Hear the talk:
Many of you know that for me, the way something is said is as important as what is said -- hence my love of quotations: the best words in the best order.
Here are some words from an article that appeared in the magazine the New Yorker. The article, by Adam Gopnik, is about football. He writes, “partly what drains the joy from…pro football these days is the same as what drains the joy from much of American life: there’s a lot of money to be made by a few people, and a lot less for everybody else.”
I am writing this just after reading about the obscene bonuses given to Wall Street traders, millions of dollars for a few people -- and these are bonuses, not regular pay -- millions of dollars.
I am not about to scream at wall street traders or football players, it is the concept that bothers me -- a lot of money to be made by a few people, a lot less for everybody else.
Over & over, year after year, we are told that the divide between the rich & the poor is growing wider. This is true in America, and as I learned in a TV program I watched just last night, this is true in England. This is true the world over. Those who have are getting more & more and the have nots are getting less and less.
It is useless to rail and say this is unfair. The world has always been unfair -- some of us are better looking than others, some of us are smarter than others, etc. etc. It is the growing division between the rich & the poor that bothers me. Why is it fair to allow the rich to get so much richer, the poor to get so much poorer.
Let me give you a small but ridiculous example that has bothered me for years -- but the example reveals the principle. Lottery winners are scarce: we know you are more likely to be struck by lightning than you are to win the lottery. The prize is always millions of dollars. Why millions? Why only one big winner? Why isn’t the lottery -- and everything else -- more evenly distributed. There would be far more winners if there were many half a million dollar lottery winners. Half a million dollars would make me -- and a great many of you -- very happy. If the 12 million prize were divided into half million chunks there would be 24 winners rather than just one winner.
And that is the problem with much of American life. So many heads of companies make an obscene amount of money while workers make so much less that a comparison is not possible. Long-long ago someone came up with a ratio of ten to one: the top person is allowed make ten times as much as the lowest person in the company. Ten times as much could be a great deal of money -- and if you insist on doubling that, 20 times as much would be okay, and would be an enormous amount of money. But millions, hundreds of millions for one man who heads a company, and 30,000 for one of his workers just does not sound fair, and inevitably leads to unhappiness.
To quote those wonderful words again: what drains the joy from much of American life is the fact that a lot of money is made by a few people and very little money is made by most people. So long
Copyright © 2007 Henry Morgenstein