The Lucky 99%

by Stuart Shapiro

So we’ve had the worst recession since the 1930s, protests on Wall Street, and anger about bank bailouts on the taxpayer dime.  You would think that those lucky enough to emerge unscathed would be a bit circumspect.  You’d be wrong.  In comments that Gordon Gekko might have had the sense to avoid:

The smaller bonus checks that hit accounts across the financial-services industry this month are making it difficult to maintain the lifestyles that Wall Street workers expect, according to interviews with bankers and their accountants, therapists, advisers and headhunters.

“People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress,” said Alan Dlugash, a partner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP in New York who specializes in financial planning for the wealthy. “Could you imagine what it’s like to say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do that?”

Finally someone who is more likely than Governor Romney to say something incredibly stupid about being wealthy.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.