William D. Cohan, author of "House of Cards" and "Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World" penned an opinion piece in the New York Times today about the Raj Rajaratnam insider trading verdict asking the question of why so many people that made their money legitimately (and not through drugs or illegal activities) still end up breaking the law because they don't have enough. The short answer, because it's human nature Mr. Cohan.
This issue does strike me as being very similar to the Red-State obsession with tax cuts for the wealthy. Thomas Frank wrote a great book called "What's the Matter with Kansas?" about how conservatives essentially duped regular people into thinking the wealthy will trickle down their earnings to everyone else.
For the people at the top, it's not about their own personal wealth. It's about their wealth relative to others. The wealthy will always aggressively pursue the last dollar they can get regardless of how much they are taxed, which is why progressives believe the argument that tax cuts for the wealthy encourages economic activity is a straw man at best. So long as there is money to be made in doing so, there will be firms and businesses that cater solely to making the wealthy wealthier at a cheaper and cheaper relative price. They have access to advice and information (legally, mind you) that the average person doesn't have and never will get, making it less labor intensive to accumulate wealth compared to the average person that has to do all the leg work because it's not possible to just hire advisers to do this for you.
Yet the average person is convinced that they will be able to play in the same ballpark as the people trying to put bigger and bigger walls around that ballpark, as I was reminded by via a back-and-forth I had with a conservative a few months ago about the Bush Tax Cuts:
"The tax cuts were across the board for everyone. Its not "for the wealthy" like the left wing media portrays it. I doubt they "hoard" their money. But even if they "hoarded" their money what is wrong with that? It is their money to hoard after fall. Last I checked we lived in the US and people had a right to spend their money or not spend their money as they choose. Wait let me correct that statement, last I checked, a year and a half ago people had the right to...."
So it's okay to hold on to money for yourself even though it is to create jobs and spur economic activity? (And oh yes, the President that signed the largest tax cut in history took away peoples' right to choose how to spend their money, but this is an issue for another day and another argument.) I applaud the people that made their money through their own hard work. However, they are still people and as with all people, some have a larger appetite for greed and corruption than others. The only issue is they also have enablers that will help them get off scot-free because their own less substantial livelihood depends on it.
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