The National Review sure has some strange views on economics. First of all, they now believe that economic growth equals communism (via Brad DeLong).
And then there’s this, from one of John Derbyshire’s bankster friends:
Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don’t demand a union. We don’t retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we’ll eat that.
For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? We’re going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime and double time and a half. I’ll be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much.
So now that we’re going to be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: we’re going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren’t going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We’re going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.
I have to wonder if this isn’t a joke, but who can tell these days?
stevie314159
This has to be a joke. I was a trader on Wall Street for 25 years, and the only skill I have now is fast reflexes for playing video games.
Joseph Nobles
Going Galt on the cheap.
Kryptik
WHO IS JOHN GALT?!
It really is amazing just how much unfounded arrogance there is up there.
Julia Grey
As Doghouse would say, Th’ fuck?
These guys have SUCH inflated opinions of themselves and their roles in society. All I can do is stand here and boggle.
Mnemosyne
Before they had “Undercover Boss,” they had a very similar show on Discovery where the CEOs of companies had to do the jobs of their employees for a day.
Turned out that they sucked ass at those jobs. It took the head of a hotel chain an hour to clean one room when it was supposed to take him 10 minutes. The CEOs of California Pizza Kitchen couldn’t get the dishes washed quickly enough or get them clean enough. Etc.
If these guys want to work a fast-food or construction job for a week because it’s so damn easy, I say let them.
I find it especially funny that guys whose own children are being raised by nannies think they could easily control a class of 40 9-year-olds. Good luck with that, pal.
Der Blindschtiller
This sounds like an amped-up pity fantasy of an angry 8 year old. It’s just like in the movie “A Christmas Story” where, after being sent to his room, Ralphie fantasizes about how despondent his family would be if he ran away and came back blind. Then, they’d be sorry!
What a wanker…
burnspbesq
Bruce Bartlett is a wise man.
The whole thing is here.
http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/1691/when-we-will-get-vat
dmsilev
They eat what they kill? Man, I had no idea that downtown Manhattan was home to herds of free-range filet mignons.
And I’d love to watch one of these assholes try to last for a while as, say, a machinist. And see how many fingers they have left at the end.
dms
Mnemosyne
@Der Blindschtiller:
“It was … soap … poisoning!”
manwith7talents
“Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping?”
Yes.
geg6
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Riiiiiiight. Because people like me (a public university employee with a graduate degree) don’t work long hours. Or two jobs to make ends meet. I really wanna know what these fuckers think this job entails. Seriously. Or how many hours a day or a week I put in for my less than $40,000 a year with no summers off (like he seems to think we all get). And I really wanna know a teacher around here who makes $85K. Because I’ve never met one. Some professors, yes. But teachers? Not here in Beaver County.
And the only teachers I’ve ever met who retired at 50 were married females who had spouses with lucrative careers. Almost all my teacher friends have put in 35-40 years in the classroom before retiring.
These assholes wouldn’t last a day in my job. Too much work and taking bullshit with a smile for them to handle.
Bullsmith
UFC fight night from Wall Street. Winner gets to keep his job, loser eats the plate. Sounds entertaining.
These assholes who got placed in elite nursery schools that guaranteed their entry into ultra-rich society and then pretend they earned something by working hard need to get punched in the face, repeatedly. Hell, not repeatedly, for the rest of their goddamned lives.
Der Blindschtiller
@Mnemosyne:
Hah!
JL
$85K teaching or landscaping! HAHAHAHA!
HAHAHHA!
No wonder we have so many talented and smart people clamoring to be teachers. They are so well compensated.
HAHAHAHA!
On a serious note, when will journalists start reminding people why it is teachers have sweet tenure deals in the first place. It was a trade off for low pay. Strapped school districts couldn’t afford to pay teachers salaries they deserved. Teacher unions accepted that reality, but negotiated tenure in return for deep pay cuts or fewer/no raises. Not so “sweet” in context.
Zandar
That is awesome. Do what a lot of Americans do: work 40 hours at a job with no bonuses, dwindling benefits, no OT and no raises since Kerry/Lieberman bumper stickers were being applied to cars, and then go to your second job to help make your nut for the month.
Then come home and try to help the kids with their homework, feed them, make sure they don’t kill each other, and collapse into sleep only to wake up at 3 AM because you’re hoping your check for the mortgage doesn’t bounce because the bank screwed up on direct deposit again.
Then your spouse rolls over and tells you the brakes on the Honda are squealing again.
You do all that, Mr. Galtie. See how long you last working as hard as the rest of us do for 1/100th the pay you used to get, and see if you can stick it out.
Zifnab25
O more buying tax free yachts off the California coast. No more $1000 magnums of champagne. No more box seats to Yankees games. No more country club dues. We’re gonna bring the economy to it’s knees.
Fergus Wooster
Damn. No more free rides on them. Indeed. Processing. . .
I’ll just be here sharpening my knives. Anyone got a guillotine?
Just Some Fuckhead
Shit, I had 40 hours in by Wednesday. Even assuming they could do the time required by a real job, they’d certainly be unable to comply with the “No Stealing” rule.
flounder
I have been having a terrible last few days. Clownbaggery like this lifts my spirits immensely.
dmsilev
Wait a second. I know where I’ve read this before…
Given the choice between dealing with Wall Street bankers and remorseless killer robots from the future, I’d have to think about it for a while. Probably the robot.
dms
Bob L
What’s with stock trader’s obsession with public school teachers? They seem to think the economy is public school teachers, waiters and stock brokers.
FormerSwingVoter
To all Wall Street pussies who constantly threaten to go Galt:
Grow a pair and fucking do it already. Or hang yourself with an electrical cord. Really, we’re cool with either.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
This pathological, obsessive hatred of public school teachers never ceases to baffle me.
Wow. They don’t even have a clue about what a clue would look like.
Dan B
@Zifnab25: No more swimming in a guitar shaped pool. No more reporters at my beck and call. No more cocaine it’s only ground chalk. No more taxis now well have to walk.
But didn’t we have a nice time?
Mark S.
Yeah, you laugh, but these guys know Excel.
David in NY
It’s interesting that these guys have to work such long hours to do nothing at all!
Whispers
Agree with #10 above
“Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping?”
Yes.
