jb32 wrote:
terp06 wrote:
Why is it any of hers or anybody else's business how much money someone else makes? Who cares!!! It doesn't matter!!
I think she was making a broader point about the "pay-related pecking order [that] was established immediately after graduation" she talked about earlier. Sure, it's easy to say "who cares?" about how much everyone is paid... when you're making out pretty well. But it's simply naive to say that our society doesn't assign (or imply) a social hierarchy based on how much you make. No where more than in NYC, I imagine.
For what it's worth, I agree with a lot of what she says. As far as I can tell, the friends of mine who went to work for Goldman, Deutsche Bank, Lehman and elsewhere right out of college weren't really creating anything of value at all; and certainly not for society as a whole. They were just very talented at symbol manipulation. I don't begrudge anyone for wanting to make money (who doesn't?), but I also don't feel terribly bad for someone making six figures who's missing out on their bonus this year that's several times my annual salary.
More broadly, I don't think we can realistically expect Wall Street firms to adequately and fairly govern themselves. They're out to make large profits by any means necessary - usually by sacrificing long-term success for short-term profit, as we've seen. It's the government's role to regulate them such that the avarice that drives their success doesn't ultimately destroy the whole system, as it did in 1929.