I have a lot of respect for your comment and do not mean for this to sound like an ad hominem attack, so please take it as an observation on the societal state of affairs: what you describe as "spinning" I describe as "offering my opinion."
I think the fact that you would describe my opinion as "spin" is indicative of the larger societal disassociation with members of the financial sector. Because of this, people do not like hearing the financial sector described in positive terms. So, often when people are confronted with a positive viewpoint of it, they have no recourse but to caste it as "spin."
Society has harbored a distaste for finance many times throughout history. The Catholic church even went so far as to forbid usury, preferring to delegate tasks as inferior as money lending to Jews. Not surprisingly, this distaste becomes most evident following an economic downturn. Before the current recession, society's view of "Wall Street" was generally very positive. Now, things are a bit different.
The fact of the matter is that we do not live in an ideal world. But we want to move toward one. The best way to do that is through a strong economy. A financial sector is a necessary part of a strong economy. But I worry that people discount its value to our country.
As long as people view the financial sector distastefully, we are going to need to incentivize working in it. Otherwise the only people working in the financial sector will be people who don't care if they are viewed as working in the dregs of society. That is not the type of person we want in charge of the economy.
Yallah yallah! Your ability to deny reality is amazing!
We do not need to further incentivize working in finance. Finance has already eaten most of the rest of the economy. This is shown by the fact that from roughly the 1980s onwards, FIRE sector has grown immensely, not only in total profits/revenues but as a share of all profits in the United States.
If finance is supposed to make its living by enabling other sectors to grow, then finance should not be outgrowing the other economic sectors. It should remain as a roughly steady proportion of total profits and grow with the economy.
Instead, finance, real-estate and insurance have grown at the expense of the rest of the economy and the rest of society. That's not doing their stated job, that's parasitizing everyone else.
I think the fact that you would describe my opinion as "spin" is indicative of the larger societal disassociation with members of the financial sector. Because of this, people do not like hearing the financial sector described in positive terms. So, often when people are confronted with a positive viewpoint of it, they have no recourse but to caste it as "spin."
Society has harbored a distaste for finance many times throughout history. The Catholic church even went so far as to forbid usury, preferring to delegate tasks as inferior as money lending to Jews. Not surprisingly, this distaste becomes most evident following an economic downturn. Before the current recession, society's view of "Wall Street" was generally very positive. Now, things are a bit different.
The fact of the matter is that we do not live in an ideal world. But we want to move toward one. The best way to do that is through a strong economy. A financial sector is a necessary part of a strong economy. But I worry that people discount its value to our country.
As long as people view the financial sector distastefully, we are going to need to incentivize working in it. Otherwise the only people working in the financial sector will be people who don't care if they are viewed as working in the dregs of society. That is not the type of person we want in charge of the economy.
(FYI - No, I am not going into finance.)