These arrogant twats think that if they can do one job, they can do any job. Most of them are not in the physical condition to do landscaping, and I doubt more than 1% of them would be able to teach 3rd graders. Why they all think teaching is easy is beyond me.
cyntax
I can’t think of one job I did as a kid that these priveged arseholes wouldn’t get fired from: waiting tables, working construction, washing dishes. And they kill what they eat? Come on. I bet these jackasses couldn’t qualify for a basic marksmenship ship badge at an Army shooting range. To say nothing of the fantasy that teaching 3rd graders is cushy.
This sort of bravado only comes from people who are shit-scared, so I see this as a good sign.
Ella in NM
Wow! Looks like this guy might try to steal my nursing job! I’d better let him stay on Wall Street!!!!
sukabi
the first time one of those pussies has to actually do manual labor they’ll be running home to suck off mommies tit.
Bank on it.
El Cid
OMG! JANITORS & LANDSCAPERS BETTER WATCH OUT BECAUSE THE LONG-HOUR WORKIN’ WALL STREETERS ARE COMIN’ FER YER JOBBS!
Citizen_X
WHOO-hah-hah-haaaaaaaa! Seriously, I’m dying here; I need oxygen. Short answer? YES!
Long answer would be “You’ll work with a gun at your back/and a bowl of rice a day.”
geg6
@Mark S.:
You know what? So do I!
Guess I could take Mr. Galtie’s job and I’d do it for about 1/10th of what he makes. Wonder what Mr. Galtie thinks about that?
John Arbuthnot Fisher
The moment I realized that a well timed and fully leveraged stock trade, utilizing only limited capital and a few electrons, could yield more money in a matter of days than most people make in a month, I knew that the people who did this with billions of dollars as a profession (and continued in these jobs even after making ungodly sums) didn’t give a damn about money – it simply feeds an unbelievable sense of superiority and belief that you (the trader) turn the wheels of capitalism. Make all the money you want, but shut the f up, leave decent working people alone, pay a transactions tax and all short term capital gains at at least 50%. I’d make that trade any day of the week.
Erik Vanderhoff
If this asshole wants my cushy job, where a typical day might include interviewing a developmentally disabled child to determine, in detail, the extent of physical and sexual abuse daddy’s been heaping on them, then he can fucking well have it.
He’d last a day before he curled up in the fetal position and wept himself blind. Fuck him.
Bnut
A landscaper pulling in 85K? Holy shit, gimme some of that.
El Cid
By the way — if I work 80 or 90 hours a week, can I destroy the worldwide economy too?
Maybe all the revolutionary soshullists just had the wrong strategy. If they had all just worked at Wall Street investment banks… Well, I guess there would have been the same exact crisis of…
OMG ALL THE WALL STREETERS ARE MAOISTS IN DISGUISE!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Oh, I have a feeling some of the restaurant insider blogs are gonna be fun to read in the next couple of days.
Jager
I think these guys know alot about wine, great, because the liqour store down the street needs a clerk. $8.50 an hour, 25 hours a week. That’s $212.00 a week gross. Zero benefits. Oh, you have to be able to lift at least 50lbs!
Zam
Guys stop being so mean, Excel is hard.
John Cole
The thing that douchebag that wrote Derb does not understand is that most jobs on “Main Street” require a skill set that goes beyond being a frat boy at Princeton and learning Excel.
Andrew
@John Cole
Learning Excel? They don’t know Excel. They ask someone like me to code them something for Excel, and then complain when it doesn’t spit out the numbers they like.
blahblahblah
“OK, Mr. Fat Cat. Here’s my push mower. There’s the lawn. Get to it.”
Erik Vanderhoff
@blahblahblah:
Seriously. I got me some gutters that need cleaning. I pay the neighborhood kid $10 bucks an hour. Give me a better deal, and you got yourself a job, Mr. Galt!
Martin
My God. These people might actually be forced to do something meaningful to society. How did it come to this?
Bnut
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Can u point out some of these blogs? I’ve always tried to find something like them. Figured someone who posts on BJ would know the good stuff.
jrg
Shorter Wall Street scumbag: “Quit picking on us, or we’ll get real jobs!”. Is that a promise, asshole?
Davis X. Machina
In order to take over one of those teacher jobs, he’d first have to re-hire the 300,000 teachers expected to be laid off nationwide with the ending of the stimulus package first, then take one of their jobs.
Good luck with that, bunky.
Apsaras
Hey Derb.
I hear there are about two dozen “open positions” at a coal mine in West Virginia, why don’t you and your poor, put-upon Banker Buddies try doing that for a while. Be sure to avoid joining that union though! Wouldn’t want the littlebrains and the other parasites to bring you down, after all.
Scott
Some smart TV producer could make a nice little wad of cash with a TV show that featured these Masters of the Universe trying to wait tables, teach children, dig a ditch, clean a toilet.
And they’d make even more money if each show ended with the banksters getting beat into the concrete with bricks.
aimai
This whole thread is so full of win that there’s nothing left for me to add. Still, I’m looking forward to seeing these wallstreeter’s pick up and move to AZ to take the jobs illegals can’t do anymore. Then we’ll all see somepin’ buddy.
Also, I want to draw your attention to the very special line “we don’t need pee breaks”–what the fuck is the mute button for on their cel phones?–
More to the point there are lots of workers who don’t get to take pee breaks. The writer seems to think that needing to urinate is a voluntary act of weak will–something the ubermenschen will eliminate (sic) while the lesser mortals will not. To them the fact that factory and union workers needed to negotiate in break/pee times is a sign of limp wristed weakness on the part of the workers, rather than a fight to the death for mere human dignity in a heartless mechanical workplace.
aimai
Chuck
You know, I would tip extra to have one of these guys clean my apartment if I got any inkling they were getting an education in what it means to actually work for a living.
Mind you they’d still have to do a good job.
Ryan
So wait, bankers having to actually work for a living will be whose comeuppance?
Kirk Spencer
Some time ago I went to a church that was predominately made up of people like this. Some boggles:
The time a women’s group decided to ‘try being poor’ for a month. They decided as a group to spend not more than… twice my monthly salary. (I made a bit over the median income for a family of four at the time.)
Or the men’s group which decided to do the same, so one says… “we’re only going to take one European vacation this year.”
The woman that pled abject poverty as her husband’s income was “only” going to be $300,000 that year. Oh, and who got an outpouring of sympathy from her peers.
The rich are different from you and me. And sorry, Ernie, but it’s more than just having money.
burnspbesq
@geg6:
Everyone thinks that (I don’t, FWIW). Nearly everyone is wrong. Name one thing about your job that couldn’t be done in Bangalore by a properly trained 24-year-old.
