Don't Just Limit Executive Compensation. Limit Financial Industry Compensation
| Fri Dec. 5, 2008 10:04 AM PST
Gao Xiqing, president of the China Investment Corporation, speaking to James Fallows:
I have to say it: you have to do something about pay in the financial system. People in this field have way too much money.... It distorts the talents of the country. The best and brightest minds go to lawyering, go to M.B.A.s. And that affects our country, too! Many of the brightest youngsters come to me and say, "Okay, I want to go to the U.S. and get into business school, or law school." I say, "Why? Why not science and engineering?" They say, "Look at some of my primary-school classmates. Their IQ is half of mine, but they're in finance and now they're making all this money." So you have all these clever people going into financial engineering, where they come up with all these complicated products to sell to people.
Another benefit of working in finance, other than the spectacular paychecks? Job security. You create the economic crisis, and people in manufacturing and construction lose their jobs.
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Comments
This article resonates with me being a doctoral student in natural science. The hours are friggin long, the pay is shit (you won't have any spending cash if you don't have a roomate), your graduation date isn't set in stone, research is riddled with uncertainties that makes your training drag, and you can work your butt off and obtain no decent results and you don't make any more money for it. You can't apply for fellowships unless you have results so there goes an additional source of income down the toilet. The lazier students then get away with an effective larger hourly wage.
I can understand why people want to get into business and finance. The training is short and the short-term benefits are enormous!
Most world economies have gone from Manufacturing, Producing and Innovation to pushing money and paper around on Wallstreet and that in my opinion is why we are in the mess we are in today..
There are two exceptions to this rule in China and India who have continued to manufacture and produce product which they sell to the world which has forgotten about Manufacturing and Production of products..The only production left in the USA is the manufacture of Military weapons..Could it be that the USA is afraid of what would happen if they lost this production and that is why they continue their wars in Iraq and Afganistan..
Wallstreet and other world markets did very well until greed and corruption showed them for what they are..Crooks..
It was then that it was noticed that Manufacturing and Production had moved to China and India where the big corporations in order to help their bottom line on wallsteet had shipped them..
Now China and India are sitting pretty while we have a recession..
Read Orwell's "the Time Machine". We are turning into the Eloi - starting with Wall Street. Science and engineering is hard work - leave it to the unfortunate 'underdeveloped' class. We have everything we need to live soft comfortable lives...
"Necessity is the mother of invention" applies
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