Right now, in America, there are people walking around wearing wristwatches that they purchased for over $150,000.00. That's more money than my house is currently worth (though, not quite as much as we purchased it for), for a device that sits on your arm and tells time. Alex Rodriguez, infielder for the New York Yankees, makes $32,000,000.00 per year - which breaks down to $197,530.87 per game (if he plays all 162 regular season games), or around $65,843.62 per hour (depending of course, on the length of the game). In 2010, Johnny Depp made $75,000,000.00 - for playing dress-up-make-believe on camera. Rock supergroup U2 made $130,000,000.00 last year, which, if they split it up evenly, equals about $32,500,000.00 per member. Philippe P. Dauman, the C.E.O. of Viacom made $84,500,000.00 last year - and we all know how much back-breaking labor Chief Executives put in. But these people only represent the top earners in their respective fields. Let's look at some averages:
The average Major League Baseball player made $3,014,572.00 last year ($18,608.47 per game, around $6,202.83 per hour). The average movie star makes (according to the best estimates I could find) around $20,000,000.00 per movie. The average famous musician (again, from what I can gather) only makes a meager $88,000.00 per year. The average CEO for an S&P 500 company makes $1,093,989.00 per year.
The President of the United States makes $400,000.00 per year. A U.S. Congressperson makes $174,000.00 per year. The Governor of Washington State makes about $167,000.00 per year.
The average construction worker makes about $48,000.00 per year. The average coal miner makes $41,414.40 per year. The average waitress makes about $26,000.00 per year. The average police officer makes about $50,000.00 per year. A Staff Sergeant in the United States Air Force (or E-5 in any other branch) makes $29,379.60 per year. A Colonel (or O-6) makes $91,720.80 per year.
Last summer, I nearly jumped for joy at the opportunity to make $15.75 an hour for doing essentially a data-entry job for the summer. If that job had been a full-time, permanent position, I would have made about $30,240 per year. It would have been the highest paying job I've ever had. As most of you know, I am in the middle of about 5 and a half years' worth of a college education with the aim of becoming a high school English and Social Studies teacher. The job I had last summer - doing data entry for an energy company while listening to my iPod all day - would have paid me just under $4000.00 a year less than what I will most likely earn my first year of full-time teaching.
This is Capitalism.
I watched Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story a while back with high hopes, but I was pretty disappointed. Moore didn't do a very good job at all of pointing out the real problem with the system. The way I see it, the problem with Capitalism is most perfectly summed up in a scene from Ron Howard's Academy Award-winning A Beautiful Mind. In the scene, John Nash, a brilliant mathematician and his friends are all stricken by a beautiful blonde girl who walked into a bar with a few of her friends. They all begin arguing amongst themselves as to who is going to get to go home with her. Nash suddenly has an epiphany and sums it up nicely: "If we all go for the blonde, we block each other. Not a single one of us is going to get her. So then we go for her friends, but they will all give us the cold shoulder because nobody likest to be second choice. But what if no one goes for the blonde? (camera shows each man dancing with a friend of the blonde) We don't get in each other's way, and we don't insult the other girls. That's the only way we win. That's the only way we all get laid." Nash then goes onto explain that Adam Smith, the father of Capitalism, said "the best result comes from everyone in the group doing what's best for himself." Nash, on the other hand, had discovered that, in fact, "the best result will come from everyone in the group doing what's best for himself AND the group." The real John Nash went on to fully develop this theory, calling it "Governing Dynamics" and won a Nobel Prize in Economics for it.
The problem with Nash's idea is that it's not quite in human nature for us to consider what's best for the group. We see the blonde, and our instinct is to naturally go for her. This is why, if we are to realize the best results, we need the government to create regulations to ensure that the best interests of the group are also considered. This is what the economic fight is ideologically about between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans are typically for smaller government and they prefer to "let the market sort itself out." Democrats, on the other hand, are traditionally for tighter regulations in order to curb corporate greed and make sure the little guy doesn't get screwed (too badly, anyway).
A perfect example of the human nature that gums up Nash's theory occurred to me while driving a couple of weeks ago. The interstate highway on my way home from school is down to one lane. Every day, I see the signs two or three miles in advance warning me to merge to the open lane, and every day, I merge to the open lane as soon as I see the sign. Inevitably, however, I am frustrated by drivers whizzing by in the other lane, completely ignoring the warnings to merge. Then, about a mile from the forced merge point, traffic comes to a complete stop. Drivers are still whizzing by in the soon-to-be-closed lane, cutting in front of all of us who merged early, and merging at the last minute. If you view the world like Adam Smith, or a Republican, you can't really blame them. They would be viewed as the "smart" ones, because they now don't have to wait nearly as long. They can bully their way into the open lane at the choke point, and they've cut about ten minutes off of their commute. Meanwhile, all those poor schmucks who followed the warning signs and merged early are left to bake on the asphalt. It's a terribly inefficient reality.
But what if we looked at the highway situation from John Nash's point of view? The merge warning signs are posted at least three miles before the choke point. If EVERYONE merged as soon as they could within those three miles, while we were all going 70 mph, then when we got to the choke point, there would be nobody trying to merge at the last minute, and we could all just slow down to 50 mph (the work zone speed limit). It would be a much more efficient system, and instead of a few people shaving 10 minutes off of their commute time, EVERYONE would get to their destination on time because we'd all be going 50.
The people who wait to merge, to me, represent the people who push for the $32,000,000.00/year baseball contract and wear the $150,000.00 watches. Nobody needs that much money. Not when we literally have people starving to death across the world. I don't have the time or the energy to look up the statistics and do the math right now, but I think it's a pretty safe assumption that if all of the ultra-rich people in America alone decided to evenly redistribute their wealth among the rest of the population, everyone would be provided for - hell, everyone would probably be living pretty well.
I can feel my conservative friends' collective blood pressure rising at this point. "Why should they have to redistribute their wealth!?!?!" they'll rant. "They've worked hard to get what they have!!" they'll rave. "Bullshit." I say. You cannot, for a second, tell me that anyone I mentioned before in the categories of athlete, actor, musician, or even CEO works as hard as a coal miner, or a Staff Sergeant, or a police officer. A small business owner who makes $100,000.00 a year might work that hard, but I've worked for too many corporations to believe that Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America, works any harder than his mid-level managers, who make a pitiful fraction of his salary, do.
It's a broken system, boys and girls. I'm not saying I have a good fix for it, I'm just saying it's broken. Maybe reorganize the tax structure - but do it intelligently. Small business owners (and I mean SMALL businesses - not just the bullshit S-Corp loophole businesses) need to have relief, but Bank of America should pay its share of fucking taxes. As should A-Rod, and U2, and Johny Depp, and anybody else who makes over $1,000,000 a year.
I am the Reverend Humpy and I have approved this message.
No comments:
Post a Comment