Classic Wall Street
Woke up this morning to find this little puppy in my inbox. Quite a pleasant surprise, and it brings to ink (or pixels, I suppose) my thoughts exactly!
“We are Wall Street. It’s our job to make money. Whether it’s a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn’t matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn’t hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone’s 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I’ve never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.
Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat, the government and the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be one for everything. Well, here we are.
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.
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?”
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Re: Classic Wall Street
Hey Josh,
A classmate of mine was at Dartmouth this past weekend for Homecoming, and she said she saw an Occupy Dartmouth protest going on. Did you see it? If so, could you describe it/comment on it?
Re: Classic Wall Street
And concerning the e-mail that's going around on behalf of Wall Streeters...I can't decide what I think about it. I get the righteous indignation that's coming through, but at the same time, the letter sort of confirms the stereotype that these people are greedy jerks. Don't get me wrong, I have friends on Wall Street. And they are greedy jerks, and I love in spite of that. But, does a letter like this win them empathy from anyone but themselves?
Re: Classic Wall Street
I have some pictures of the occupy dartmouth movement that I can post. There are some people in their protest that are partaking in the corporate recruiting process. I agree, I don't think that this email should be used to try to convince the wall street protestors why they desperately need wall street. I think it should be used amongst fellow conservatives to drive home the point that greed, when pursued lawfully, is good for everyone. I certainly won't be sending this to my liberal friends, but mostly to my friends going to work on Wall Street to serve as a reminder of how hard it will prove to be.
Apr '11
Re: Classic Wall Street
Raspberries to the writer of that letter. People that trade baseball cards or gamble in Vegas play with their own money. If they lose, it's no skin off my nose. When Wall Street loses, some grunt worker the writer holds in contempt because he goes to the bathroom as needed loses his job, his house...
Wall Street is overhead. It creates no real wealth... at best it performs a service for which it is well paid.
An acquaintance once posited that big money is made handling money, not making things or performing a service that benefits the making and using of things. If my 401k doubled in three years, I'm certain the fund manager was well paid. If it becomes worthless, I'm sure the fund manager will be well paid.
Wall Street did not cause the meltdown. But it sure had a hand making it happen (e.g. GS "helping" Greece hide its true condition).