It is my duty to inform you: capitalism isn't working. The NYTimes puts a story on their front page for the second week running, trumpeting the excesses of year-end bonuses on Wall Street. Let it never be said they didn't tell you.
"Miller Motorcars, in Greenwich, Conn., is fielding more requests for the $250,000 Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano than it can possibly fill. One real estate broker laments a dearth of listings for two clients trying to spend $20 million on Manhattan properties. Financiers already comfortably settled in multimillion-dollar apartments and town houses are buying $5 million apartments for their children. Vacation homes, usually bought and sold in the spring, are now hot this winter, including ones in private resorts like the Yellowstone Club in Montana near Yellowstone National Park.
The PI also does its duty: there are homeless people who can't get a shower or a roof over their head because the city is trying to force "responsibility" on them--it's their fault they can't find a job and are therefore starving or stinking. Why aren't they "responsible" like the Wall Street bankers?
"Last year, her city-funded agency provided emergency housing for more than 500 households, with most clients spending two to three weeks with caseworkers.
"We had to move people out pretty rapidly," Warner said. "But a lot of people just cycled back into homelessness."
Next year, Family Services estimates it will serve only 160 households. But clients will spend much more time with workers -- about three months -- and receive a range of help, from finding work and housing to confronting domestic violence and other problems.
"This is a real sea change for us," Warner said. Since April, her agency has found housing for 60 clients, which she embraced. But there was a constant downside: lack of space for more.
"You're just heartbroken when you have to turn people away," she said. "That never changes."
2 comments:
Half of those bonuses go to the government in the form of taxes. The other half helps provides jobs for 145 million and health insurance for 250 million Americans.
I'd like to see documentation for those claims, Jake.
How does the other half (not the taxes) provide jobs for 145 million people? I know the tax part is being spent on a war I don't support that has killed hundreds of thousands of people.
The plain and simple fact is there is inherent injustice in the fact that these people get millions to spend on themselves and the taxes I pay get spent on an illegal and immoral war that Wall Street just sees as a way to make more profits.
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