can be happy on a lot less money,” going on to express his “amazement” that his former employers, the Wall Street firm of Drexel Burnham Lambert “would allow someone to benefit that greatly.” Well, it should be easy enough to clear up Mr. Trump’s alleged befuddlement. We could use economic jargon and say that the payment was justified by Mr. Milken’s “marginal value product” to the firm, or simply say that Milken was clearly worth it, otherwise Drexel Burnham would not have happily continued the arrangement from 1975 until this year.
In fact, Mr. Milken was…