The $700 billion bailout package slows Wall Streets day of reckoning. The Wall Street gang, with its huge campaign contributions and friends in high places, such as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, is better positioned to get protection than steelworkers or textile workers. But, as we all know, you can’t just build walls around the country. […]
The resources tied up in Wall Street will find better uses in other areas. Specifically, the tens of thousands of highly educated workers who made huge salaries on Wall Street may find something more productive to do with their lives than shuffling complex derivative instruments. Some might become doctors, engineers or research scientists – areas where they could make important contributions to society.
And, if it is not plausible for many of the people who are currently losing their job to pursue these alternative career paths, certainly it will be possible for the people who are now in college or grad school in the hopes of pursuing a high-paying Wall Street career. By eliminating the Wall Street path, other relatively high-paying jobs will look much better.
In other words, we will be less likely to have doctors who think that they are making huge sacrifices by earning $200,000 a year. Without Wall Street as a basis of comparison, doctors’ salaries would look very good even to doctors.
(via Robot Wisdom)