What price efficiency? How much is efficiency in financial markets worth? How much is it worth to you or to me? The hedge fund owner/manager who clears $billion in a single year, $500,000 per hour, thinks he/she is worth the price. If we put the job out for bids, I am sure that someone would volunteer to do it for $500,000 per day and then someone else would offer to do it for $500,000 per week and then another for $500,000 per month and finally $500,000 per year. I don't care if the financial markets are super efficient or not. I might be willing to pay $500,000 per year or I might not.
The standard argument heard from Wall Street is that huge salaries and bonuses are necessary to keep the talented from joining competitive firms. So what? If the talented were not profitable to an individual firm, it would not matter who they worked for.
Then there is the other false argument thrown out by those who support the present tax structure, that the US has a high rate of taxation. That may be true on paper but it does not reflect the real world of tax loopholes and tax havens. If the hedge fund owner/manager really believes this, let him/her take his firm elsewhere and start paying taxes in a foreign country with a lower tax rate that lacks the tax loopholes that exist here in the US.
The numbers describing the US economy are huge, in the $trillions, but that is not an infinite number. If some pay themselves and friends in the $billions, that leaves less to be divided among the rest of us. How much is enough and how much is too much? We can read about how much is more than enough when we read about Wall Street's greed.
