Re: Occupy America You're delusional if'n you think that these guys reached these heights without some serious help. Somewhere, someone along the way saw something in these guys that they liked. They probably had a mentor, someone they attached themselves to their coat tails, who gave them some serious breaks along the way as they went to the top. It happens all the time. Doesn't negate the work that they did to improve their stations themselves, but we all know someone who doesn't deserve the position that they have thru any competence of their own, it's who they know.
Re: Occupy America Right, but my point is that they were not at all born into these positions. They made it there because at various points along the way, their peers and superiors thought they would do a good job. These people didn't have any more laurels to rest on than anyone else. It just happened that in many of these cases (Lay, Greenberg, Lewis in particular) those peers and superiors were wrong.
Re: Occupy America You're 100% right about these examples, but what is the percentage of people in Big Banking that ARE born into these positions? How many of the "top families" hire and mentor each other's kids? I would believe that the above examples are the exception rather than the rule.
Re: Occupy America I don't know, but this actually may be more of an education problem than pure nepotism. Obviously what you're describing happens, but more often, it's that they pick their hires predominantly from certain types of majors at certain types of universities. And "top families" are certainly over-represented statistically speaking among, say, economics majors at Harvard. Partially do to student interest, but more often due to legacy admissions and an unbalanced educational playing field. If you don't do your work, banking as an industry has a very low tolerance level. It's extremely results-oriented culture, to a fault (because incentive focus on earnings encourages analysts/traders to take high-risk, high-reward positions, and sometimes encourages them to enter into transactions they don't entirely understand. See: John Paulsen and MBS).
Re: Occupy America You're 100% right about these examples, but what is the percentage of people in Big Banking that ARE born into these positions? How many of the "top families" hire and mentor each other's kids? I would believe that the above examples are the exception rather than the rule.[/quote] I think we can all agree that while many successful people achieved that success through lucky breaks or family connections, many did so mainly through hard work and intelligence. Most achieved success through a combination of the two. That's one of the things that makes America great. But the other point is we have to get ourselves off this ridiculous notion that anyone who is struggling or is on public assistance is a social pariah who is lazy and unwilling to do a hard days work. Some in this thread have given examples of the person who receives thousands of dollars in food stamps and then goes and throws it away on worthless junk food. Yes fraud does occur. But we shouldn't use these examples, which are exemptions and not the rule, to demonize the system and those who receive benefits. Because if we are just going to cherry pick cases, I can throw out dozens of instances where people were forced to go on food stamps despite being productive members of society for decades and were able to feed themselves and stay in their homes because of this program.
Re: Occupy America Any sort of statistics that prove this assertion? Every time this caste warfare argument comes up someone invariably mentions nepotism. Not that I don't believe it happen (as there is a prominent legacy program at a lot of Ivy League schools) but a lot of the times it seems like people make the case that every rich person is rich because they are related to the Rockefeller's.
Re: Occupy America This is a problem. I have no issue with the guys in charge being paid like a boss. I do have a problem with it being so lopsided that you can't afford to live a decent life because all of the revenue is funnelled to the top. Think of what an average Pizza Hut employee would make if this ratio was a little more equal. Maybe enough to go to school, support a family, and encourage some social mobility? I say this because I have plenty of friends who work honest, simple jobs that will never see more than $12/hour. They work construction, teach kids, cook food, wait tables, manage restaurants and work on cars. They do things that are vital for society to continue. And they make utterly fuck-all and have existed in poverty for years. As it stands, they live in shitty apartments or with their parents and cannot climb out of poverty doing honest work. Again, it's an incentive problem: we are not accurately rewarding the people who provide value to our society. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.weforum.org/issues/global-competitiveness" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.weforum.org/issues/global-competitiveness</a> Why isn't the US in the top 10 for global competitiveness? A lot of "socialist" countries seem to have a much more open, competitive form of capitalism than we have.
Re: Occupy America It seems to me to be a flawed assumption that lower CEO pay would funnel into higher salaries for lower level employees. For the average publicly traded company, the money is much more likely to be funneled into increased dividends, stock buybacks, etc. I'm not sure why you think the two are zero-sum or even particularly correlated. Also, the US is fifth on that list, behind Switzerland, Singapore, Sweden, and Finland. As for your table...the US ranks low because we pay our CEOs a lot, particularly our "rock star" CEOs (well beyond the value created, in my opinion and according to some academic papers on the topic). Partially this is due to our focus on individualism: we believe that a single person can be and often is the primary driver of value for a company. Hence the appeal and celebrity of figures like Jobs, Gates, Blankfein, etc. That attitude is much rarer or at least significantly muted in other countries. Our average wages are actually the highest worldwide.
Re: Occupy America I know this has devolved into some very serious almost political bantering, however, I thought I'd inject some lighthearted jest into all of this madness. I give you Occupy Herbstreit. A guy is going around making signs at all the protests in regards to his disgust to the current state of college football. My favorite by far...
Re: Occupy America This thread is probably going to be closed soon, but I'll post my thoughts until it is. I think at this point almost everyone posting is pissed off at someone else. That's the hope, right? So why are you holding American expectations to such a piss poor standard? Complaints about the state of America are not about someone sitting on their ass and deserving checks. It's about people working their asses off and expecting more. If they have reasonable smarts, a strong work ethic, and pursue their careers vigorously, do you really think that is all they're entitled to? And what does not fucking with your shit mean? I'd say our shit has been fucked sir. I'm so sick of this bullshit. Yes, it's a first world country. That does not mean we should be satisfied with whatever we get because someone in Africa has it worse. Again, you're holding us to very low standards here. It's better than somewhere else to shut the fuck up and be happy. Not good enough. Not that much prettier and smarter, and blah blah blah. Not anything close to the differences in income distribution. Other countries understand this, why don't we? Are we so terrified of becoming socialist? Is this just some inane fear ingrained into our DNA at this point? Gee, maybe they couldn't run a fucking company then. And that dumbass in the mail room has risen to top more often than you think. That is one of the good things about this country. I think Trakiel was right about how this board has gone from 'follow your passion' to 'fuck you for being a dumbass who didn't major in finance.' It's kind of sad. At this point I picture some of you as corporate lackeys holding a whip with an axe to grind while simultaneously berating people for taking the easy way out. I guess what bothers me is a lot of people in this thread don't even seem to have hopes or suggestions for improvement in this nation. It seems all you want to say is that people disappointed in their lives need to suck it up.
