“You owe it to your country to serve”
choongyong.koh January 4th, 2008
Alan Greenspan, the retired Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, US, published an interesting autobiography, “The Age of Turbulence”, recently. I am halfway through the book, but came across an interesting quote that I feel that I should blog about. In page 63 of the book, he was relating how he was convinced by his mentor Arthur Burns to join government service (as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors first):
…Referring to the Watergate scandal, he (Arthur Burns) said, “This government is paralyzed. But there’s still an economy out there and we still have to make economic policy. You owe it to your country to serve.”
Alan Greenspan was a successful business-consultant providing economic forecasts to clients at that time, definitely someone belonging to the high-earner group. It was not higher salary that brought him to serve, it was a call of duty, it was because he owe it to his country to serve. He served for more than 20 years, before retiring on 31 January 2006.
Whoever said that only higher salary benchmarked to 77% or 88% of private sector pay will attract and retain talent to serve the country?
All Posts
Whoever said that only higher salary benchmarked to 77% or 88% of private sector pay will attract and retain talent to serve the country?
Only pple who are greedy, and are in power, would say that to pay themselves more. Still waiting to see which charity they are going to ‘donate’ to.
Hey, I was tempted to read that book but it does look a bit too thick for me … ha ha ha.
Well, you know … there is only one Alan Greenspan from the entire US population. If to scale to our Singapore population, perhaps there will be a Greenspan in the next … 100 or 1,000 years? Let it be the benchmark that speed up the process … sigh.
Wilfrid, I am still reading the book, told myself to do one chapter every night before I sleep. When I finish it, I can lend it to you.
Agreed that there is only one Alan Greenspan in the entire US population, but I believe there are many more people holding public office in the US deciding to do it because of the “owe it to the nation” idea, and not because of whatever monetary returns they can gain.