This one pretty much speaks for itself. Calling all pitchforkers, please proceed with caution after reading. Violence is not the correct response to this bit of insanity. Laughter and reform will suffice.
Showed up in my inbox this weekend. I've seen it posted elsewhere, so it appears to be legitimate.
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"We are Wall Street. It's our job to make money. Whether it's a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn't matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn't hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone's 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I've never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.
Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat, the government and the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be one for everything. Well, here we are.
Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you're only going to hurt yourselves. What's going to happen when we can't find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We're going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We're used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don't take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don't demand a union. We don't retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we'll eat that.
For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? We're going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime and double time and a half. I'll be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much.
So now that we're going to be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: we're going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren't going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We're going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.
The difference is, you lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid, but it's really going to hurt like hell for them when our fat asses land directly on the middle class of America and knock them to the bottom.
We aren't dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The question is, now that Obama & his administration are making Joe Mainstreet our food supply…will he? and will they?"
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The writer misperceives the anger. We've spent 16 months chronicling the disconnect. I'll publish your responses.
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Response from Dan F. (received by email)
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To my brothers whose job it is to make "money" on Wall Street,
Wall Street is actually just a place in Manhattan, New York. It's a street, a linear stretch of concrete with large, impressive buildings on it. There are many places like it all over this fine planet.
I know, I know, it sounds pedantic. You are clearly using the term 'Wall Street' to denote a group of people, a group of people to whom you evidently feel strong association. Tribal mentality is not something novel to our times. In fact, it's got us to where we are today.
I really don't mean to deconstruct your world. I mean to deconstruct ours. You are human beings, just like the rest of us. You, like us, are the product of this society, which rewards greed. Perhaps you were encouraged to study hard, or perhaps your parents pulled some societal strings, in order for you to achieve your position within our society. Furthermore, the masses' reliance on the fiat currencies and commodities you trade in every day, could make you apt to perceive yourself as fairly important within the grand scheme of things. However, just like our self-perception vs. others' perceptions of us, what we perceive money to be, and what it actually is, does matter. Lest we believe ourselves to be wealthier, or smarter, than we really are, and our notion of reality warps around our ego.
My bets are that many of us will suffer, starve and die as the current financial system collapses. What they used to do for a living (i.e. to earn sufficient fiat currency credits in order to purchase the nutrition they needed to survive) is of no relevance. It certainly does not help us see our situation any more clearly.
There has never been a more pressing time for us all to work together for the benefit of all species on this earth. You could call this Altruism. You could also call it Ecology. Either way, we desperately need to move beyond the paradigm of 'them and us' - whether we are able to grasp this notion intellectually, or on a more experiential level, I'm not sure that emails like the one you are distributing contribute positively to our predicament. For too long we've been divided and conquered by powers far beyond anything even the brightest luminaries of Wall Street could even begin to fathom. If we continue to compare, and then inexorably to squabble, many of us will perish, while squabbling. What a terrible way to go. Better to perish in peace, surely?
I'm not sure who, if anybody, will read this. But please understand that there is nothing to fear, now or in the future. There is no division between you and me. My wealth isn't dependent on your actions, it's based on a deep understanding of Nature. I grow my own food. In fact, I grow a surplus so that I can share it with you should you ever turn up at my door hungry and there's no landscaping to be done! I appreciate that the values I describe may sound as naive to you as your 'them and us / f*ck you buddy' email does to me.
We have been born into a world of scarcity, acquisitiveness, violence and aggression. Generations, like us, have all played our part. We need to take collective responsibility for the mess we are in.
I look forward to sharing my leek and goat's cheese quiche with you some day. Until then, given your strong allegiance to "Wall Street" and your hugely outnumbered position, combine this with the historical precedent of human beings externalizing their shortcomings on to human scapegoats based on their stated allegiances, I would caution you before sending any more emails that play into the hands of would-be aggressors.
Peace,
Dan F.
Gabriola Island, BC