Sunday, January 17, 2010
Living Well: When Wealth-Getting Goes Wrong
The term bailout is a rescue from financial distress. It's funny that a couple years ago, the only ones whom paid attention to that word would be people working on Wall Street and the U.S. Government. Today, the single utterance of that phrase is an automatic beatdown! Do we blame the previous administration for the fallout that the country and the world is suffering? Is there a time limit for President Obama to rectify this mess? The most obvious question is: How did we get to this point? All valid questions but for this entry I will concentrate on the philosopher Aristotle, his views on living well and the dangers of it.
Aristotle's Art of Acquisition states governing the household is the primary concern of the individual. His views includes the most natural way of exchanging is to barter, that it should be limits on all goods to maintain the household plus have economic uses for the items and money should be a subordinate never identical to these beliefs. Of course over time, the desire of living well over just living, consumed the world and it grew into the 21st Century Monster (?) that we see today!
Some would argue the introduction of retail trade is the root of the problem. The deal for the customer who use money to purchase items became a necessary evil to acquiring goods but also gave birth to what Aristotle called a fetishtic desire for money for the seller. For all the good retail for selling products and growing businesses there are a few individuals who feel that is not enough. Greed has taken over the financial landscape with corporation's bottom line is the most important to the executives and shareholders. Why Not? They have the confidence to feel this way since all of them know the Federal Government will bail them out to save the Nation's Economy. President Obama is trying to convince Congress to create a "bailout tax" for all the financial institutions who request one to ensure all the money is returned.(1)
Time will tell if this measure will pass and this will help the economy rebound. Aristotle's ideas on money is still argumentative to a certain degree but the reality is as long business dealings continue this way the world will suffer.
"Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."
— Oscar Wilde
1. http://money.cnn.com/2010/01/14/news/economy/bailout_tax/index.htm
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First, I think the President is making a rather unwise choice by threatening to impose a "bailout tax" on the banks, and it seems to be some type of punishment that he's trying to dole out as retribution for paying out large bonuses. If he really was doing it to aid the taxpayers, wouldn't he have the foresight to realize that this tax is going to be passed down to the taxpayers in the form of more overpriced account maintenance and overdraft fees, etc.?
ReplyDeleteSecond, the whole world economy is based on credit in some form or another. (Eg. the money we taxpayers lent to financial institutions to bail them out) If Aristotle or Aquinas were to be dug up and revived so they could see what was going on, they'd probably re-die of usury-induced vomiting right after they condemned us all to hell for being so wrapped up in unvirtuousity(is that a word?)/sin.