<p>
</p>
<p>I disagree on quite a fundamental level. Corporate lawyers work for companies while banks and investors work with companies. Think about the mission of a for-profit enterprise: regardless of its core competency, a company’s job is to seek profit. In order to seek profit, companies of today need both lawyers and financiers, but the two play completely different roles. Financiers - either banks giving loans or investors (banks or people, doesn’t matter) - give companies money, allowing companies to hold the cash needed to innovate and expand. </p>
<p>Financiers must be judicious about which companies to invest money - make too many bad investments, and suddenly the financier cannot finance anything anymore since it has no money anymore.</p>
<p>Lawyers are hired by companies either as outside contractors or as employees themselves, and the only risk they take on is that they may not receive all of the money they were promised if the company were to fail. They will not lose money. Banks and other financiers take substantial risk when they decide to give companies money. If the company fails, there is no guarantee that the financiers will recoup their initial investment. So, loans bear interest in order to soften the blow when a limited number of loan recipients fail to repay, and investors control a part of the company in order to have a fair say in how the company is managed - again, controlling risk. </p>
<p>You seem to be talking not about banks that invest in companies and take major risks in that sense, but rather about banks trading imaginary goods - for example, futures markets. However, even futures markets, in which nothing is actually bought or sold, have a place in society, as they bring stability to commodities markets by allowing companies to predict costs and revenues before they happen.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The one thing that all dramatic economic downturns have in common is that they are completely unexpected. In hindsight, it seems silly to think that we could give out millions of risky mortgages with the expectation that if homeowners defaulted, the homes would be worth more than they were previously. It also seems wholly irresponsible to swap these risky mortgages with other institutions. Nobody thought that the real estate boom of the 2000s was a bubble; however, once demand for housing subsided and prices began to fall, the financial dominoes started to fall, eventually leading to an inevitable credit crunch. But when the belief of nearly everyone across every industry, every government entity and every business believed that the housing bubble was not, in fact a bubble, the decisions that were made appeared quite prudent. </p>
<p>In the 1930s, some doctors would prescribe tobacco smoking to their patients for ailments such as throat discomfort. Today, that kind of prescription is unthinkable… but should the doctors have been fired? </p>
<p>And when you talk about your tax dollars being spent, don’t forget that the GM bailout allowed them to continue making a LOT of somethings, even though the market dictated that GM should fail.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You miss the point. The point is that while most teachers are very dedicated and poorly compensated, some are not. Some do go into teaching because it offers a summer vacation, frequent time off, relatively short working hours and generally excellent benefits.</p>
<p>If you become a teacher, you may be laid off, but that is probably due to your tenure rather than your performance. If you become an investment banker on Wall Street, you have two years of job security, and if you are a bottom performer (I’ve heard of anywhere between 10% and 30%), you lose your job. In addition, you may earn $100,000 in your first year, but the experience of most of my friends who are bankers is that the $100,000 annual compensation (salary + bonus) can be translated to about $21.00 an hour, as they averaged 90 hour weeks with zero weeks off. A teacher at $21.00 an hour, working 10 hours a day for the 180 days of school each year (I say 10 to add buffer for nights, weekends and summer) would make $37,800, which is less than 35 states’ average starting salary for teachers.</p>
<p>It’s easy to lampoon investment bankers for being worthless bloodsuckers because there are far fewer bankers than teachers, doctors, lawyers, small business owners, accountants, etc. Many people don’t know any investment bankers, and why would they? But the reality is that bankers are people too, and they are held to the same standards as everyone else in every other industry.</p>