Modest Proposal

It would be interesting to see what would happen if people decided that they wouldn't work on Wall Street for a mere $250K. The normal jump would be to assume that these people would simply find or create something wherein they were making the money they were used to, in the millions. Okay, maybe a lot would. Though I'm not sure these people are necessarily entreprenuers by nature - they've spent years making money through systems already built in for their "success." So while some may be able to pull that off, I doubt most of them will be able to take their huge brains and go home to spite us. They would hafta try to find careers that already exist. In other words, maybe instead of having the smartest people in the world sprinting to Wall Street to play some weird nebulous game wherein they make a ton of money for themselves but don't really contribute anything to society, would it be the worst thing in the world for these people to drift over into fields like medicine, the law, politics, engineering, green economy, etc? Three years ago HERE I wrote:

I think it's time that the best and brightest of these Ivy League schools get back to running the country and let the old Jewish guys from Flatbush get back to doing the comedy from now on.

That time it was in reference to Hollywood; this time it's hey, instead of having our smartest people in cubicles playing video games with peoples' money, let's see if we can get some of them to do real work. If they don't wanna work on Wall Street for $250K, we'll be happy to find a spot for them. Of course, the key to that would be making working on Wall Street less of a profitable venture. Which, ironically, they seem to have done themselves.

Firing the people that got us into this mess wouldn't only stick it to them cause they're assholes; it might actually force them to get real jobs that can benefit you and me.