This is indisputably a big part of why people on wall street get paid so much. It doesn't explain why the opportunity exists in the first place, but it does ex

This is indisputably a big part of why people on wall street get paid so much. It doesn't explain why the opportunity exists in the first place, but it does explain why the top players get so much money. As long as we're careful not to associate "bringing in revenue" with "creating wealth", I'm in agreement. My big problem with wall street isn't that top players get money - that's fine by me. It's that they acquire wealth without creating it, and in many cases inflict real wealth destruction on the rest of the economy. In general, I'd say that in a a good economic system, wealth acquisition correlates closely and positively with wealth creation. When it does, people tend to value and admire the wealthy. When the correlation becomes negative, well, you get the French revolution. This is a big part of why wall street pr types try to frame this as a general "anger with the 1% issue" rather than as an "anger with wall street" issue (and even then, plenty of banking activity is highly beneficial to the economy). This is why I was so disappointed to see the "occupy wall street" movement become so diluted ("occupy the ports! occupy berkeley!). In the early days, we could turn to the wall street people and say "hey, this is occupy wall street, not occupy google. we aren't you, don't think you get to hide behind a productive industry that actually creates some value." Now? Well, I wouldn't be surprised by "occupy silicon valley".