Im not sure if "honorable" is the most appropriate word for that scenario. I think that a significant portion of Americans/Society don't find oil speculators to be very honorable. I also don't think that it is a prevailing attitude that people who make great money also contribute to society and social cohesion. In addition, I don't necessarily think that honor and wages really correlate.
Maybe "honorable" is not the correct word but something akin to it. I think there is very open classism practiced. I'm willing to wager that if you took an individual, and alternated scenarios where in one he was wearing a suit with a suitcase and the other he was wearing a janitor's uniform pushing a broom, people would most likely make vast assumptions of that person based on their perceived employment and salary, as well as moral assumptions.
Obviously, there are negative connotations when the phrase "fast-food worker" is heard, but I think that that is improving ever so slightly, especially comparatively speaking to the "oil speculator" as more information gets spread about the big business and greed behind oil and speculators in the market in general. In fact, I bet a bunch of people would say Person A is far more honorable than Person B, and that Person B's impact on society is far more volatile and factors into more unhappiness than they do happiness.
I don't agree. See above. It's only obvious when we agree to expose the wall street person as a criminal. If he's not exposed as a criminal, I would guarantee he would be looked at more favorably.
I'm trying to look at this from a Utilitarian point of view and it is hard to evaluate it and come up with answers to solve it entirely.
How do you suggest wages should work? Supply and demand and elasticity of both is impossible to escape, as well as the corporate ins and outs in the current infrastructure of America. Social norms are always tough to break, agreed, that is why they are norms...so it is hard to work within these norms to change things to "how they should be" rather than "how they are".
I don't know the utopian solution to wages but I do know our current system is vastly broken. There is daily oppression under some false pretense of the state of human behavior that tells us "this is they way nature intended". It isn't. There are plenty of ideas out there about wageless societies and we have plenty of documented proof of many nations where the labor is rewarded at a much better rate than here.
Whether you like it or not, this subject will almost always revolve around economic factors and I don't see how anything can really be done in a relatively short amount of time outside of small pieces of legislation, such as: raises to and changes in the formula for calculation of minimum wage, increased taxes on financial transactions (hits the oil speculator), increased corporate tax rates and penalties/cracking down on international tax havens. Unfortunately, the people set to lose on these things are the people with the most "pull" and also could just try and take business elsewhere if it gets "bad enough", which could cause even more problems for the average joe than there already are.
This all stems from an "Economic-first" mentality, like I said before. Maybe that is the best way to judge human society, but the fact that we have to judge and punish greed by imposing economic-first solutions might be a futile and primitive way to go about it.
The Zeitgeist and Venus Project people have proposed a pretty good idea about a resource-based economy as opposed to a monetary-based economy. To sum it up, they propose we work to build machines to do work so humans can enjoy life and work on their passions in life. They got into a lot of detail so I suggest you check it out. Obviously it isn't perfect and I don't agree with all premises presented, but at least it is new ideas being presented.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/travis-walter-donovan/the-zeitgeist-movement-en_b_501517.html
@ this blatantly obvious attempt at trolling.
I assume everything he says is bullshyt. I'm still waiting for his response about the white girl incident. He probably made that shyt up though.
you don't say. I'm not necessarily light or fair skin though, but that's beside the point....