And if you think you put up with bullshit, try dealing with Fortune 500 CFOs and tax directors. You have no idea.
Fergus Wooster
I used to laugh at Bachmann’s talk of reeducation camps.
Now I’m thinking they might not be such a bad idea. Can you picture Lloyd Blankfein of Fabulous Fab in a grey uniform, learning to be a shoemaker?
Michael
Try doing it with your back.
How about twisting yourself around under a sink to fix a leak? Or working outside on a 20 degree day? Digging a hole on a 100 degree day?
Try 20 minutes in a crappy lunchroom.
Chuck
@Apsaras:
That mine wasn’t unionized. Most of Massey’s mines aren’t, if any at all. Mines with unions see far more safety violation citations — because the union reports them in order to get them fixed.
R-Jud
@Whispers:
I think people who despise teachers are convinced that teaching is just telling the children what you learned at school, and making them stay in their seats. They are basing their perception of it off their experiences as a student.
Nutella
So they think the lazy bums who serve their restaurant meals, mow their lawns, and wash their cars are just useless leeches, practically stealing the money they earned in their very very valuable market manipulation? The market manipulation that gets paid hugely ($85k ++++) and provides little to no to negative value to the economy?
Right.
The Moar You Know
@Citizen_X: Awesome with the Kennedys clip.
They aren’t even capable of making their own coffee. I’m not worried about them taking over a landscaping job, or….this one has me in tears…a teacher’s job. Oh my. This MUST be spoof.
manwith7talents
Oh, and why do I not believe this guy leaves 35% tips? I wonder how much waiter-spit he’s unknowingly consumed in his life.
LuciaMia
Indeed. From my waitressing days, business men were usually the worst tippers.
The best? Working/former waitress’s or the Mothers of same.
JGabriel
They never did.
.
Shalimar
I admit I am a little scared. As if society wasn’t going to hell fast enough, now we have a bunch of monitor-entranced cocaine addicts threatening to teach our kids.
geg6
@Apsaras:
FTW.
Nim, ham hock of liberty
What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours.
No wonder they fuxed up the financial industry so badly – they’re apparently terrible at math.
Divide the number of banksters in the US by the total number of working people.
The result is what we call “jack squat” or a “statistical urp.”
me
They’ll work harder with a gun in their back for a bowl of rice a day.
JGabriel
@LuciaMia:
Some tipped well. Especially if they were on a date.
But even the best tipped 30%. No one tipped 35%. In my experience anyway, which admittedly is about 20 years ago.
.
chopper
LOL, “I AM THE ALPHA MALE!!!”
and to get to those hard-working jobs they’ll take an electric car that runs on their own sense of self-satisfaction.
tworivers
Awwwww, did poor wittle Wall Stweet twaduh get his feelings hurt? Boohoooo
David in NY
“need pee breaks”
This guy will need to hold it if he’s a classroom teacher. They don’t let you just run off and leave those third graders alone when nature calls.
My sister got out of classroom teaching precisely because she was tired of not being able to pee when she had to.
David in NY
I saw the musical of “Enron” on Broadway last night, and it captured the hubris of guys like this perfectly.
(Not much of a musical, but an accurate and entertaining summary retelling of a classic story.)
chopper
these guys couldn’t handle a week at a job that won’t cover their coke habit. they’ll start demanding a bailout.
Tom Betz
The sooner they go Galt, the better off we will all be.
Check out the rude Socratic dialogue Mark Ames had with “a private equity hypocrite” over at the New York Press:
[…]
Worth a read.
FormerSwingVoter
I love the implication from this Wall Street douchebag that no one could possibly do their jobs as well as they can.
You cratered the entire worldwide economy, you insufferable little fuck. It would be, by definition, literally impossible for anyone they replace you with to do a worse job.
And when you say “hey, all my millionaire buddies at competing firms guessed wrong too!”, it doesn’t really disprove the thesis of “you’re an incompetent fuckwad”. It just means you have a lot of company in that department.
Bob L
So he planing on showing up at the door of some machine shop and telling the owner; “Who cares if he has twenty years experience as a machinist? I have a degree from Harvard and five years as a stock broker, I want his job NOW!”
drunken hausfrau
Fuck them. They’re going to mow their own lawns? They don’t even know how to start the damn mower. Teach?? Ha ha ha — oh, my, I am weeping with laughter. As someone who has classroom teaching experience, let me tell you — there are no pee breaks, there are no do-overs, there are no pauses while you get another cup of coffee — NADA. The kids are smarter than you think and they are hungry like little pirahnas… good luck, dickhead!
You’re not going to tip anymore? Boo hoo. Having also been a waitress in my youth, I happen to agree with all the above commenters — you idiots never did tip well to begin with!
Good luck with that attitude, also. Too. You certainly would be someone I would hire — NOT.
Fergus Wooster
Oh, he does – when the waiter or bartender slips him a couple $50 20-year scotches off the tab. Thieves reward their own.
Nim, ham hock of liberty
Shorter bankster:
You peons don’t realize how good you have it, being trickled-down upon.
gypsy howell
I don’t think this asswipe (assuming he even knows how to wipe his own ass) has any idea where food comes from. But I’d love to give him the chance to work in a slaughterhouse for his food, and put that little claim of his to the test.
Midnight Marauder
@burnspbesq:
You’re right. Maintaining a profit-model built on fraud is hard work.
Joel
I think the average Wall Street bankster would have a hard time standing up to a PDX hipster in a battle for survival, never mind anyone else.
geg6
@burnspbesq:
Well, despite your condescension in thinking you actually know what my job entails, I happen to know that most people won’t last in it since the turnover for people holding my position is one of the highest at the University for a salaried professional position. People come into this job think it’s so simple and run screaming from it within days.
I guess knowing, understanding, and implementing all federal and state laws and regulations and University policies relating to student aid programs, being responsible for the awarding and stewardship of over a half million $ in campus scholarships, coordinating and administering the federal and state work study programs, and responsibility for implementing, certifying, and verifying all VA educational benefit programs is something anyone can do.
And that’s all before you have to deal with students or any of my duties for admissions activities.
scav
I was unaware that most Americans had cushy tenured jobs that involved washing the cars and busing the tables of Wall Street Titans — Wall Street Titans that apparently are killing their own meals then and bringing them to the restaurant in order to leave those 35% tips. Can we really trust anyone stupid enough to do the latter with our money?
