greed

Hamilton Nolan · 05/06/16 12:35PM

“People derive more happiness from pay when they know they’re earning more than co-workers, research shows. In a famous 1998 study...half of 257 people surveyed said they would rather make $50,000 a year when others around them earned $25,000 than earn $100,000 while peers earned $200,000.”

Are You Enough of an Asshole to Buy This Building?

Tom Scocca · 04/15/16 04:02PM

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday on an exciting New York City real estate offering: For $22 million, someone can buy a 20-unit apartment building in Brooklyn Heights to use as their very own single-family dwelling. Are you that person? That is to say, are you a monstrous asshole, who would like to make dozens of people’s lives worse for the sake of your personal luxury?

San Francisco: Build More Housing, Assholes

Hamilton Nolan · 03/09/16 09:50AM

Another week is here, and with it, another story about the affluent, techie-infested caricature that San Francisco has become. Hey, assholes: step one to surviving this trying time is to build more fucking housing.

It's Not Charity If You Want Your Name on It

Hamilton Nolan · 10/27/15 10:42AM

Very rich people sometimes make very large donations to educational or cultural institutions. In return, they ask for their names to be plastered atop buildings. These donations have no moral worth.

McDonald's Has "No Budget" to Pay Artists at SXSW Showcase

Kelly Conaboy · 03/05/15 11:10AM

SXSW, Austin's annual sticky-floored music industry sport coat and jeans cocaine marathon, wherein bands willingly exhaust themselves playing garbage sets for little or no money, deriving sustenance from tacos and the hope of "exposure," features a McDonald's showcase this year. And, no doy, they aren't paying.

How Much Is Too Much to Pay a Rich Person For Being Incompetent?

Adam Weinstein · 05/06/14 10:40AM

Are you rich? No? Then the servicey aspect of this post this probably doesn't apply to you. But if you're rich, you probably want to know how you can be richer, right? Here's the secret: Do less work. And the work you do, do it worse. In other words, be a hedge fund manager!

America: We're Fucking Poor, and We're Fucking Scared

Adam Weinstein · 11/26/13 09:42AM

The Washington Post has done a poll that shows lower-income workers are terrified they will lose their awful jobs. Then it interviewed one of those workers, who commutes three hours a day for $5.25 an hour:

Tom Scocca · 09/24/13 09:33AM

The CEO of economy-wrecking greed-disaster AIG compares criticism of the bonuses collected by his bailed-out derivatives jockeys to "hangman nooses....what we did in the Deep South. And I think it was just as bad and just as wrong." Lynchings and criticizing bankers: equally wrong.