What grinds my gears!

I like to keep OnTheEdgeBlog focused on issues that directly affect packaging, but sometimes we need to go off on a tangent when we discover something remarkable, innovative or disturbing. This time, it is the latter. I don't remember anything in recent months that has ground my gears like the report of Goldman Sachs earning $3.44 billion in profits in the second quarter.

As an advocate and supporter of capitalism and entrepreneurism, one might think I'd be thrilled about this. If this was Exxon or Ford or some other industrial company, I would be. At least these companies produce something that we all need and can use. I never fall in line behind the media when they decry Exxon-Mobile's huge profits. But what does a company like Goldman Sachs produce? Where does that wealth come from? It comes from someone else who actually did produce something - from packagers, packaging machinery companies, converters, you and me. Perhaps we should look more carefully at teachings from other parts of the world that would discourage the kinds of practices that led to this.

What makes it more obscene is that Goldman Sachs took $10 billion of our tax money in the form of TARP payments. A lot of entrepreneurs might be able to turn $10 billion of free capital into a 34% profit, if given the chance; but how many of us are given a chance like that?

Another sad truth of the matter is that companies like Goldman have used their projected $800,000 AVERAGE employee salaries to siphon off the best and brightest engineers, scientists and mathematicians to create the mathematical models and computer algorithims to implement their reverse-Robin Hood strategies. These are the very people that should be employed in constructive pursuits of innovation and technology development.

Well now that I've told you what ground my gears this month, let's hear your opinions!

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Comments Most of Wall Street's activities are non-value added. They merely move money around while siphoning off numerous fees for themselves along the way. It's really criminal that they pay average salaries of $800,000/year for people to figure out sophisticated ways of stealing. If we used this intellectual horsepower and capital for societal good - such as working on optimizing experimental testing for cancer and flu vaccines - imagine where we could be today and in the future and all the lives that could be saved and improved. And on top of all this, as taxpayers we are subsidizing these people so they can continue to figure out better ways of cheating us even more! It's like buying the gun and bullets and getaway car for the person who robs you! This insanity of excessive greed must be stopped if we are to make any real progress as a society or we will be doomed to failure just like the Roman Empire. Posted by: Glenn Whiteside on July 31, 2009 Post a comment (If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.) Name: Email Address: URL: Remember personal info? Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style) Type the word 'packaging' (required):