What Maha said - updated with Kagro X

This is a follow-up to my earlier post - and Senator McCaskill's remarks, and President Obama's.

Barbara O'Brien, one of my favorite political commentators who writes at Mahablog, discusses the economy and some of the whining coming from Wall Street types these days, as they attempt to justify outrageous bonuses.

One choice paragraph:

The idea seems to be that because they work very, very hard, they deserve enormous amounts of money. The thing is, normally the economy doesn’t reward a person based on how hard he works. It rewards people for producing something that has value to other people. The fact is that America is full of people who work very, very hard and who are not paid well at all for it.

She really nails it here. A lot of hard work is done in this nation without huge financial rewards.

To this I might add: So get over yourself. People struggling at minimum wage are not likely to feel sympathy for your plight. Nor can I think of any reason why they should.

Anyway, I commend her entire article (and her blog) to you all. She also writes on Buddhism.

UPDATE:
Kagro X had a great comment at Daily Kos today:

"On Main Street, ‘bonus’ sounds like a gift," he said. "But it’s part of the compensation structure of Wall Street. Say I’m a banker and I created $30 million. I should get a part of that."

So, say you're a banker and you flushed $30 million down the toilet, which is the actual scenario we're looking at. When can we expect you to pay a part of that back?

Well, yes. Exactly.

--the BB