As regular readers know, it is the policy here occasionally to step back, update some matters previously mentioned, correct any errors that need correcting, and respond to various comments and complaints. This is one of those occasions.

But we begin with an announcement: The News Guy is taking next week off.

Actually next week and the following Monday. He does have a life beyond this web site, and will live it, visiting family and wasting a few days in New York City, home to cultural and gustatory opportunities not usually found in Vermont. Posts will resume (after this Friday’s regularly scheduled offering) on Wednesday, April 7.

Now, to the updating. The post on March 8, They’ve Got a Secret, discussed, and essentially attacked, H. 331, a bill to allow the University of Vermont and the State Colleges to guarantee the anonymity of big bucks contributors.

The bill is sort of dead. Officially, in the words of the Legislative web site, it was  “ordered to lie on motion of Senator (Peter) Shumlin,” the Senate leader.

That’s legislative-talk for “dead,” but the “sort of” is required because Shumlin, having ordered it to lie, can order it to wake up, and he may be pressured to do so by Gov. Jim Douglas and the higher education establishment, neither of whom (which) is without clout.

But neither are the state’s news media, whose opposition is obviously what gave the lawmakers second thoughts on a measure that had already passed the House and looked likely to sail through the Senate.

It would be tempting for the News Guy to claim credit. It would also be absurd. Far more influential was an editorial in the Burlington Free Press, testimony by Rutland Herald/Montpelier Times-Argus publisher John Mitchell, coverage by VT Digger, and a most persuasive column by Tom Kearney of the Stowe Reporter and Waterbury Record (reprinted in the Free Press March 16).

Another bill, this one discussed in Corporate Values on March 15 is not dead. . It passed the Senate March 19 and is before the House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. This is the bill that would allow corporations to define themselves as “for benefit” corporations with other objects in addition to making money written right into their charters.

Not because they don’t want to make money. They do. But the “for benefit” status could allow them to fend off hostile takeover efforts by larger firms offering higher stock prices. Right now, the board of the smaller company would be reluctant to resist because shareholders could sue, arguing that their shares are worth money and nothing else, and that the board was preventing them from maximizing share value.

But if the corporate charter specified that the firm had other basic objectives – supporting local businesses, practicing sustainable agriculture, or the like – its board could resist the takeover on the grounds that the would-be buyer did not share those goals.

Last Friday, after March 19^’s Austrian Delusion had gone to press (no, that’s not the right term; but what is?) the News Guy received more information about Austrian economic and social conditions, thanks to Maria Spalt, the 
Director of Business Development at the Austrian Business Agency in New York.

Austria, as the post said, is where the Burton snowboard company had decided to consolidate some of its manufacturing operations (it also produces snowboards in China), eliminating all production in Vermont, though its headquarters and other functions will remain in the state. The switch will cost 43 Vermonters their jobs, and the news set off ill-informed speculation about Vermont’s “business climate” and whether the company was taking this step to get away from Vermont’s taxes, wages, and regulations.

As the new information makes clear, it is not. Instead, Ms. Spalt provided more evidence to support the post’s contention that businesses do not move to Austria to luxuriate in some free-market paradise of low taxes, minimal regulations, and weak labor unions. In fact, the country seems far closer to a social democratic paradise of widespread entitlements and (at least compared to the U.S.) economic equality.

For instance, according to a report  last month in the Austrian magazine Gewinn, the average salary of corporate CEOs in Austria is just a bit more than 180,000 Euros a year, which comes out to about $250,000. Not a bad living, but far less than American CEOs earn. Yes, most Austrians earn less than most Americans, but the spread between the top and the middle (or the middle and the bottom) income levels is not nearly as big. In 2007, according to Statistics Austria, median individual gross income was €23,613, or not quite $32,000.

That’s only a couple of thousand dollars a year less than the median in Vermont, and slightly more than $3,000 lower than in the U.S. as a whole. Though slightly poorer, the Austrians might be happier. According to the statistics sent by Ms. Spalt, an accounting by World Competitiveness Online concluded that Austria rated second among 57 countries for its “quality of life.” The U.S. was 16^th.

These “quality of life” and “happiness” ratings should be approached with some skepticism. They are based on some assumptions which are not easily quantifiable, and others which are downright subjective. For what it’s worth, though, in a new book called The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always do Better,  epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Picket conclude that the country with the highest quality of life and least social dysfunction is Sweden.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_Level:_Why_More_Equal_Societies_Almost_Always_Do_Better.

Ms. Spalt also said almost one fourth of Austrian workers were unionized, twice the rate in the U.S. But she said labor-management relations were more cooperative than confrontational, and strikes were rare.