<p>I suspect you’re defending your child’s career choice rather than making any truly rational argument. I’m not making your point at all. Of course there’s honest work in moving money around, even if much of it is fake and only exists on paper, but just as lawyers are servants to the real economic producers, financiers should be servants to the same. They shouldn’t be controlling everything because they’re fundamentally detached numbers crunchers.</p>
<p>The industry and its workers are more than adequately compensated to figure out how to do their jobs correctly without devastating our global system (obviously they failed at the analyses they were doing in your example so they should lose their jobs). But they didn’t. They’re big boys who can handle a little well-deserved criticism when my tax dollars kept them from having to go create something.</p>
<p>And if that’s what you honestly think of teachers, the only word that can come to mind is uninformed. Every teacher I know works days and nights (the latter uncompensated). They coach or tutor or get other jobs in the summers because they’re paid to raise the next generation (and sometimes give their lives trying to protect the next generation) at a fraction of the value that fresh grads with no experience are paid on Wall Street.</p>