David in NY
I doubt it. There was a long period when banks made money by lending at 8% and paying 5% interest. We could just go back to those days.
El Cruzado
@Nim, ham hock of liberty: That, too. Even if (bear with me) they were really hard working and able to adapt to all sorts of working class suck, the best they’d do is end up with a small landscaping company or eking out. Assuming they didn’t get sick first (and thus bankrupt) or screwed up in another of a million ways.
Apsaras
@Chuck:
I did not know that, but I can’t say I’m surprised. Non-union mines letting safety conditions suffer. A massive disaster in the gulf coast because certain oil companies won’t install the right valves. And government is supposed to be the problem?
A lot of us work hard. Yes, even bankers. But my grandfather put more than thirty years in a mine in coal country, PA. Thirty years of digging ore out of the earth in utter darkness, in standing water, getting Black Lung, all for his wife and kids. He’s the guy I think about whenever I start to complain about how hard accountancy is. (Oh boo-hoo! You had to use excel for several hours in your air-conditioned office! The machine was out of diet pepsi, and you barely had any time to screw around reading political blogs).
If I could scrub one piece of idiot mythology from this country’s collective unconsciousness, it would be the idea that poor people don’t work hard. Somewhere along the line, we took the very good idea that “you can get ahead if you work hard” and twisted it into “if you aren’t ‘ahead’ (or wealthy) then obviously you didn’t work hard.”
4tehlulz
But will you clean your own toilets and raise your own kids?
James K. Polk, Esq.
Guess the grass is always greener…
But, seriously, he thinks he is going to be paid 5K to hit grounders to kids over the summer? Shit, if it paid that, there would be a line out the door forming for applications for an interview to that job.
Does 10% unemployment ring a bell, numbnuts?
Scuffletuffle
Any one of them can have either of my jobs just for the asking. I will sit by my phone and hold my breath…
David in NY
If someone at Massey is too thorough about reporting bad safety conditions, he loses is job. The unions actually provide protection against that.
JG
At a basic level, these people really believe that they shouldn’t be held accountable for their wrongdoing. Because, if they are held accountable, they will systematically destroy the economy. It takes a special kind of sociopathy and deceit to write things like this, but the right-wing dog whistle community manages to top itself every few weeks.
Shalimar
What this guy doesn’t seem to recognize is that he is like a blackjack dealer in a very perverted universe. Sure, the dealer is an important part of the game. But that time many years back when his ilk started getting paid by the shuffle instead of by the hour turns out to have been a huge mistake because all they do now is shuffle the damned cards for hours at a time in between each deal. Then they congratulate themselves on how hard they work managing a game that no one else including the house makes money playing. No one else could do that job.
chowkster
Well joke are not, I posted my rage fueled rebuttal to this as my first GOS Diary
JustMe
“Eat what we kill” is a term of art also rendered as “eat our own dog food”– what he is claiming is that he is risking his own money in the same funds/securities that he’s managing/trading as part of his job (in the IT consulting world, this would refer to using the same tools that you sell to clients). It is not really relevant in this case, but the author was just spewing forth a stream of “tough-guy” cliches, and that one just got blurted out because it’s what his friends at the bar downtown think his bravado.
russell
I hate to break it to this guy, but some jobs require that you bring more to the table than belligerence and a willingness to fuck over anyone who gets in your way.
“Abrasive hypercompetitive dickhead” is just not going to make you a success in the real world, even if you are willing to work 20 hours a day.
Kyle
They read the Wall Street Journal editorial page (which was Fox News before there was a Fox News), an imaginary land of conservatard fantasy and carefully channelled resentment where public employees live lives of indolent luxury on the backs of valiant financial warriors.
rumpole
To answer your question, it’s not a joke. And I really doubt that this guy could be a good teacher or landscaper for one simple reason: you need some semblance of social skills, empathy, and an ability to deal with people from vastly different walks of life to do either of those jobs. (And not as servants). There are lots of landscapers. Who wants to deal with the asshole? Anyone? Bueller?
Bloomberg literacy not = social skills.
racrecir
Proud of a New Gilded Age:
These days, Mr. Weill and many of the nation’s very wealthy chief executives, entrepreneurs and financiers echo an earlier era — the Gilded Age before World War I — when powerful enterprises, dominated by men who grew immensely rich, ushered in the industrialization of the United States. The new titans often see themselves as pillars of a similarly prosperous and expansive age, one in which their successes and their philanthropy have made government less important than it once was.
“People can look at the last 25 years and say this is an incredibly unique period of time,” Mr. Weill said. “We didn’t rely on somebody else to build what we built, and we shouldn’t rely on somebody else to provide all the services our society needs.”
D. Mason
@chopper:
Whoever invents those cars will be a trillionaire and solve all of Americas problems to boot.
burnspbesq
@Midnight Marauder:
Way to miss the point, boyo.
Catsy
This is less about the “rich”, per se, and more about a failure of perspective and an overinflated sense of worth. Both of which, ultimately, come back to a lack of empathy and a self-centered sense of entitlement.
I make pretty decent middle-class money, we don’t have to worry about bills, I have good insurance for my family, and our biggest financial roadblock is typically figuring out how long it will take us to save for something we want rather than how we’re going to pay for something we need. Up until the last five years or so, I spent most of my life living from paycheck to paycheck–I have a pretty good handle on exactly how lucky we are, and I try not to take it for granted.
But even with that awareness, it’s still hard to keep things in perspective sometimes because you get used to your own frame of reference. And to a certain extent, it’s necessary to do so: for us, being “short” on money means that we need to dial back the discretionary expenses for a while so that we maintain a buffer, but it doesn’t help if you spend your time reminding yourself that you still live in the lap of luxury compared to someone who lives on the street and collects cans to recycle so that they can eat. An so on: it’s not really helpful for that person to go around thinking they’re living large just because someone in Somalia has it worse. I don’t stop thinking that we’re short on money just because I don’t live in abject poverty–the fact that my family is not on the verge of bankruptcy or in a life-or-death situation doesn’t mean that we don’t have our share of problems. It just means that I have to remind myself to keep things in perspective if I start getting too bent out of shape about it.
These people think the world revolves around them and depends on their unique insights and skill sets, and it shows in their inability to step out of their own frame of reference long enough to put things in the proper perspective. It has less to do with being rich and everything to do with being self-centered douchebags.
scarshapedstar
If a bankster wants to take my job manually masturbating caged animals for artificial insemination, he’s welcome to it.
rumpole
One other thought–
Same quote, slight rewrite. I think you should turn it into a mad lib.
