What if everyone used their gifts to benefit others?
Posted by Joel Friedlander | 2 Comments
Today the N.Y. Times editorializes about taxing the high earners at Goldman Sachs. Is that really the problem with such intelligent people devoting themselves purely to the accumulation of lucre.
If all of the mathematical investment geniuses at Goldman Sachs and the other investment banks and hedge funds had devoted their talents to serving the ends of Mankind instead of themselves we would probably had a cure for cancer, diabetes, MS, Lupus, and many other diseases long ago. The problem is that the best minds involve themselves in the very least consequential aspects of the functioning of American society.
Perhaps these people do what they do because they have several hundreds of thousands of school loans to pay off, or because they want to be the J.P.Morgan of their age. If the former is true, perhaps we ought to forgive loans that are taken out for education when the person taking them out works for a certain number of years to serve their country by serving its real interests (and by this I do not refer only to the military). Perhaps we ought to take the bonuses being given for two or three years and set up National University system. It certainly would be able to provide an education to the people of this country without their bankrupting their future to pay off school loans. It might also avoid the ultra large numbers of fine students devoting their lives to the acquisition of money for themselves.
As to the later, who is better known by mankind, or served it better, J.P.Morgan, or Louis Pasteur or Jonas Salk? I will not belabor that point here. Which was more complicated, working out the use of complex derivatives, or working out the human genome?
Don’t like science? Perhaps one or more of these geniuses could have become another Mozart, or Beethoven, or Handel, or a leader like Leonard Bernstein, to set out just a few obvious examples. Perhaps they might have become another Picasso, or a Michaelangelo, or, who knows, you name them. Certainly, none of the really great people in the World was in it for the money only, although they certainly tried to make as much as they could.
As Spider Man says, “With great power comes great responsibility.” The high earners in these firms obviously have a great genius, but is their use of it responsible? We need new methods of feeding the World, not new credit default swaps!
Think about it! America doesn’t need their bonuses, it needs their brilliance directed in the correct direction.
Tags: Business > Genius > goldman sachs > Society > Taxation
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January 11th, 2010 @
If you need a song to assist you in understanding why my generation felt they could make an easy buck doing this racket, look no further than the rap genre; behold, I give you Lil’ Wayne.
“Money On My Mind” By Lil’ Wayne
Yeah
[Chorus 2X with variations]
Money on my mind
Money on my mind
Money on my mind
Money money on my mind
Money on my mind
Money on my mind
Money money on my mind
So money is all I think of
Steppin out the motherfuckin car they in awe
I’m lookin like a star bitch when you see me make a wish
Holla at ya motherfuckin boy J.R.
Birdman my pa bitch ball bred born rich
Dear Mr. Toilet I’m the shit
Got these other haters pissed cause my toilet paper thick
I know but trip and that forty make a chip
Out a potato head wimp and like ranch I dip
And the hustle was all muscle just strength
When it comes to that weight I don’t struggle I just lift
I got my hand on the game yeah I make a grip
Hundred grand in my fist same on my wrist
Get key money from a quarter blame it on my wrist
I whip coke like hoes nigga I’m a pimp
Lil nigga bout to rape the market
If we talkin bout money baby now we talkin
[Chorus]
[Hook: during chorus]
Fuck bitches [3X]
Get money [3X]
Get money fuck bitches
Fuck bitches get money
Fuck bitches get money
Yeah
Nigga get it in a slump if you know how
In the heart of the summer we need a snow plow
What you know bout that baby its yo time
Coke transactions on the phone we call it blowjob
Too fast for the feds too cocky for the cops
Had to ditch my old bitch gettin sloppy wit the pots
Hoppin off the boat meetin papi at the docks
He tell me I’m gainin weight I tell him I’m gettin paid
Money over bitches I’m yellin it to the grave
Developed at a young age go after what pays
These Gabana sunshades block the sunrays
I drop a car note in the mall on the first day
I gotta get it even if its in the worst way
That cake like it’s it’s my birthday
New Orleans my birthplace ya heard me
Where moneys more important than the person
Nigga
[Chorus + Hook during chorus]
Twistin up a blunt thinkin bout my next dollar
I’m diggin in the game tryna get some money out her
I’m so vain its a problem
It ain’t a stain on these Pradas I’m just bein modest
Got me a goddess sure how to divide it
She still down and she don’t get none of the profit
We around the city let the tints hide me
Thats a cold muhfucker whoever inside it
Forever symbolizing the grind it don’t walk to you
I make it run like horses do
Giddy up baby if you got it then hit ‘em up baby
I know its crazy but I can’t get enough baby
I love it I fuckin love it
I’m a self made millionaire fuck the public
Ridin to myself cause I don’t fuck with nothin
Pistol on my lap on the way to the money
January 11th, 2010 @
Oooooooooooookay, so there is music to explain the fascination with lucre. But, so many of the women of genius were also caught up in the banking business of creative rape of the World. I say World because we sold our poison securities, etc all over the globe, even to small cities that are now without money to pay their civic obligations.
There were women as well as men in creative finance and for the same reasons; so much for the moral superiority of women. They didn’t do it to get sex from women of doubtful virtue. They did it because we are at the very edge of the moral abyss in America and if we don’t step back we will begin to fall.