Why Hardship Never Trickles Up…and some Open Houses
Hardship never trickles up. If someone hasn’t coined that phrase by now, I’m taking it.
People wonder at the growing gap between rich and poor in this country. In fact, our current Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson (at right), said he aimed to suture that festering gash when he took the office two years ago. I guess he can pat himself on the back now for a very Bushian “mission accomplished” with today’s bailout plan.
Yes, this bailout will almost certainly cost taxpayers less than the protracted recession and possible collapse that would occur otherwise. But what it won’t do is stop another population of return-hungry fund managers from making similarly idiotic decisions in the future; if anything, it encourages the short-sighted, win-that-bonus culture that brought us here in the first place.
So while we as a nation may suffer less collectively, the people who lost thousands of dollars for millions of Americans still get to the keep the sky-high wages they earned in doing so. This lack of accountability incentivizes irresponsible behavior in the future, while punishing those who saved prudently and limited their market exposure.
I don’t have numbers on this, but I’m willing to bet the average incomes of those heavily invested in financial firms are several orders of magnitude above those squirreling funds away in savings accounts. It’s taxes on those same savings accounts that will keep the firms of rich investors afloat through the current financial crisis.
I love the free market as much as anyone, but as they say in Spiderman, “with great power comes great responsibility.” Irresponsible abuse of lightly-regulated markets leads to catastrophic loss. Intentionally sloppy bookkeeping doesn’t help. And sometimes (IHMO) you’ve just gotta make people pay for their own mistakes.
But no one wants the blood of another Great Depression on their hands, and so the cycle of boom and bust continues. The good news, I guess, is that for those wealthy enough to buy a house in the toniest of neighborhoods, there will likely be someone else willing to pay more a few years down the line. So that having been said, here are some open houses that rich people will continue to be able to afford:
24 Marlborough St #5
Back Bay, MA 02116
2 beds, 1.5 baths
980 sq. ft.
$949,900
Open House, Sunday, September 21, 2008 2:30 PM – 3:30 PM
15 River St #602
Beacon Hill, MA 02108
2 beds, 1 bath
797 sq. ft.
$679,000
Open House: Sunday, September 21, 2008 12:30 PM – 2:00 PM
108 Mount Vernon St #1
Beacon Hill, MA 02108
3 beds, 3 baths
1,640 sq. ft.
$1,595,000
Open House: Sunday, September 21, 2008 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
And You Thought Politics was Boring
