As stated below, your general point is certainly true..
But what is the financial industry accomplishing today that they didn't accomplish 25 years ago? As far as I can see, the most useful innovation has been the ATM machine (which is indeed quite useful). The rest of it? Is the economy running better? Does the financial system allocate capital more effectively? If not, then why are they taking home so much more money?
I'm not going to argue that they're not smart -- they're plenty smart, I'm sure there are a lot of people in finance who are smarter than me. It just seems that those smarts have been applied towards rent-seeking and value extraction rather than "building things people want".
But what is the financial industry accomplishing today that they didn't accomplish 25 years ago? As far as I can see, the most useful innovation has been the ATM machine (which is indeed quite useful). The rest of it? Is the economy running better? Does the financial system allocate capital more effectively? If not, then why are they taking home so much more money?
I'm not going to argue that they're not smart -- they're plenty smart, I'm sure there are a lot of people in finance who are smarter than me. It just seems that those smarts have been applied towards rent-seeking and value extraction rather than "building things people want".