The Waltonian

“Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.” So said Sir Winston Churchill about his close friend and World War II ally after the president’s death, in April 1945.

John Boyer and I weren’t moving armies and navies around the Western world, leading nations or sampling the bubbly, but Churchill’s assessment came to mind when I learned of Mr. Boyer’s death in early September of this year. John was a long-time personal friend and a pillar in the Eastern University community. A beloved Trustee, he was a respected member of the Board’s Finance and Property Committee and a close adviser to four presidents stretching back more than three decades. In his later years, he served as an Emeritus Trustee.

I knew Mr. Boyer most closely as a fellow elder of Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr, Pa. He taught me a number of the ropes back in the early 1990s, and we hit it off right away. His governance responsibilities at Eastern, particularly his finance experience, added a special dimension to our relationship.

Many people knew John possessed significant personal leadership qualities. In a 2006 article in the Philadelphia Business Journal, current Trustee Tom Petro said Mr. Boyer had been a mentor to him.

Mr. Boyer’s academic experience prepared him well for service on Eastern University’s Board of Trustees. A graduate of Wilmington Friends School in Del. and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, he completed courses of study at Rutgers University’s School of Banking before taking on the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton school. In each venue, Mr. Boyer excelled thanks to his native ability and hard work.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia was Mr. Boyer’s first job in the world of finance and economics. It was a fitting tribute to his father, who was also a banker. In 1958, Mr. Boyer became an officer of what was then Provident Tradesmen’s Bank and Trust Company. These positions were solid stepping stones on his way to what became the longest, most visible part of his business career. The Philadelphia Suburban Water Company saw Mr. Boyer rise to President and Chairman & Chief Executive Officer. Subsequently, this company became a jewel in the corporate crown of what is now Aqua Pennsylvania.

Mr. Boyer’s diverse experiences and resulting expertise made him stand out as a desirable director for organizations in the for-profit sector. Germantown Savings Bank, Haverford Trust Company, Salient 3 Communications, Betz Dearborn and Rittenhouse Trust Company were among those companies that were fortunate to have his governance, counsel and wisdom.

John was a committed evangelical Christian. Arthur DeMoss, founder of Liberty Insurance Company, was instrumental in bringing him to faith in Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. John had an increasingly close relationship with the Lord thereafter and took great delight and comfort when members of his family made their own decisions for Christ.

Possessing and nurturing a strong heart for evangelism, Mr. Boyer was a founding elder of Proclamation Presbyterian Church, and he was a driving force for many years behind the annual Valley Forge Leadership Prayer Breakfast. In addition, he had a close relationship with nearby Westminster Theological Seminary.

Students may not know who the University’s Trustees are or what they do for the school. Mr. Boyer was a neighbor for many years, but his closeness to Eastern was a lot more than geographical. During his heyday, he walked the St. Davids campus frequently and enjoyed meeting students, faculty and administrators.

Mr. Boyer’s death is a great loss to Eastern. Members of Eastern’s community will remember John for his strong affection, warm sense of humor and indefatigable efforts over many years to improve Eastern for the benefit of our students. Those of us who knew John have been quick to extend our deepest condolences to his family, friends, colleagues and all those blessed by his extraordinary life of faith in our Lord and service to men and women near and far.

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Every four years, we’re treated to the spectacle of a contest for the presidency of the United States. One of the reasons this year’s experience is so different is the fact that one of the Democratic candidates is a self-styled socialist. This article describes why Bernie Sanders’ economic ideas would spell disaster for the United States in general and Millennials in particular.

Why are Millennials flocking to support a socialist in record numbers? The primary economic reference point of today’s young men and women is the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009. Millennials saw their parents struggle with what looked like the stumbling, if not the outright faceplant, of capitalism. Added to that perception is the dearth of knowledge about the abysmal failure of socialism as an economic system. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once described socialism’s primary deficit: “Sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money.” Socialism is the steroidal version of the Robin Hood notion of taking from the rich and giving to the poor. In addition to being a confiscatory farce, it’s economically unsustainable. That’s the reality. Bernie Sanders propagates the mindless fantasy.

Who couldn’t like “free health care” and “free public college”? If only. The truth is that these commodities are not free. Someone must pay for them. Patients pay for health care directly as fee for service or via medical insurance. Taxpayers fund expenses for public colleges net of tuition and other fees students pay. Sanders’ idea to change the funding mechanism to the federal government merely shifts the financial burden to those saddled with federal income taxes.

To pay for all his schemes, Sanders would have us believe that raising the tax rate to 52 percent on the income of the bedeviled “millionaires and billionaires” will usher into being his idea of economic utopia. It seems to be an effective campaign slogan, especially because it fuels the criminal behavior of inciting class warfare. However, as with most of Sanders’ smoke-and-mirrors economics, the math doesn’t work. The relatively small number of millionaires and billionaires simply don’t have anywhere near enough money to accomplish Sanders’ specious goals.

Another example of pedantic economics is Sanders’ desire to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Sustainable compensation results from market-driven realities of supply and demand for workers’ varied skills. Legislated value is a distortion that yields negative consequences. Chief among those unfavorable outcomes is higher unemployment among young, less-skilled workers—especially teenagers and particularly minorities. These are the first to be laid off when the employer can’t afford artificially high wages—compensation that exceeds its economic value in the business.

