How to Earn $900,000 an Hour While Unemployment Soars

[marmar]

from AlterNet:



Let's be honest. Wouldn't you like to rake in a cool $900,000 for one hour's work? No? Still have hippie ideals, perhaps? You could work for just 10 minutes and walk off with $150,000. Push yourself to work one entire day and we're talking $7.2 million. Hang in there for a month, and you'll pull in more than the richest athletes make in 10 years -- $256.5 million. And in one year? Well, you'll be earning what the top ten hedge fund honchos each averaged in 2009 -- $1.87 billion. Wouldn't you like to know their secrets? Here are a few:

Step 1: Check your conscience at the door.

You must be able to live with the knowledge that while you were making $900,000 an hour, more than 29 million other Americans had no job at all or were forced into part-time work. Also you'd have to live with the uncomfortable fact that your sector -- high finance -- crashed the economy, leaving eight million Americans jobless in a matter of months.

You're obviously good at math so you'll be able to calculate that it will now take 22.5 million new jobs to bring the economy back to full-employment (an unemployment rate of 5 percent or less). That's the equivalent of creating 630 new corporations the size of Apple Corp. (35,000 employees each). Sadly, you're also a realist, so you know that unemployment is likely to remain at record post-WWII highs for years to come.

Feeling guilty? Don't. Remind everyone again and again that hedge funds like yours didn't get bailed out. You're not too big to fail. You just figured out how to be better at investing than anyone else. You're what capitalism is supposed to reward. You earned your $900,000 an hour fair and square! Suppress all your doubts and just keep telling yourself -- and everyone else -- that you have nothing to do with rising poverty or the fact that nearly 50 million people can't afford health care. You're the solution, not the problem. Conscience be damned! ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/economy/148513/how_to_earn_%24900%2C000_an_hour_while_unemployment_soars/

[ixion]

1. Finance slugs care about two things: Themselves, and their money

not necessarily in that order.

[Hannah Bell]

2. +100

[Scuba]

3. Chink in the armour: Number 5

This fight needs some "bad guys" who we can point to and say "there is a big part of the problem".

[Scruffy1]

4. This is insanity cubed

Any system that rewards so few so well is in imminent danger of collapse. As the wealth of the republic becomes more concentrated the power keeps shifting into the hands of a small oligarchy. This years election cycle gives a clue to the future. Even whack jobs like Angle can raise 14 million from the uber wealthy and they can get their slate of fawning clown elected to do their bidding. The more I see of our capitalist system the less I like it.

[indepat]

5. $1.87 billion taxed at just a piffle more than the payroll taxes paid on an average Joe's income of

$106,000, some of which would be subject to an additional income taxes of 25% when that threshold is met. This congressionally-mandated tax inequity (crime?) is reason number one why the U.S. has fallen to the bottom/near the bottom in almost all quality of life/longevity rankings among industrialized nations: it is up-in-your-face state-sanctioned criminality imv. :grr:

[Kablooie]

6. Just take up Ayn Rand philosophy and your conscience is clear.

The richer you are, the more worthwhile you are.
You are rich because you were smart enough to make yourself rich.
You deserve it.

The poor are worthless people who were stupid enough to make themselves poor.
No money or effort should be expended to raise their standard of living because it's their own fault.

But then there's the middle class.
People who manage most of the time but occasionally fall down and sometimes it's not their fault.

Umm... well ... They don't count.

You are rich because you deserve it! Yeah!
Conscience is cleared.
Now go steal some more cash for yourself!

[leftstreet]

7. K&R