Guess what: We’re going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don’t demand a union. We don’t retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we’ll eat that.
For years t
eachers and other unionized laboryou cancer-fighting charities have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable ofteaching 3rd graders and doing landscapingraising money for research or working with test tubes? We’re going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for saving people’s livesbuilding the youth of America. Say goodbye to your Friday donuts and family lifeovertime and double time and a half. I’ll be selling t-shirtshitting groundersto the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much.So now that we’re going to be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: we’re going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren’t going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We’re going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.
The difference is, you lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid, but it’s really going to hurt like hell for them when our fat a**es land directly on the middle class of America and knock them to the bottom.
We aren’t dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The question is, now that Obama & his administration are making Joe Mainstreet our food supply … will he? and will they? You will all die of cancer.
Read more at Wonkette: http://wonkette.com/415151/wall-street-assholes-will-eat-your-cushy-middle-class-job#ixzz0mbvWzocW
JSD
So, basically, these Fckrs are going to start doing some Real Work that actually adds value to our society. It’s about time. Thanks for stop being a leech, fckwad.
Mark S.
@JG:
Haven’t they already done enough of that? I’m not just talking about the bailout; I mean the way they’ve largely destroyed our manufacturing base and have generally left one or two firms controlling important sectors of our economy. What’s good for Wall St. has largely been terrible for Main St. for the last thirty years.
Kevin Phillips Bong
@scarshapedstar: Actually that’s a pretty accurate description of what he already does.
Omnes Omnibus
An old friend of mine from college posted a rant on facebook today about how the parasites working for the federal government make, on average, twice the income of people in the private sector. He posted a link to the Washington Examiner (to which I decline to provide a link) which said that the average pay for federal employees is $120k and the average pay for equivalent private sector workers is $60k. This is a bright person with a BA from a good liberal arts college and a law degree. Some people simply do not want to understand the world.
BTW I actually came close to defriending him over it and I no longer even work for the federal government.
Jon H
If he were a REAL man-trader he would use a catheter.
burnspbesq
@geg6:
What condescension is that? Sounds like an interesting, important gig, and I take your word for it that you’re good at it.
But given that it is important and challenging, why does it pay only what you say it pays? And if you are badly underpaid (as I think you are), why do you keep doing it?
Shinobi
Does someone know where we can get enough hookers and blow to create a trail leading these people off of Wall Street and preferably towards somewhere northern and very very unpleasant?
burnspbesq
@Apsaras:
That’s completely fair. But there are also an awful lot of people out there who think that any work that doesn’t involve physical exertion isn’t hard, and that’s equally fallacious.
Blue Neponset
I like this guy’s attitude. I bet they make him a trustee at the prison farm within two years.
Uloborus
@burnspbesq:
I think Burn’s not saying these guys can do regular jobs. He’s just saying that one thing they ARE great at is dealing with bullshit. Bullshit, dishing it out and taking it from others, is a prime part of their jobs.
Some of these guys really are hard workers – because they’re hypercompetitive assholes. And they’ve gravitated to a livelihood where that’s the most important skillset. The snake oil industry.
Mike G
John Derbyshire’s bankster buddy prompts me to wheel out Modern Arthur’s entry for every single New Yorker Magazine Caption Contest:
“Christ, what an asshole!”
http://modernarthur.com/blog/christwhatanasshole.html
twiffer
dear wall street guys. hi. i’m the guy that calls you and tells you your application is working again. you can’t do my job. you also can’t teach kids, cause you’re an asshole and will get fired and/or sued. but, whatever.
@Zam: no, it isn’t.
drkrick
The problem is that being a self-centered douchebag has become way too reliable a way to get rich.
r€nato
@Erik Vanderhoff:
I highly doubt it. You, sir, have a conscience and empathy. These fuckers have neither. He’d probably tell the kid to man up and stop whining about it.
demimondian
@Erik Vanderhoff: No, he wouldn’t. Sociopaths tend to be of limited empathic ability, after all.
maus
No you won’t.
You never did.
But, being glibertarian, you were such a proponent of “free rides”? What, is Trickle-Down BROKEN?!
No, you won’t.
r€nato
@manwith7talents: however much, it wasn’t nearly enough and it should have been urine, or worse.
(actually urine is sterile and spit is not, but I digress…)
Randy P
@Omnes Omnibus: The GS pay scale is public record.
As I recall, there are salaries like $120K when you get up around GS-13 or GS-14. But that’s a rarefied sector of the civil service. People work their whole lives hoping for a GS-13 slot to open up.
But why guess? Why not check the actual table?
Looks to me like salaries of $120K are only in the highest steps (steps within grade are based on factors like degree and years of experience) of GS-15, the very tippy top of the government pay scale.
Edit: OK, that’s the base pay scale. There are adjustments for location. In Washington, DC, you can make $120K as a GS-14. I could rant about a newspaper willing to publish an article completely at odds with an easily checked fact, but by now that’s an old story in the “news” business.
demimondian
The thing which amuses me no end about this jerk is that he’s defending something which liberal economists refer to as “the multiplier effect” — but, as a deeply held Galtie, how certainly doesn’t believe in.
Apsaras
@burnspbesq:
The limits of physical exertion on my job are changing the toner cartridges and fixing paper jams. That said, I agree with you. I work fairly hard during an average week, and put in about two months worth of sixty-hour workweeks every year. And yes, there are people who work harder than that. (Plenty, I’m sure, and I don’t begrudge them their luxuries.) I just get tired of hearing the glibertarians of this world complain about how hard they work without any sense of perspective. (See: Matt Taibbi’s excellent post on the subject)
Midnight Marauder
@Uloborus:
No, I get that. I understand that they are hard working Masters of the Universe, putting up with unfathomable levels of bullshit.
Bullshit that is largely designed to continue making money from a system largely built on fraud.
Yes, it’s hard work. It’s fraud, but it’s still hard work.
No one ever accused con artists of being lazy.
Sarcastro
We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a lunch break.
Wait a second, are we talking about Wall Street financiers or South Korean hackers?
James
Whoever wrote that sad little email wouldn’t last a day in a big city classroom…or on a hospital floor…or out in the sun laying concrete…or, well, you get the picture.
