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An “Inconvenient Truth”: Exceptional People Are Worth All That They Are Paid

We have entered into an era of reaction to the laissez-faire capitalism of the turn of the century, and particularly its excesses.  President Obama is determined to create or preserve “middle class jobs” and redistribute income and probably wealth from the top 5 percent to everyone else.

There is a lot of this that I agree with, particularly curbing excesses and making good healthcare as near to universal as is practical.  It is both inefficient and heartless to not provide health services to 15% of our society:  inefficient because these people end up receiving reactive care in high-cost venues, leading to bad outcomes.

And the excesses are ridiculous.  It’s amazing how much of the supposedly astute and clever hedge fund industry boiled down (before it melted down) to leveraging mortgage backed securities with short term debt at high multiples; hardly a genius level financial product.  And, not deserving of a 2 and 20 comp package that paid managers millions until the music stopped.  Many I-banks and commercial banks fell into the same game, and then there are the imperial CEOs who mostly do deals and coddle their boards (remember Dennis Kozlowski?).  Capitalism is out of favor for a reason.