The great American “blame game” is in full force these days. Poor Obama. Do you think he really knew the mess he was getting himself into? Living in a country like Costa Rica it is a little hard to fathom executives being paid $1 to $4 million dollar bonuses. I mean the entire tourism industry that I make my living in is only a couple billion and here we have one U.S. company (AIG) receiving, how much is it, 180 billion in a government bailout? I have written previously in this blog that in my opinion the major problem the U.S. faces is that it has become a culture obsessed with consumption and greed. And, moreover, a culture that believes in its heart of hearts that it deserves the right to consume itself out of existence, which is exactly the threat it faces at this moment in history. Look at it this way, we may be endowed with inalienable rights, like the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but those rights cannot be viewed only in the individual, but must also be viewed in the collective. What does that mean? Well, it means that my rights don’t allow me to take away from the potential of you enjoying yours. Those “rights” also carry important “responsibilities.” In the exercise of our rights we also must exercise the responsibility not to interfere with others’ enjoyment of their own, and, moreover, to the extent we are endowed with more “happiness” that we can reasonably hope to consume in a lifetime, rather than hording that happiness, we actually try to increase the “happiness pie” for everyone. Get it? But what is occurring as exemplified by this whole AIG mess is exactly the opposite, isn’t it? In the pursuit of these inalienable rights supported by U.S. free market capitalism, this company, AIG, helped create these “toxic assets” that have now collapsed and put the U.S. economy in a tail spin. Now the government has deemed this company “too big to fail” and therefore has provided taxpayer money to the tune of a sum many times larger than the entire economy of a country like Costa Rica to bail this company out. And now the masterminds that designed these “toxic assets” get to use that taxpayer money to reward themselves for failure to the tune of $1 to $4 million each! It is a little bit mind-boggling to even try to comprehend. So John Q. Taxpayer, who right now is struggling to even make the payments on the mortgage of his 3 bedroom home, has to watch his tax dollars go to support Wall Street “Gordon Gekko” types with million dollar bonuses that fund mansions and yachts in the Hamptons. Isn’t there something a bit askew about that picture? So now the Congress, who paved the way to make the bonuses available to begin with, is responding with “outrage” and threatening to tax the bonuses to the tune of around 90%. I tell you it is quite amusing to sit back and watch all this, but also quite threatening. The economy of Costa Rica is being dramatically affected by what is occurring, as are other economies of countries around the world much less prosperous than the U.S. This culture of greed is, in other words, bringing the whole world down with it. So that brings me back to my point, those inalienable rights that die-hard free market capitalists love to rant about must be viewed in the collective. They belong to every soul living in every corner of the world, not just those individuals fortunate enough to have a business degree from an Ivy League school and a job with AIG. I could live the rest of my life quite comfortably down here in Costa Rica with one of those million dollar “annual” bonuses. Are you kidding me? The whole thing is absurd. Wake up U.S. and get off your high horse of believing that you alone are the possessor of inalienable rights. The world is watching and getting pissed off! We all deserve the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and these greed-obsessed shenanigans that keep only a certain “privileged few” wealthy and powerful at the expense of the rest of us need to end, once and for all.
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