America's Disease is Greed
 

by Andrew Greeley
Published on Friday, August 20, 2004 by the Chicago Sun Times

The most serious spiritual problem in the country today is reckless
and untrammeled greed. Greed caused the disgraceful corporate scandals that fill our newspapers. Greed is responsible for crooked cops and crooked politicians. Greed causes the constant efforts to destroy unions that protect basic worker rights.

Greed has produced rash tax cuts that have given money to the rich and in effect taken it away from the poor. Greed has led to the immigration policy in which hundreds of poor men and women die every year as they struggle across the desert for the jobs that el norte promises them. Greed accounts for the efforts to take profitability out of the pensions and health insurance of working men and women.

Greed is responsible for the fact that so many Americans have nohealth insurance and the fact that the recent reform of Medicare was a fraud. Greed causes newspapers to overestimate their circulation.

Greed is responsible for the obscene salaries of CEOs. In the '90s the ratio of CEO compensation to average workers' compensation was 250 to 1, meaning that the boss earned on his first day of work during a year as much as the worker did in a whole year. In European countries the ratio is closer to 100 to 1. Recent estimates put the current ratio at 500 to 1 -- the boss makes as much before lunch as the worker does all year. Greed is the cause of the high wages paid to the bosses even if the company is failing.

Greed is responsible for the endless stress and ruthless competition of the workplace and the strains and tensions of professional class marriages. Greed (in this instance another name for relentless ambition) explains much of the cheating on college campuses. Greed is responsible for outsourcing, which is incapable of comprehending that the employees who lose their jobs are also the consumers who sustain the economy. Greed generates the reckless ventures that in part caused
the bubble of the late '90s. Greed causes expensive wars that shatter the budget. Greed is the reason that only the wealthy are benefitting so far from the economic upturn that is allegedly happening. Greed drives loan sharks. Greed is responsible for the success of big box stores that tax the poor with low wages to provide bargains for affluent suburban shoppers. Greed is the reason poor white Appalachians, poor African Americans and poor Native Americans must fight the wars that the wealthy start. Jessica Lynch joined the Army so she could go to college. Her Native American roommate, killed in action, joined so, single mother that she was, she could support her children. Greed is the reason why the country is being run by those whom the president has described, however inelegantly, as the ''haves and the have mores.''

No one said during the bizarre deification of President Reagan that he taught us that greed is good and that we should feel good about our greedy country. Greed is the reason that the country is being run by the insurance, pharmaceutical, weapons and petroleum industries. Greed causes worldwide sex slavery of women and children.

Greed drives the murders of the narcotics world. Greed is responsible for the exploitations of teen sports stars by colleges and for the mess in the pro sports world. It is also the cause of the use of performance drugs by young athletes. Greed is responsible for the bad advice lawyers gave the Church years ago to beat victims of sexual abuse into the ground. It is behind the scam artists who steal from the elderly.

Greed may have been a more serious problem for Americans, say, in the era of the robber barons. But the Garys and the Morgans and the Carnegies were a small bunch of men. Now their greed has seeped down to a much larger segment of the population.

The Catholic Church speaks of four sins that cry to heaven for
vengeance. Two are cheating workers out of wages and exploiting widows and children. Both happen every day in our greedy country.

Ambition is not evil within limits. The struggle for success is not
bad within limits. Hard work and fair rewards are good within limits. It is not good to take from the poor and give to the rich, and that's exactly what this country is doing today.

Don't let anyone tell you that lust is the most deadly of the deadly
sins.

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what do you think?

I agree lust is not the most deadly of the deadly sins, then again neither is greed. Now vanity or sloth could be.

I agree good post

Greed is Good

Sure looks like there is some truth in it - at various levels.

When you have a society that is hell-bent on that keyword "success" and this is measured in money - yea, there is going to be greed.

It's not only the US that is like this - other "civilized" societies breed this too, but probably not to this level.

The sad bit is, that US people work longer to achieve this "success" with money - but WTF cares when it only buys a lump of metal in the form of the lastest SUV?

There is much more to life than money... tho it may "enable" other things and give some peace of mind.

In a way... it is a very sad and corrupt scenario.

Pinko commie scum.

Show me a society that lacks greed and I'll you a society that lacks ambition. Stagnation and regression are not desirable states for our civilization.

Greed is part of what makes the US so strong in every world market.

It is fueled by the fact that anyone! ANYONE can become very very rich in the US if he works at it.

How many people on this board alone went from having average jobs to living their dreams?

solid post soul...

Wrong!!!!!

greed is equal to "i want money, i want a big house, i want a nice car, etc....."


and why do you want all these things???


because you want some PUSSY!!! (in other words lust)