rise of the proletariat

[hslayer]

ABC News was covering the whole AIG bonus debacle last night (as, I imagine, was everyone), and afterwards turned to the massive swell of anger surrounding it as the next story. They asked the question of why there's so much anger over this, when there have been worse offenses (numerically worse, anyway, as the AIG bonuses are only 0.1% of what

Comments

[viridian]

I don't think he's actually saying that, since the "punchline" or whatever compares two situations that are equally bad.

And "without context" = most people don't really understand one million vs. one billion. People hear huge numbers and they become meaningless. So the comparison of 170 billion vs. 165 million doesn't necessarily register as being as small a percent of the whole as it actually is.

[trinityvixen]

One problem with that linked article: He didn't get the memo that that group of women kvetching about their out-of-work rich boyfriends was actually a joke website to start with.

[bigscary]

To summarize: The problem isn't capitalism, capitalism and the free market are actually probably the best way to run an economy. The problem is CHEATING. Part of the AIG issue is that the entire time, those kinds of bonuses have been used as ways to turn exploitation into cash. The classic example is the subprime mess: people get bad mortgages (because they're told they're good mortgages, because homes they could afford with good mortgages weren't being built (because the same banks wouldn't finance developers to build middle/low income housing), because they, perhaps, were greedy; banks get mortgages that are nominally exorbitantly profitable; executives conspire (either actually or effectively) to value the mortgages as if they are sure to be paid; executives take bonuses based on revenue calculated by completely insane means

[hslayer]

Of course. I was talking about this with a coworker just the other day. Even if not for the bonuses being paid now, we'd still be in this situation, because these guys were being given obscene amounts of money based exclusively on the short-term gains they were generating. Never mind the fact that those gains where phantasmal, and would eventually bring the company to its knees (or worse). It seems like everyone in key decision-making positions was doing the same thing, or at least complicit.

But runaway greed isn't a problem that's going to go away any time soon. People always want more. What can be done, however, is to prevent them from leaving a trail of destruction on their path towards getting more - especially when they already have more than enough.