Greed
To design extraordinary schemes to fool people into false expectations, to create intricate structures that hide real motives, to wear one face while knowing your other face is beneath that exterior, defines a person who delights in debunking another of their innocence.
The people of money whose desires outpace their ability to acquire more and more money may find themselves on the path of reckless greed. I heard today that the best tickets at the new Yankee stadium cost over $2000 per seat for each game. You cannot, even if you want to splurge, order a single ticket for one game. These luxury seats are sold as a season package—doling out over $125,000 for a season ticket may be akin to keeping up with the Joneses. It all depends upon the Joneses you know.
I am aware of the difficulties of living under the strain of an unbridled need to acquire. Perhaps we, the others, suffer under our lack of compassion for the rich. We need the rich to keep business alive. Who else will buy the high-end items in high-end malls? Who will buy the mini-mansions? Who will buy kitchens with appliances meeting the needs of chefs trained at Le Cordon Bleu?
I am not tossing all the rich in one pot of broth. I am only speaking of those who lose their grip on the path in the middle. I am thinking of those people who believe that a bonus that exceeds the lifelong wage of many workers is a fair value for their contribution to a company—even when that company falters and sputters.
Yet, how foolish of me. How can they afford what became necessities without that added remuneration?
Oh share the tax loopholes and the accountant who knows how to hide money.
Did the money managers who defrauded people of their money need the money they made or did they need the rush that accrues to doing something risky?
Want risk? Become a follower of Evel Kneivil. Climb on your motorcycle and jump over Pepsi trucks and Greyhound busses. Risk takers are breaking his records—join them.
Trek across the Gobi desert. Helen Thayer and her husband walked 1600 miles across the Gobi when she was sixty and he was seventy-four.
"We enjoyed the simplicity of a trek in a world drowning in convenience and easier methods of travel."
But greed doesn't only stick to the craws of those financial and corporate people. It is all over.
Sometimes the name is different. .
2 Comments:
Quite so. Recent events prompt me to leave as small a carbon footprint as possible, with as little as I can.
I don't know who makes me angrier -the people with their hands out who live on welfare with no plans to make it off the rolls and still want more and more or the companies we are bailing out because of mismanagement and unearned bonuses and unearned wages. Both groups are irresponsible. I wish neither would get my taxes. I wish we could pick from a list of items to fund with our taxes much like we do with our retirement funds (which are dwindling). I have had a paying job since I was fifteen, paid my own way through college without loans or grants, paid for the birth of my children when I had no insurance, worked different shift from my husband because both needed to work and we couldn't afford day care, struggled to buy a house and land that was within our means, took in my in-laws so they wouldn't have to be kept in a nursing home, made it to the top of my company as a CIO (without big bonuses)and where I have worked for 22 years. So I resent being told I must share my wealth/taxes with those I don't deem worthy.
Don't come to me with your hand out...if I see you struggling, trying, making an attempt to help yourself then I will be there before you have a chance to put it out.
Yes, there is too much greed.
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