When you invest money, it is a risk. When you work for a living, you get paid.
When capitalism was at is best, risk takers and hard workers lived in unison. Now risk taking is viewed as “hard work,” I call it a keyboard-economy. It is no wonder why we are now having our bridges built by China.
I honestly don’t disagree with your rule of law point; in a just world. We haven’t been in a just world since the end of the Cold War.
Cold War (looking back) kept us grounded in capitalism.
Ever read about the building of the first Transcontinental Railroad?
Well you know we don’t have to agree on everything: we still have the right to disagree and state our positions which is a great thing.
I do agree that hard work counts for a lot. My point was looking beyond all the “keyboard” people who do the investing to pension funds to the majority of hard working people(there are still a lot of those out here in flyover country) who lost much of their lifesavings in what was supposed to be a safer investment than stocks.
I simply can not dismiss all the other hard workers who are getting their benefits cut, loosing their jobs, and loosing their retirement savings, and/or funds for their children’s education.
We have lots of hard working people who are paid less than the auto workers, with lesser benefits, who are taxpayors and will help foot the bill for all the bailouts. When they are dead, their children and grand children will continue to pay, if we can’t get Washington to cut spending. I just don’t think Wall Street, and the autocompanies should be treated as more special than the rest of the workers.
I do think that the car companies are important to us, and we need to do all we can to keep manufacturing in the USA. In the long run, I don’t think the bailout will help their real problems.
As for me personally, I’ll be buying any new car from Ford, if I should ever be able to afford a new car again, which is not likely with the present administration’s approach to jobs.
Just another thought or two: The risk taken turned out to be more than it was supposed to be. I doubt if any one thought there was a risk of the bankruptcy laws not being followed. Your statement is true for the common stockholders.
Now as to the other: when you work for a living you get paid. Not always. I know a construction guy who was called in to help finish a job so the contractor could get finished on time (thereby avoiding penalties).
The contractor never paid him. We also have companies that have folded overnight, and the workers did not get their final pay checks.
As for the future, don't count on getting paid. Once it is ok to ignore the law, someone can choose to just ignore that little detail of paying people.
If that happens, look back at this period, and remember - they came for the bondholders before they came for the workers.