D. Mason
@Catsy:
I personally think that being a self-centered douchebag has an awful lot to do with being rich. That might not apply to all rich people but these fuckers couldn’t have got where they did with any shred of empathy.
Some jobs just aren’t meant for some people. The compassionate can’t be banksters for the same reason men don’t make good pole-dancers, they have extra equipment that gets in the way of doing their job right.
Omnes Omnibus
@Randy P: I realize that. When I was a federal judicial clerk 10 years ago, I was a 12; I made $55k. Those jobs are not easy to get and require pretty decent qualifications. At the same time, big law firms in the same town were paying 100k for associates with equivalent qualifications. My friend knows, or should know, these facts. He chooses not to, because those facts don’t fit in with his libertarian view of the world. Oh, what makes this fun is that he is the lawyer for a private equity firm.
Wile E. Quixote
“We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position.” This is the apex of Wall Street Manlihood, the ability to control your bladder? Who knew it was so easy? Hell, I could have been a bankster, but do you know what ruined me? Fucking Tivo, that’s what! Back in the old days watching TV, especially sports, required some real bladder control. You had to be able to hold it until a commercial break and when one came up you had to go to the bathroom, (and god help you if you had to take a number two) wash your hands (some people skipped on this step to save time, which is disgusting), go to the kitchen, get another beer, see if there was anything to eat and then get back to your chair and quickly surf the other channels to see if there was something else good on TV that you should be watching instead.
But now, with Tivo you don’t have to have the iron bladder and sphincters of steel that serious, long term TV watching helped develop. If you need to go you just press the pause button, get up, leisurely saunter to the bathroom. Leisurely go to the bathroom (even taking a nice long leisurely and thoroughly satisfying number two if you have to). Leisurely and thoroughly wash your hands. Check to see if there’s any beer in the fridge, go online and check your e-mail. Pop over to Balloon Juice and see if anything is going on. Check your Facebook page. Get another beer from the fridge and then go back to the TV, sit down and go back to watching whatever it was that you’re watching.
Not only are school lunches making kids too fat to fight but Tivo and on-demand streaming video technologies aren’t forcing them to develop the kind of bladder control necessary for careers on Wall Street! We’re doomed! Doomed I tell you!
RedKitten
So, um…these bankers were so damned incompetent at the jobs for which they trained that they almost destroyed the U.S. economy. And they think that they’d be able to just walk into any job for which they DIDN’T train? And they think they’d be able to do it better than the folks who are already doing those jobs?
Riiiiigght….
PeakVT
Guess what: we’re going to stop buying the new 80k car
Germany would be sad about this. Detroit, not so much.
Wile E. Quixote
Why is it when I read that sentence I’m reminded of this episode of South Park.
Ken Pidcock
I know – I just know – that at the origin of this tantrum stands a genuinely successful entrepreneur who pushed a trader neighbor’s buttons hoping that he would, eventually, spit this shit out. And I thank that person, because it really is funny.
Loved the early gambling reference. Got a dollar? Here’s ten thousand says I can guess your gender.
Omnes Omnibus
@RedKitten: Abnormally robust self-confidence based on very little foundation appears to be a requirement for being a bankster. I believe am fairly good at what I do. I have certain native abilities and have developed a skill set that allows me to perform well. Some of these abilities and skills would transfer well to other career paths. I have, however, no illusions that I would be able to waltz into the workplaces of most of the other commenters here and do well at their jobs. Some, I would be able to do quickly and well, some would take me time to develop even minimal competence, and some I would never be able to do. Weird, huh?
russell
I don’t really care how freaking hard these guys work. What I care about is what value the do or do not create.
The role of the financial sector, broadly construed, is to make an accurate analysis of risk, and to find productive places to put capital to work.
So, fail, on both counts. Especially the first. But the second also, unless you consider “into my pocket” to be a productive place to put other people’s capital.
Why the fuck do they deserve a lot of money?
There are janitors who create, net/net, more tangible value for the economy overall than these jerks.
khead
@Omnes Omnibus:
That one is my favorite. Here’s my response to those folks:
“Fuck you. If you want a government job, we’re hiring – and we’ve been hiring. You didn’t give a fuck about my 2-3% a year raise and union security until your job went to shit and now you to bitch about them? I don’t think so.”
JohnR
@Shalimar:
It’s worse than you think – as I read that, he’s saying they’re going to make up for the crappy pay of a teacher by killing and eating your 3rd-graders. Is this what you want, Mr. and Mrs. Ungrateful Liberal? Is it? IS IT?
limniade
I’m just wondering what these guys are going to do when they realize that getting up at 5am and working until 10pm is actually not uncommon (although a 6pm end time is more typical). That most people only take one or two pee breaks through the day. That the standard lunch break is half an hour and quite a few people end up working through it. That nobody leaves a 35% tip. That nobody retires at 50 with a pension, they retire at 70 with Social Security. And that you don’t do it on $85K, you do it on $45K. Or $35K. Or $25K.
The economy is not driven by over-entitled assholes who work on Wall Street. (Except periodically into the ground.) It’s driven by the middle class, who spend their money on small luxuries and reasonable services provided by other members of the middle class. I mean, what, there’s 200 million of us versus a couple thousand of them? They really think they were doing something special, doing us a fucking favor? If so, then by all means, spruce up the resume and start answering want ads. Schmucks.
Mnemosyne
One more amusing factoid to go along with this:
Most states don’t mandate an hour lunch break. In California — which has very generous employee protections — your state-mandated lunch break is 30 minutes.
Not to mention that those of us on a timeclock have to “punch out” (ie not get paid) for that lunch break, unlike Mr. Salary.
Jon H
@JustMe: ““Eat what we kill” is a term of art also rendered as “eat our own dog food””
No, this is incorrect.
“eat our own dog food” means you use what you make, you don’t just make stuff and foist it on the customer while using better and/or different products internally.
“eat what we kill” is supposed to mean that if you don’t “kill” anything, you go hungry, implying they’d be broke if they weren’t any good, and since they are “overfed” they clearly must be very good at “killing”.
Except, what we’ve just seen is that on Wall Street you can get very rich by making very bad deals that kill the company down the line.
So, on Wall Street, “we eat what we kill” applies in the sense of a dog gorging itself on 25 lbs of chocolate and ex-lax it found in an unattended shopping bag. Then shitting and barfing all over the new carpet and upholstery and requiring thousands of dollars of vet bills or dying.
liberty60(Veteran, Great War of Yankee Aggression)
OK, everyone else has piled on so well I got nothing to add, except what Molly Ivins said of GWB-
that these guys were born on 3rd base and thought they hit a triple.
