It is "Justice : What's the Right Thing to Do? " (by.MICHAEL J. SANDEL).
I have to konw it by heart.
So, please help me:)
The public reacted with fury. A full-page headline in the tabloid NewYork Post captured the sentiments of many: "Not So Fast You Greedy Bastards." The U.S House of Representatives sought to claw back the payments by approving a bill that would impose a 0- percent tax on bonuses paid to employees of companies that received substantial bailout funds. Under pressure from New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo, fifteen of the top twenty A.I.G. bonus recipients agreed to return the payments, and some $50million was recouped in all. This gesture assuaged public anger to some degree, and support for the punitive tax measure faded in he Senate. But the episode left the public reluctatn to spend more to clean up the mess the financial industry had created.
At the heart of the bailout outrage was a sense of injustice. Even before the bonus issue erupted, public support for the bailout was hesitant and conflicted. Americans were torn between the need to prevent an economic meltdown that would hurt everyone and their belief that funneling massive sums to failed banks and investment companies was deeply unfair. To avoid economic disaster, Congress and the public acceded. But morally speaking, it had felt all along like a kind of extortion.
Underlying the bailout outrage was a belief about moral desert: The executives receiving the bonuses (and the companies receiving the bailouts)didn't deserve them. But why didn't they? The reason may be less obvious than it seems. Consider two possible answers - one is about greed, the other about failure.
One source of outrage was the bonuses seemed to reward greed, as the tabloid headline indelicately suggested. The public found this morally unpalatable. Not only the bonuses but the bailout as a whole seemed, perversely, to reward greedy behavior rather than punish it. The derivatives traders had landed their company, and the country, in dire financial peril- by making reckless investments in pursuit of ever-greater profits. Having pocketed the profits when times were good, they saw nothing wrong with million-dollar bonuses even after their investments had come to ruin.
The greed critiqued was voiced not only by the tabloids, but also ( in more decorous versions) by public officials. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-ohio)saids that A.I.G.'s behavior "smacks of greed, arrogance, and worse." President Obama stated that A.I.G "Finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed"
The problem with the greed critique is that its doesn't distinguish the rewards bestowed by the bailout after the crash from the rewards bestowed by markets when times were flush. Greed is a vice, a bad attitude, and excessive, single-minded desire for gain. So it's understandable that people aren't keen to reward it. But is there any reason to assume that the recipients of bailout bonuses are any greedier now than they were a few years ago, when they were riding high and reaping even greater rewards?
