General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Stripping away the distracting BS, this is what it all boils down to. (In my opinion.) [View all]frazzled
(18,402 posts)This is the root of the issue, to me. Our society values people who make money. We don't particularly value education, or ideas, or altruism, or art, or any of the other things that could be valued.
We think people who make money must be "smart" (or more talented), and we admire them. Well, they're not always; they're usually just more ruthless. (They think they're smarter though; there was a fascinating article in the New Yorker a few years back, at the outset of the recession, talking about how these financial crooks truly believe that because they can snare money in illicit trades, they are somehow smarter than the rest of us.)
We, as a society, are partially guilty for all of this. Look at this season we're inthe Oscars with its high-priced entertainers; the Super Bowl, with its high-priced athletes. This is the stuff we eat up as a culture, so no wonder we marvel at our high-priced titans of finance and leave them alone.
I remember reading an article in the Times many years ago, probably in the early 90s, already talking about income inequality. And it was talking about Norway, I think (one of the Scandinavian countries), in which industrial and financial magnates themselves did not want to earn more than X times what the average worker made ... because they felt it would lead to unrest amongst the masses and therefore be harmful to themselves and to their society. They actually CHOSE not to earn a lot. (I think this has changed even in Norway over the past few decades.)
A culture that reveres money will eventually suffer because of it. Until we start admiring things like morals and ideas and grace and comity more than dollars, we're in trouble. I don't know how it will ever change. The Great Depression helped even things out again for a while, but it was just a slow process of climbing back up the ladder to inequality again.