Wall Street - Aloof

Disclaimer: This is really more of a rant than proper commentary.

Aloof: detached, having no need, desire, or much (if any) awareness of other people and social relationships.

This piece from the New Yorker is worth the somewhat longer than normal internet read. It's about the workers of Walls Street and why they're pissed about the fact that the rest of America wants to see them get a pay cut.

"He [Obama] knows that you can’t live in New York on $75,000.”

Seriously? You need to realize that you're just a privileged human being who happens to work hard. Do you deserve double or maybe even triple salary because you work 80 hours a week? Maybe more because of the cost of living in NYC? Sure, but $742,000? Seriously, fuck you. Don't tell me that it's your birth right because you went to an Ivy League school and work all hours of the day. There are maybe a dozen living people who deserve the gross domestic product of an African nation as their take home salary. There are people who work just as industriously and take as much risk as you do who make $8 an hour. You are not special.

I understand the need to compensate people for what they contribute to society and our economic system, but no one deserves that much. Especially when you would be jobless if it weren't for the government, or perhaps more properly the tax payer. I even understand why they fight for their viewpoint so endearingly. I get that it brings with it security and a lifestyle that is hard to give up, but wake up. The huge salaries of Wall Street attracted the brightest, hardest working, greediest people in the country. There was fierce competition and innovation and it went unchecked. No one blew any whistles when it got out of hand because no one wanted to lose their high paying job, and don't tell me "we didn't know." I know people who work there. They all knew that what they were doing was unsustainable and had dire consequences. In the mean time you collectively ruined the American and by proxy the world economy.