Re: Occupy America Just for the record, I wasn't saying one generation was smarter than the other, or better than the other. The average intelligence across age is most likely exactly the same: at 100. I'm saying that due to the differences in economic climate, someone at the bottom of the bell curve 30 years ago may have had an easier time finding a job than someone at the top (well, front) of the bell curve does today. Of course, this climate makes it doubly shitty for the older folks who are looking for work for whatever reason, so I'm not saying not everyone is suffering. I was pointing out that is it's frustrating when crap jobs that would be begging you to come work for them even 5 years ago are now overflowing with applicants and rejecting quality people. It's like the morbidly obese, foul-smelling girl at the bar who nobody ever wanted and was always pathetically desperate. But suddenly she finds she's the only girl left on a deserted island, is getting lots of attention now, and now she starts acting like a cunt.
Re: Occupy America Another thing to be said here. All the conservatives on this thread are under the same delusion: that we live in a meritocracy, that money is ALWAYS justly awarded, no matter what, and that your career path and financial health are completely, absolutely under your control, and not fickle at all. This is patently false. Here are some examples of the richest men in history: The De'Medici family from Italy. Huge wealth mostly inherited and passed down from one noble to another. Marcus Crassus from Rome. "Crassus, born into a wealthy political family, inherited a fortune of 7 million sesterces after the death of his father in 87 BC." Fuck it, I don't even need to list more. Every major king ever. King Tut, the Pharoahs, half the Roman emperors that ascend from birthright, King Henry VIII. All these men were extravagantly wealthy; wealthier than 99.99% of anyone in this fucking country. Did they earn one penny? NO THEY DID NOT. They were BORN into wealth. Period. Just like THE VAST MAJORITY of wealth today. It's passed on. Now, to you people who think "current bank account" is the only measure of human worth, and is an absolutely PERFECT and INFALLIBLE scorecard-- Was King Henry VIII more innovative and "value-added" than every CEO in this country combined? Of course he fucking wasn't. He acquired wealth, like all the other stinking upright chimpanzees we call humans: through luck, fortune, destiny, chance: fickle means. Did he deserve to be there? To have that wealth? Well, HE certainly thought he did. Why? Well, if I inherited a billion dollars for no reason, I'd be DAMN SURE to convince people I deserve it, or else they might try to take it from me or change the system. Kings and Pharoahs enslaved their peoples for thousands of years under the "delusion" that "they deserve to be king, to be God." Now the same myth is propagated by CEOs who take lavish bonuses after running a company into the ground, trust fund babies who never worked a day in their lives, and IDIOT conservatives who aren't rich, but who assume they one day will be (they won't.) We do not live in a meritocracy. CEOs are not paid by performance metrics. They are paid by whatever they can grab and get away with. Most rich people in the top echelon have inherited their wealth. If I steal a billion dollars, did I "earn it" by virtue of "having it"? Of course fucking not. That is the problem with conservatives. They think money is the perfect scorecard. It isn't. You can be diagnosed with life-threatening cancer tomorrow and if you are middle class, the massive medical bills can easily put you into massive debt. Did you 'earn' that? Did people with cancer "earn" their disease or are responsible for their financial woes? The level of ignorance about the universe amongst people like this is staggering.
Re: Occupy America Are you really using rich men in the history of Ancient Rome to support your argument? Shut up dude, you're going to get the thread locked.
Re: Occupy America AAAAAAAAnnnnnd that wraps it up. Also, the problem with conservatives is Fuck You. And the problem with liberals is Fuck You too. Jesus fucking Christ. Goddamn fucking politics...
Re: Occupy America Let's try this again... Anyone being an idiot won't get the thread closed, it'll get them banned.
Re: Occupy America I had to. Anyway. The coverage has shifted from people generally agreeing with the movement to covering how tired some localities are of dealing with the headache of hundreds of squatters in public parks. Always interesting to see how certain news stories are framed for the public.
Re: Occupy America So when you heard that police had shot an Iraq war veteran in the head with a "non lethal" tear gas canister that resulted in him needing surgery to survive, all during a peaceful protest... was anyone surprised it was Oakland? In other this-isn't-about-lazy-people-vs-honest-hardworkers news, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court invalidated a huge number of foreclosures over the past five years based on the radical legal doctrine of "you can't foreclose on a house to which you don't own the mortgage note." Industry experts have referred to the systematic perjury that underlined these foreclosures as a "whoopsie."
Re: Occupy America I'm not sure the cops would need tear gas and riot gear if it was "peaceful." But either way, it's extremely fucked up. Him being an Iraq vet doesn't matter, it's fucked up all around. I was under the impression that tear gas is fired in an upward arc to prevent this kind of thing? This is gross misconduct and abuse by the cops if it was in fact fired directly at them. Nobody deserves that bullshit.
Re: Occupy America Bill Maher had this to say on his show last week, which started off an interesting discussion. Since it focuses on one of the core elements of OWS, I thought it'd be worth sharing here. For the time being, there's a clip on YouTube from last week's episode. The relevant part runs from 6:10 to the end of the clip.