In his Feb. 10 column “Marxism in action,” Hasenmiller has gotten everything wrong. What is socialism, is the government bailing out companies instead of letting them close down when they are not profitable.

On the other hand, it is pure capitalism to call the shots once you are the principal investor in a company that would not have been in existence had it not been for your investment.

Obama is trying to make compensation proportional to performance, a principle for whose absence we are paying a very high price. His intention is not to limit pay to people “who could fix things,” but to those who are rewarded and provided for lavishly after having run their companies to the ground for so many years.

In this, Obama is getting the backing of the majority of investors (us), while Hasenmiller’s view is one that has been tried for a long time and has been proven defective.

George Voutsadakis

Graduate Student

Computer Science