1987

The entire quote goes like this: "The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much." This comes from the Oliver Stone film, "Wall Street" that came out in 1987. You may remember this as the waning days of the Reagan Revolution. This was just about the time that the wheels were coming off the fast train to nowhere. And if you've seen the movie, you may recall that the character who spoke those words was Gordon Gekko, the villain of this morality tale. A man so vile that no one really noticed that he was named after a lizard.
That was twenty-plus years ago - a generation. We're not worried about saving a fictional paper company from financial ruin anymore. We're now focused on rescuing financial giants. Things have changed, right? Twelve years ago, I had a friend who insisted loud and long to anyone who would listen that there should be such a thing as a "personal salary cap." At that time, he felt that anyone should be happy and comfortable making fifty to seventy-five thousand dollars a year. We did not own houses back then. We did not have children. We thought about retirement only when forced to by our wives. Things have changed. For some of us. I don't need to worry much about imposing a salary cap on my career. Fifty to seventy-five thousand dollars a year for teaching in a public school is a pretty good deal these days. As more and more of our life savings get swallowed up by the economic vacuum that has become our new reality, I wonder if I didn't make a bad choice back in the eighties. I wonder if my career choice was a prudent one, given the fact that I have chosen to live in a house with dependents in a state where being "comfortable" and being "well-off" are notions to which half of its population cannot relate. The rich do indeed get richer and the poor stay that way.
And all of this makes me wonder: "Do I want the person who will decide my economic future for the next four years to be the kind of person who cannot remember how many houses he owns?"