One common-sense economic axiom of which Sanders seems to be disturbingly unaware is that, if you want more of something, you tax it less. President Kennedy, who was a Democrat, orchestrated a reduction in marginal federal income tax rates from a high of 90 percent down to 70 percent. Federal tax revenue skyrocketed. Twenty years later, President Reagan did the same thing, dropping the rate to 36 percent. Again, revenues rose dramatically.

Like so many on the Left, Sanders erroneously thinks that increasing federal taxes on all those pesky millionaires and billionaires will, somehow, swell the government’s insatiable coffers. Incredibly, Sanders and his ilk never studied enough economics to understand this axiom so easily—and historically—demonstrated by the Laffer Curve, a creation of economist Arthur Laffer.

A component of Sanders’ plans calls for expansion of the so-called Affordable Care Act, colloquially known as Obamacare. Were Sanders to be elected president, everyone would be “feeling the Bern” in his or her wallet for years to come. His plan calls for substantive increases in this already-expensive, largely ineffective legislation. Sanders’ goal is a single-payer system—with the warmhearted federal bureaucracy as the payer—for your medical care. If that sounds attractive, think of the IRS holding a financial scalpel.

Space considerations here preclude me from adding to the list of economic reasons why Bernie Sanders would be a disastrous president. Suffice it to say that when a politician of any stripe or creed tells you this, that and the other thing will be “free,” turn quickly and flee.

Mr. James Rogers is Vice President of Planned Giving.

Congratulations to your staff for being willing, able, and diligent enough to report on the challenging economic circumstances that Eastern is facing.

Your article “Faith, Reason and Economic Justice” appearing in the Dec. 2, 2015 issue contained a number of facts but, generally speaking, demonstrated a lack of knowledge about why people are compensated at the levels they are. This article attempts to address that question.

The fundamental flaw in reasoning is that everyone has the same economic worth in the marketplace. That’s not true in the United States or anywhere else in the world where freedom is a part of the national culture.

Of course, everyone is of equal human value, especially at the foot of the cross. This is a simple, spiritual fact, and it’s codified temporally in our Constitution.

Nevertheless, we are not equal in economic terms. Despite Bernie Sanders’ shaking fists and Hillary Clinton’s thumping rhetoric decrying income inequality, we will never be economically equal and, simultaneously, live in a generally free society. If you want to see income equality in practice, visit North Korea.

Why aren’t we economically equal? First, we don’t apply our God-given talents with equal enthusiasm, diligence, ambition and skill. We’re not all equally intelligent, sophisticated, or savvy in our dealings with other people. Our individual goals are not of equal value in the marketplace. We’re not all blessed with the same looks or whatever else you, personally, value as an individual.

This is diversity at its best, and we’re all stronger, smarter, and better off as a country when people are free to use their individual, God-given talents and gifts to take them as far as their abilities and efforts permit.

Why does Taylor Swift earn $1 million per day on tour—a staggering $365 million in a year—by singing and dancing around a stage, recording music and endorsing a variety of products? Why does a PhD who studied longer than Ms. Swift has been alive earn $60,000 in a year? Isn’t the PhD a better intellectual and social investment in the future of those whom she teaches and the research she produces than a twentysomething crooning about adolescent angst? That’s the wrong question when it comes to assessing someone’s economic value.

The marketplace—that dynamic, highly complex culmination of everyone’s desires expressed through purchases and demands—decides who earns how much based on the application of skill, talent, strength, endurance, effort, brains, judgment, and all the other factors that go into creating or measuring economic value.

Why is a president, or, to a lesser degree, a vice president worth more economically than a professor? Presidents and vice presidents are more scarce than professors. Generally speaking, managerial, professional, and leadership skills in administrative areas are in greater demand than those of professors.

The most important point to remember about salaries is that Eastern University must compete with other colleges and universities as well as other industries in the complex marketplace for every employee. Eastern must offer market-driven compensation levels to attract a president, vice presidents, professors, and everyone else who works here. The marketplace determines compensation ranges based on elements like scarcity, demand, candidates’ education level attained, candidates’ experience, geography, Christian vs. secular institutions, reputation of the employing institutions, national economic realities, and so forth.

It’s both simplistic and economically unworkable to reduce the salaries (i.e., compensated economic value) of a president, vice presidents, etc., to fund the return of professors who were laid off. Even if you reduced the president’s and vice presidents’ salaries 35 percent, there wouldn’t be enough cash to hire back the 11 faculty who were let go.

The marketplace decides what presidents and senior administrators are worth economically. However, if you ignored that economic axiom and made that 35 percent economic salary reduction change by imperious fiat, it wouldn’t be too long before the president and vice presidents would rightly and understandably quit so they could realize their market-determined economic value elsewhere. The then-rudderless University, devoid of leadership whose positions it could not fill with below-market salary offers, would fail and dissolve. That would be inexcusable economic injustice of the worst order, because every Eastern student would suffer immeasurably.

Thank you for the opportunity to express the above. I laud “The Waltonian” for adhering to the principles of reporting that the paper’s namesake, founder Charles S. Walton, Jr., always championed during his life.

James Rogers is Vice President for Planned Giving at Eastern University.