Saturday, April 10, 2010

American Values

From the nice folks at AlterNet

In 2009, the worst economic year for working people since the Great Depression, the top 25 hedge fund managers walked off with an average of $1 billion each. With the money those 25 people “earned,” we could have hired 658,000 entry level teachers. (They make about $38,000 a year, including benefits.) Those educators could have brought along over 13 million young people, assuming a class size of 20.

So if this miraculous economic model of ours is indeed allocating scarce resources in the most effective and efficient manner (as advertised), 25 individuals who gamble with rich people's money - with an implicit taxpayer backed insurance policy should things go wrong - are more valuable to society than over half a million school teachers. Riiiight.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"...gamble with rich people's money - with an implicit taxpayer backed insurance policy..."

No offense to the author of these words, but if you got things fixed to where you can't lose, then you ain't gambling, you're stealing.

Ben There said...

The author of this blog agrees with you.