Down with the rich!..

If you have been becoming more well-off in the past 10,20 years, that would have been a good thing, isn't it? Being more well off would mean that your standard of living have improved. Generally, standard of living is not just the hard work of one person, you alone, but also due to the combined work of the society. It could be due to the physicists working in the lab to store more data on a magnetic disk resulting in you able to carry terrabytes of data with ease, or that productivity of you increasing thanks to online networking tools that are shifting towards pro-user, or your life being lengthened because more a better understanding of nutrition, or having your wierd cravings satisfied by logging to the World of Warcraft servers just to see your Level 150 NightElf hunter kick some serious ass, well the list goes on and on.

But some people are just not satisfied that their lives have been becoming better generally. Because other people are having their lives becoming better and richer faster. They think themselves getting wealthier too slowly. Before the financial(->economic) crisis, there have been concerns over the widening income gap. Is that so surprising to see this? After all, it is common sense that the more money you have, the faster you are going to earn profits when you invest it. But no.. common sense does not appeal to some people. And then, when the financial crisis hits, these people are quick to pounce and point their judgemental finger at the rich, accusing them of manipulating the world at the expense of the rest. Have they forgotten, that those people who have made the error in judgement are too paying the price for their mistake? Some are likely to go bankrupt for having made too risky ventures. Clearly, their mistakes must be made known, after all, those greedy people were really greedy. But it would unnecessary to go to extremes and start bashing every single of one of them. After all we are all human, and we all make mistakes. To those who would use this reason as an excuse to make mistakes deliberately, we should be strict, but magnaminous enough to give them a chance to do better.

Bailouts are a tricky matter. If you let these people who made an error fail, by virtue of their economic size and influence, they are likely to bring unemployment to many working under these people. And then we have these people wailing loudly. If you bail them out, then other taxpayers are going to wail loudly, because they feel unfair having to pay to save a bunch of people that they feel are bringing no direct benefit to them. So do we bailout, or do we not bailout? Shall we put this to a vote? Say nay, if you object to saving these bunch of undeserving people. Pronounce yea, and put down how much you are willing to pay. The government collects the results, processes it, collects money accordingly from the yea people, and then hands them over to the drowning company. Here, this is it. The public's goodwill. Or better still, to the forgiving public willing to give them a second chance, are you willing to lend them money at an interest rate? Too bad, different people are likely to rate different interest rates. Putting out a single fixed interest rate could be discouraging people who are willing to give them a second chance, but want expect more from them as a reward for throwing a lifeline.

Hubris was ever one of humans' seven sins. Being overly confident, complacent definitely leads to one's downfall. And that is a sin that is as impossible to purge from humans as greed or lust or avarice is. Good times do not last forever, but take heart, for we are definitely capable of making them come again. Thankfully, tenacity is one of life's features.