Comrade Robert Weissman Is Disgusted By Your Private Jet

Communist Party Poster, aka Huffington Post Logo Robert Weissman penned an article at the Huffington Post railing against the evils of private jet usage and its negative impact not only on the environment, but on the socioeconomic fabric of society. While we are used to over-the-top “progressive” rants at Huffington, Comrade Weissman has reached a new level of intellectual dishonesty that can only be matched by his outright mischaracterization of the facts. Although a complete review of the errors and misstatements in Mr. Weissman’s article would likely be more expansive than the original piece, there are a few glaring inaccuracies that need to be addressed.

One of Mr. Weissman’s central theses in his piece is that private jets are destroying the world’s environment. The primary factual basis for this argument is a report put together by the Institute for Policy Studies, an organization run by Mr. Weissman, which contains citations to “authorities” such as “Inside Bay Area” and op-ed pieces written by noted leftists. In any event, the central assumptions that (a) global warming is occurring; and (b) man is the cause of such warming are far from globally-accepted scientific facts, despite the constant repetition of such theorems by the left. (Although this can of worms is sufficiently full so as not to be opened here, a concise counter to the global warming dogma can be found in Richard Lindzen’s editorials available on OpinionJournal.com.)

Even if we are prepared to accept the existence and causes of global warming, the idea that private jet usage is a statistically significant contributor to such warming is absurd. The asserted “soaring” private jet use put forth by Mr. Weissman is reflected in the approximately 10,000 private jets in service in the United States. However, while this number is approximately 50% greater than the number of commercial jets, the absolute number of miles traveled, and thus CO2 emitted into the atmosphere, by commercial jets dwarfs that of private jets. Commercial jets generally have larger and more numerous engines, and they log many more miles per aircraft than the average private jet that spends the majority of its time in the corporate
hangar. The fallacy of manipulating important-sounding statistics is a favorite of Mr. Weissman, as we shall see below.

Mr. Weissman also argues that the proletariat unfairly foots the bill for private jet usage by corporate fat cats. One of the statistics used by Mr. Weissman to support this position is the fact that $2.2 billion of the $7 billion in federal funds spent on airport improvement between 2005 and 2007 went to small airports in places like Napa and Aspen that tend to cater to private and corporate jets. As can be seen in Mr. Weissman’s Marxist analysis of the United States’ economic and taxation systems, he completely ignores the concept of economic utility and the benefits of spending funds to upgrade these airports to encourage private jet usage. It is not hard to imagine that increased accessibility to private jets in places like Napa and Aspen will increase the dollars spent in places like Napa and Aspen, whether it be through corporate retreats, real estate purchases, tourism expenditures, or the actual construction of such airport improvements. I’m sure that is why liberal Senators and House Representatives such as California’s own Diane Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi allowed such federal expenditures to occur on their watch.

Mr. Weissman also rails against the cost of transporting CEO’s via private jet, versus commercial airline, or public transportation. Mr. Weissman puts the annual median cost of company aircraft at approximately
$183,000. I don’t know about you, but the ability to save a Fortune 500 CEO the time and loss of productivity associated with the hours spent wasted in commercial airline check-ins, lines and delays seems to be worth a bit more than $183,000 a year. If you figure the average CEO makes several trips a month,
with an annual average of anywhere to 50-200 of such trips, and that an average of two hours or more can be saved through the use of private jets, you would have to be of the opinion that such CEO’s hourly value is somewhere south of $1,000 to make commercial travel cost efficient. If an hour of time for your CEO of a company worth in excess of $1 billion is only worth $1,000, you need to find a new CEO. Such simple analysis further assumes that the CEO is alone on his private jet - to the horror of Mr. Weissman and other who insist on maximum passenger load for any usage of fossil fuels; if similarly valuable corporate executives are sharing a flight with the company’s CEO, the utility of private jet usage is quite clear on a time-value basis. Mr. Weissman equates the value of an hour of Bill Gates’ time with that of a Microsoft programmer sitting in traffic in his Prius, sipping a latte out of his travel mug. Mr. Weissman and his comrades refuse to accept the idea that some people are simply more productive than others and create wealth for stockholders, employees, pension plans and retirees at an order of magnitude higher than the average commercial airline traveler.

It is not until the end of Mr. Weissman’s indictment of private jet travel that we get to the real core of his problem with the use of private jets; Mr. Weissman is fundamentally advocating socialist, if not communist, economic theory, and the use of private jets is just a symptom of the diseased capitalist culture of the United States. Sure, damage to the climate and windfall benefits are things to get worked up about, but the real evil of private jets and the rich, undeserving corporate moguls who use them can only be addressed through wealth redistribution. This quote from Mr. Weissman’s piece sums up his unabashed feelings on the issue:

“To the extent that private jets are symbols of an economic system gone awry, remedying the problem will require big picture policy changes — steep wealth and income taxes and other measures to redress inequality, and comprehensive policies to address global warming.”

$Communist Party Rolls Royce: How the Huffington Post Wishes You\'d Travel$ No, that wasn’t taken from a speech by Fidel Castro or Karl Marx, that is Mr. Weissman’s fix for the ills of private jet usage. In order to stop the evil that is private business jet travel, we must tax the wealth out of individuals and corporations so that the government can better decide where to reallocate such dollars. As to measures to redress inequality, it appears to me that such measures already exist in the United States; they go by the names, “education,” “work,” “hard work,” and “responsible saving and investment.”