The melodic Jack Johnson song of the same title asks “Where’d all the good people go?” After reading Inside The Great American Bubble Machine, I am left asking the same questions and coming to the same conclusions. In Johnson’s words: Where did all the good people go? How many train wrecks do we need to see? We have heaps and heaps of what we sow.
I don’t want to sound like a nostalgic Pollyanna. But the Kennedys, Goldwater, even the reviled Joseph McCarthy held serving the public good as their highest aspirations (even if it was misguided at times). They served the public with vastly different ideologies but none placed the pursuit of wealth above their belief in the public good. Sure, wealth was nice, but the pursuit of obscene wealth at the expense of the public good was regarded as almost ignoble in the 50s and 60s. But what's happened since then?
Between 1966 and 2006, the median household income increased roughly 30%. However, the total output of our nation (real GDP per capita) more than doubled. So where did all the money go? It is a complicated answer but the biggest contributor is an explosion in income inequality. In 1978, for example, the top 1% of households earned 8 times the average household. In 2006, it was 23 times. Moreover, for the top 0.1% the increase was from 86 times to 546 times the average. The rich are getting richer - and at a faster pace. I have nothing against wealth or the super-rich unless the pursuit of wealth supplants the pursuit of public good. And in the case of Goldman Sachs, according to Inside The Great American Bubble Machine, it has.
This blind pursuit of wealth at the expense of the public good is nothing new. Goldman Sachs is simply the latest and perhaps the grandest example of greed. What’s horrifying about Goldman is that they carry the Gordon Gecko torch unapologetically - as if they are incapable of understanding why anyone would pursue anything other than wealth. After a quarter of record profits and bonuses, despite a sputtering economy that they helped to create, Goldman is now locked in a battle with the US Government to actually reduce the value of the government’s (read: your and my) stake in the company. And even more horrifying, Goldman has now spread itself so deeply into the recesses of power within government and politics that is has insulated itself against its only two threats: competition and regulation.
I don’t want to sound like a nostalgic Pollyanna. But the Kennedys, Goldwater, even the reviled Joseph McCarthy held serving the public good as their highest aspirations (even if it was misguided at times). They served the public with vastly different ideologies but none placed the pursuit of wealth above their belief in the public good. Sure, wealth was nice, but the pursuit of obscene wealth at the expense of the public good was regarded as almost ignoble in the 50s and 60s. But what's happened since then?
Between 1966 and 2006, the median household income increased roughly 30%. However, the total output of our nation (real GDP per capita) more than doubled. So where did all the money go? It is a complicated answer but the biggest contributor is an explosion in income inequality. In 1978, for example, the top 1% of households earned 8 times the average household. In 2006, it was 23 times. Moreover, for the top 0.1% the increase was from 86 times to 546 times the average. The rich are getting richer - and at a faster pace. I have nothing against wealth or the super-rich unless the pursuit of wealth supplants the pursuit of public good. And in the case of Goldman Sachs, according to Inside The Great American Bubble Machine, it has.
This blind pursuit of wealth at the expense of the public good is nothing new. Goldman Sachs is simply the latest and perhaps the grandest example of greed. What’s horrifying about Goldman is that they carry the Gordon Gecko torch unapologetically - as if they are incapable of understanding why anyone would pursue anything other than wealth. After a quarter of record profits and bonuses, despite a sputtering economy that they helped to create, Goldman is now locked in a battle with the US Government to actually reduce the value of the government’s (read: your and my) stake in the company. And even more horrifying, Goldman has now spread itself so deeply into the recesses of power within government and politics that is has insulated itself against its only two threats: competition and regulation.
Is wealth wrong? No. But the pursuit of wealth above the public good is antithetical to American ideals. Where'd all the good people go? They certainly aren't at Goldman.
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