Reds

After watching 60 Minutes the other night, I’m convinced more than ever that most people involved with Wall Street and the banking industry would sell the United States of America if it meant making an extra dollar. I really do think that. As the months have passed since the economic shit hit the fan back in September and Congress has scolded and shamed automaker CEOs and banking CEOs and the morons in charge of the SEC, I contend that all these people knew full well the harm they were doing and went ahead and did it anyway because nothing was more important to them than making money.

Nothing. Not even the short and long term health of their nation’s economy.

An interesting side effect of our country’s financial crisis is the stark light that has been shined upon the excesses of the rich and powerful. I’m the world’s leading proponent of a free market system, but even I get urges for Red revolution when I read about billion dollar CEO salaries, spa retreats, and conventions in Vegas. Communism is clearly a failed economic philosophy, but there’s just something wrong about the fact that 5% of the world’s population owns more than 75% of the world’s wealth.

For the most rich and most powerful, it begs the question “How much is enough?” One million dollars? Five million? 20 million? A hundred million? I’m not wealthy myself and so can’t speak from experience, but it’s my estimation than any salary over 2 million dollars pushes well beyond the realm of good pay for a good day’s work and into the realm of compensatory substitution for a tiny wenis. With more than 5 billion people on the planet, does anyone really have the right to half dozen mansions and a dozen sports cars? Don’t million dollar salaries far exceed the amount of risk, work, and responsibility a human being undertakes in the name of running a company? In a free market system, are there limits to how much wealth one human being can accrue?

I know I sound like a commie bastard, but I’d like to remind any detractors that I wouldn’t be thinking these thoughts if the banking industry hadn’t bled our economy into cardiac arrest. If angry mobs rise up and burn and pillage the estates of the rich and powerful, all those BMW driving, caviar munching, polo playing elitists have no one to blame but themselves for killing the golden goose and unleashing a growing sentiment of disparity and unfairness within a slumbering U.S. citizenry.

I’ll be pleasantly surprised if we come out of the economic crisis unscathed, politically speaking.