Forbes is very helpful in reporting on the richest in the
world or the United States . Phil Knight is the only Oregonian currently on
that list. We know his net worth,
depending on where the markets close on any particular day, is somewhere around
$14.4 billion. Tim Boyle, CEO of
Columbia Sportswear, made the list in 2007. With somewhere around $1 billion,
he was 891st wealthiest person in the world.
If a Who’s Who of captains of industry could provide any
indication of who is wealthy, such a list of privately held companies in Oregon was compiled by
Oregon Business in 2011. The top two classifications
on that list are “More Than $1 Billion” (annual revenue, I presume) and
“$1Billion - $250 Million.” There are
five Oregon companies
in the first category and 22 more make up the second rank. A similar list for publicly traded companies
could probably be found or compiled easily enough – and those CEOs would certainly
be fairly well-off. But “privately held”
suggests that the CEO has a strong family connection to the company.
Here are the first ten names on the list, in order of
company revenues: Roderick C. Wendt, President
and CEO of JELD-WEN; Peter Maslen,
Acting U.S. CEO of Knowledge Universe – US; Dick Borgman, CEO of Les Schwab Tire Centers;
Robert G. Gootee, CEO of ODS Health; Scott
B. Walker, President of EPIC Aviation LLC; Delford M. Smith, Chairman of
Evergreen Holdings, Inc.; Cal Collins,
CEO of ESCO Corp.; Allyn C. Ford, CEO of
Roseburg Forest Products; Ron King, President
and CEO of Western Family Foods; Wayne A. Drinkward, President of Bi-Mart Corp.
Understandably, the truly wealthy like their privacy and can
afford to buy it. But some are not shy
about “outing” themselves or they simply can’t avoid it. Celebrity and notoriety can provide hints or
glaring evidence of who else should be on the list.
Phil Knight is mostly on the celebrity side, up there on the
Forbes list. The legend of his
collaboration with Bill Bowerman and the waffle-soled Nike prototype is
well-known. So is Knight’s
philanthropy. Perhaps less known are the
continuing controversies surrounding labor conditions at Nike’s overseas
manufacturing partners.
How about Arlene Schnitzer? She’s famous.
The namesake of the Portland
landmark, Schnitzer Hall, is frequently associated with Schnitzer Steel. Actually, Arlene’s husband, Harold, quit the
family business. Wikipedia reports:
After the war, Schnitzer entered the family
business, Schnitzer Steel Industries, for a time. He did not wish to compete with his
four brothers in the company, however, so in 1950 Harold Schnitzer decided to
shift gears, selling his share of the business to provide capital for a new
enterprise. The new enterprise founded was a real estate investment company
known as Harsch Investment Properties. The
name of the firm, Harsch, derived from the first three letters of Harold
Schnitzer's first and last names.
The Schnitzer’s are known, somewhat erroneously,
for their association with Schnitzer Steel and for their philanthropy. Harold is deceased.
Loren Parks “is the biggest political
contributor in the history of (Oregon )”
per Wikipedia. He lived in Oregon from 1957 to 2002 and now resides in Nevada . He is a long-running political activist,
fighting union penetration in Oregon
for quite some time.
Andrew Miller is CEO of Stimson Lumber
which has revenues somewhere in the neighborhood of $260 million a year. He has a very high
profile as an activist and political contributor. A recent quote by him is, “The
Democratic Party has been a monolithic front for public-employee unions.”
What do we know about these folks as a group?
It’s like squeezing blood from a stone to find useful public information. The census statistical abstract a provides
this tidbit which was current in 2004: In
Oregon , there
were 15000 Top Wealth Holders with total net worth of $61.328 billion. A Top Wealth Holder has a net worth of $1.5
million or more.
Why
should we care? The very wealthy are
in a position to comprise a plutocracy.
Many argue that they are indeed.
Money buys access to political power and the ability to promote one’s
agenda and interests. This
disproportionate concentration of power is contrary to the interests of the
many wherever those interests diverge.
The concentration of wealth by itself is also a concern.
The trillions locked up in personal
net worth are not necessarily being actively invested in useful economic pursuits. How much of it is sitting in accounts
representing shares owned? If it’s not
being traded, the transactions are not being taxed and the cash is not ending
up in accounts to be loaned, invested, spent, re-deposited and loaned again. Much innovation and cleverness has been
applied to provide arcane avenues of speculation that yield huge personal
windfalls but miniscule macro-economic returns.
The public interest outweighs
customary values that protect such personal opulence. Wealth that can’t be spent in several
lifetimes has no relationship to the expected rewards of hard work, character
and entrepreneurship. Dynasties and
fortunes that beggar the public are at odds with democratic values and the
ideal of a large, thriving middle class.
PS
Who else belongs on the list? I’d
love to hear from you.
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