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Comment by dkersten | Hacker News Reader

> this isn't stealing from the poor

Except when the finance industry creates (directly or indirectly) a financial crisis like in 2008. Its the poor, that never stood to gain from the financial system in the first place, that end up hit the worst.

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Isn't that because if you gain from the financial system, you are no longer poor?

Perhaps. My point is that the poor or less well off get impacted by the bad effects without any of the good effects. For example, here, there was an income levy introduced to bail the banks out. For the less well off, that money has much more impact on their lives than on the rich, even though those people never stood to gain at all.

I think not bailing out the banks would have affected the poor eventually.

That’s besides the point, which is that these people never stood to gain anything, while the finance industry stood to gain and then when it messed up, the less well off still lost even if they didn’t take part in the game themselves.

The 'game' is the economy, which the poor still benefit from. If you have no stake in the economy, you wouldn't be affected.

You are still affected, if you pay taxes.

Many of them got to live in really big mcmansions they should not have been allowed to 'afford' for about 10 years. The labor spent building those houses could have been spent building twice as many small houses.

Those people got foreclosed. The banks got bailed out, took property off the market, and prevented the market to properly settle. Tons of people are still locked out of the market in order to protect everyone else’s “investment” by artificially propping up the value.

Wasn't the risk shared between those who got to live in mcmansions and those who gave them the money for that? Why does one party get to reap all the benefits but pay none of the consequences?

It's not the poor who got the mcmansions.... it's the not-rich. Big difference.

Many people didn’t have this at all and we’re still very negatively impacted by the recession due to loss of employment or raised taxes (eg I personally did not benefit from the pre-recession as I was too young and my family wasn’t particularly well off nor had a mortgage and I entered the job market right in the midst of the recession and I was hit with an income levy introduced to bail the banks out — I was personally lucky as tech wasn’t particularly heavily affected but many people were not so lucky).

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