Days like this she is sorely missed.
aimai
I think that was Ann Richards–about George HW Bush.
aimai
asiangrrlMN
@russell: I agree with this. I’m sure they work freaking hard (well, maybe), but they get richly compensated for it, unlike most other jobs. That’s the arrogance that gets to me. This guy thinks he’s oh-so-special. I don’t think he could do a landscaping job (not sure I could) because physically, he’s probably not fit enough. I don’t think he can be a teacher because he has nothing to offer in terms of ideas (judging by his piece). If he wants to try to do a landscaping job for a month, then let him (not a teaching job, though). Let’s film him doing the life of an ‘ordinary’ person for a month and see how he does. No health insurance. Long hours. Taking care of his own children, mowing the lawn, taking out the trash, etc. For someone as pampered and entitled as this, he probably would not have the internal fortitude to man up and make it through one month.
So, go ahead and go galt. Try to do as you threaten. You might actually learn something from it.
Fergus Wooster
@aimai:
That was “Poor George, he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.” Also one of my favorites.
Fergus Wooster
@asiangrrlMN:
I was an analyst for these people for two years. Many of them (there were exceptions) really do believe they are the masters of the universe, and that they’re paid their high six figures for the value they create.
Even though in my two years, all they created were fucking pitchbooks. Lots of pitchbooks.
kay
Everyone thinks they’d be a great teacher. Maybe it’s because everyone went to school?
I can’t think of another job or profession where every adult person insists: 1. it’s easy! and 2. “I would be GREAT at that!”
It would drive me absolutely crazy if I were a teacher.
Cacti
Bankster guy’s rant just drips with the old saw…
“Born on third base, but thought he hit a triple”
licensed to kill time
@kay:
Everybody thinks they could be a rock star. Though I don’t know if every adult person thinks that.
“Money for nothin’ and the chicks for free”
jake the snake
John Derbyshire and Mark Steyn, the best argument for draconian immigration restrictions.
TooManyJens
They eat economies?
Anne Laurie
@dmsilev:
Yeah, you could always break the robot down for parts, or assign it to governor Kuleefurneeyah. Banksters don’t even make good soylent green — no flavor.
Pangloss
Shorter: Give us everything we want, or the country gets it.
kay
@Pangloss:
Agreed. It’s been threat after threat since financial reform hit the agenda. Will it work though, this time?
We gave them everything they wanted and the country got it anyway.
Not one attempt by these folks to offer a solution, or an idea, or a proposal, or anything to mitigate the damage. They bitched incessantly when they were being bailed out and they’re bitching now that we’re attempting to put them on a shorter leash to avoid another bail out.
Their contribution? Tens of millions to lobbyists. They came up with that cash pretty quick, but they couldn’t rework terms on a mortgage.
DaddyJ
@John Arbuthnot Fisher: Precisely. The self-regard of this guy, if his diatribe is sincere and not a put-on, is fed by the absurd disconnect between what he does and how much he is compensated. “I make 10x what all you people do; therefore I must be 10x better than you.” Working for five figures for a decade might actually make a man of him, if he didn’t have a nervous breakdown first.
Joseph Nobles
Hey, let’s ship them all to South Korea where they can mine for gold in WoW. Bladder control could give them the edge there.
Glen Tomkins
Like it’s 1788 all over again
The really scary possibility is that this actually was written by a bankster, and actually does represent how a lot of them are thinking.
The system that has coddled them for so long, that socialized their risk while allowing them to privatize the profits completely as they saw fit, is now dead to them because the peasants threaten to start to think about imposing some sort at least half-way oversight into how they make their profits at our risk.
It’s as if Neckar had proposed some modest taxation of the privileged. The monarchy must be crushed! Bring back the Estates General!
Not that that example, even if it occurs to them, would change their minds. The malefactors of great wealth in the ancien regime all got away with their loot long before they set up the guillotine. I’m sure their spiritual heirs would prove as perspicuous of their personal fortunes and security. They’re only fools when it comes to the public good.
Delia
Where are the Khmer Rouge when they could actually serve a useful purpose?
Sly
I can’t speak for professional landscapers, but I’ve actually seen a fair amount ex-Streeters try their hand at getting an MAT or combined degree in the past year and a half (SUNY and CUNY schools offer pretty good programs that are cheap due to state subsidies). Mostly mid-level people like this guy. The result has been somewhat… comical. Almost all of them leave within their first semester back because of the workload. And the workload you have during teacher training is significantly less than when you’re actually teaching.
Up at 5AM and done by 10PM is par for the course for a lot of teachers. As well as losing weekends to lesson preparations, grading Friday assessments, coaching sports or moderating extracurricular groups, etc. We also have to figure out what we’re going to do over the summer to stretch our income.
I welcome Mr. Wallstreet to try his hand at it, though.
D. Mason
@kay:
As for saying it’s easy, I don’t know many adults who think a teachers job would be easy, maybe that’s just the circles I run in or whatever. When it comes to people thinking they would be GREAT teachers… Perhaps it has to do with people wanting to believe they have worth and value and therefore would be able to pass on knowledge of value to the next generation. For shame….
Joe Lisboa
FUCK THIS ASSHOLE.
Seriously. First against the wall, you slimy fuck.
Church Lady
@geg6: If all you make is 40K for doing all that, you might want to think about moving on to a university that pays more. Heck, the 25 year old Alumni Call Center Director at my daughter’s school makes right at that amount. You are seriously, seriously underpaid for your job responsibilities.
Joe Lisboa
By way of explanation: I’m an attorney who graduated from a Top 10 law school (and was admitted to all Top 10 law schools, in fact) and walked away from six-figure potential for a job teaching undergraduate philosophy as an adjunct lecturer. This asshole has no idea what he’s talking about and, if he comes for my “job” – such as it is – who the fuck he’ll be dealing with. It’s fucknobs like this that were partially responsible for my walking away from the golden handcuffs to begin with. I have nothing but contempt for folks like this, and I’m a pretty laid back dude most of the time.
So, may I reiterate: “FUCK THIS ASSHOLE. First against the wall, you slimy fuck.”
Church Lady
@scarshapedstar: I nominate you for “Jobs No One Wants To Do”. Yuck.
