Reading this article today on what the AIG executives did after the nation bailed out their company nearly made me throw up with anger:
Have you heard of anything more outrageous – a week after taxpayers commit $85 billion dollars to rescue AIG, the company’s leading insurance executives spend hundreds of thousands of dollars at one of the most exclusive resorts in the nation…Let me describe for some of you the charges that the shareholders, taxpayers, had to pay. AIG spent $200,000 dollars for hotel rooms. Almost $150,000 for catered banquets. AIG spent $23,000 at the hotel spa and another $1,400 at the salon. They were getting manicures, facials, pedicures and massages while American people were footing the bill. And they spent another $10,000 dollars for I don’t know what this is, leisure dining. Bars?
There’s a finite amount of natural resources. There are finite amounts of American human workforce. Certainly there are no limits on innovation or imagination, but it’s not like there are many CEOs and executives actually USING innovation or imagination daily.
So where do the rich corporate slugs and the free-market lobbyists and politicians think all these untold millions, billions, trillions are coming from? The future? Outer space?
The reality is that there is a finite amount of real assets, and the more the rich get, the less the rest of us get. And if you shove billions in your pockets, others will starve. That is a simple reality that Americans chasing the “Rags to Riches” ideal just don’t want to hear.
And since when did the American Dream become about getting rich, especially getting rich for shifting around pieces of paper from here to there?
The American Dream was about coming here to feed your family something other than potatoes and dirt. It was about putting a roof over your family’s head that wasn’t full of holes. It was about being able to taking your kids to the doctor when they get sick.
Most Americans are living the American Dream every single day, and they’re so busy chasing financial unicorns that they don’t even know it.
Honestly that didn’t surprise me. The good news though, is that our wonderful Congress is holding hearings into the matter. Yep. That makes me feel sooooo much better.