Sly
@D. Mason:
I usually hear about the limited work schedule in my own circles. People who assume that teachers only work when they are actually in a classroom, when most of the work teachers actually do comes before and after.
That and the vacations, where people assume teachers are just laying around doing nothing from late June to early September.
Jebediah
@kay:
I was a teacher, and that definitely drives me nuts. I taught third grade, and I would bet everything that that self-important turd would be a disaster as an elementary-grade teacher.
I would love to see this twatwaffle in front of a third-grade class for a week. Any wagers on how his performance evaluation might read?
Sly
@TooManyJens:
I hear public bond ratings are particularly delicious.
D. Mason
@Sly:
Yeah the summer vacation is a thing of envy everywhere I guess… One of the few perks to what seems like an otherwise thankless job.
gwangung
Which is kind of stupid. That’s when they’re contractually obligated to be….It’s like saying salesmen are not working when they’re on the road and out of the office.
Just Some Fuckhead
@scarshapedstar:
You might want to check your website. Last time I visited it, I picked up a computer virus.
Older
@twiffer: Barbi says it is. And she comes from a very good (ie, wealthy) family.
Ruckus
Let’s see, I want to hire some ivy league educated asshole to work for me, he knows crap about what I do, probably has no mechanical skills, probably no skill basis to even learn the job, and I’m going to pay him $85K? At min wage here in CA, $8 per, that’s $320 per week, $16,640 per year. Going rate for fast food in this area has dropped from $12 starting to about $10 now. And he’s most likely not worth half of that.
However, if we could get a law passed that allowed ex wall st assholes to not come under all the workplace laws, I might hire him just to see him sweat and starve. But it would be at something like $4 per hour and his job would be to take shit all day long from both me and every customer that feels screwed by the masters of the universe. No minimum purchase necessary.
@Anne Laurie:
I thought banksters would taste like shit, you know soylent brown.
Kyle
We destroy the economy more before 8am than most people do
all dayin a lifetime!El Cid
@Wile E. Quixote: You’re not a tough Wall Streeter unless you’re willing to shit your pants and keep working.
Comrade Kevin
@Church Lady: Yeah, cause jobs just grow on trees, particularly in this economy.
Kyle E. Moore
This is really funny because I just read this over in the comments section over at Wonkette earlier today.
Man I just can’t wait until these two demographic titans meet. I wonder which one will win?
sukabi
@Just Some Fuckhead:
It might have been a turkey std…
kay
@D. Mason:
Well, no, not at all. I’m not talking about people who say “I want to be a teacher”. That isn’t what he’s saying. He’s saying “that job is easier than mine”. I heard it all the time from other parents, talking about their kid’s teachers. That alone is sort of amazing because presumably they know their kids, some of whom are a huge pain in the ass, but I digress.
I don’t think it’s an easy job. I don’t think every individual who went to school could stroll on in there and be good at it.
I think teaching third grade is important and difficult work.
kay
@D. Mason:
And who is stopping him, anyway? Am I thwarting his teaching goals? I think he should get in there and try it, and then come back and report.
different church-lady
Sir, when you reach the point where you are used to having your fingers crushed between a pair of 300 lb. shipping cases, then we can continue this conversation.
D. Mason
@kay:
I think you missed my point, sorry. What I was trying to say is that everyone with any self esteem(which he obviously has) SHOULD think they would be a good teacher(they respect their own talents and knowledge right?). They also should recognize that it would be a hard job for anyone and respect the idea accordingly. That’s where the disconnect lies, though, IMO.
Roberto
I refuse to believe this guy’s rant is real.
Liberal plant.
Comrade Darkness
@Tom Betz: We should put it to a vote of the country. All those in favor of eating hobo beans for a year so we can afford to watch all the bastards fry in court? I bet it’d get 75-80% of the vote.
Batocchio
Um, yes, if doing them well counts. Teaching a specific subject to a specific age group is often not that easy, and the NR-banker crowd wouldn’t last long at manual labor outside.
jcricket
we really can’t win, can we? We either let the banksters get everything they want and they destroy the world.
Or, supposedly, we take away their fraud, illegal activities and other financial “innovations”, and they will destroy the economy by going Galt or “taking all our middle class jobs” (or something like that).
I guess we better enjoy the non-lubed ass-raping of scenario #1, since it’s the only sensible option.
Oh wait, there are plenty of other economy’s with tigher regulations around banking/investment that manage to do just fine (see banks in Canada) without all the economy destroying? Perhaps we give that a try?
I know, crazy talk. just like the whole idea of raising taxes on the rich and corporations to pay for all the shit the rest of us need b/c the rich and corporations aren’t sharing on their own.
Ken Pidcock
@Roberto, Well, yeah, that’s a real possibility. Although, if so, it’s well executed, because it certainly isn’t over the top for masters of the universe pleading. (Admittedly, that’s a very difficult top to get over.)
I mean, if it wasn’t first person, it could be Megan McArdle.
kay
@D. Mason:
Again, I don’t think it’s that simple. Think back to a teacher you had in a primary grade. Was he or she a good teacher because they had command of the subject area? Subtraction, addition, punctuation and basic reading, right? Of course they knew how to do those things. So it wasn’t command of subject area. That isn’t what made them a good teacher, for those lower grades. It’s talents in other things, things that are not valued, like an ability to deal sensibly and calmly with children, and humor, and patience, and perseverance. Things that are not valued, but are essential to do well at that job. That’s what he’s dissing by assuming he’d stroll in there and do great. Not everyone has these abilities or attributes. Reading this rant, he doesn’t have those things.
Ken Pidcock
Forgive my being off topic, but sometimes something is said that demands something be said.
Gertie Moon, you are not forgotten.
petorado
So I see meth has finally found it’s way to Wall Street. … No need for sleeping or eating, euphoric delusions of invincibility, diminishment of basic hygiene practices (peeing), prone to violent language … it’s all in that screed. Really, we should make these guys pass drugs tests before they can trade.
Allan
Trickle down on this, prole.
Comrade E.B. Misfit
@Fergus Wooster:
I’ll just be here sharpening my knives. Anyone got a guillotine?
No, but I’m willing to learn how to knit, if that’ll help.
ian
Technically, ‘going Galt’ should include the technological savvy sufficient to invent something akin to a perpetual motion device, which is what John Galt did in the novel with his motor. In point of fact, those in American society who use ‘going Galt’ as a mantra would actually be recognized by those unblinkered by vanity and greed as moochers and parasites.