Prosperity, with a purpose

I am sure many of you have seen the stories in the past two weeks about the record-shattering profits that financial firms have made this year and how this has affected the bonuses of finance professionals and created a trickle down effect on the businesses that cater to the consumer of ultra-luxury goods. Like a lot of Wall Street bankers who spend a good part of the year wondering about their bonuses and how they will spend it, many MBA students spend a lot of energy wondering about is how much wealth we will accumulate over the course of our careers and how we plan to do with it. I too have wondered about what my financial situation will look like once I graduate from Kenan-Flagler but what makes me different from my similarly situated classmates is that instead of thinking in terms of how more money will improve my life, I think in terms of how it results in the burden of responsible stewardship and increased obligation to society.

 

Even though I have more than enough money to live on for the foreseeable future and the median starting base salary for my class is expected to be in excess of $91,000 a year, I have no plans to visit the local Lexus dealership anytime soon to test drive the SC 420 that I like. I have always felt that wealth should serve a higher calling than merely increasing one’s consumption of other people’s services. Furthermore, I feel that those who are financially better off in America have an increased obligation to use their wealth (and in some cases, their fame) to influence society for the better.

 

What I have written so far may not seem like anything revolutionary. But if you look around our current culture today, very rarely do you see people living their lives in accordance to this creed. You are much more likely to see well off people using their money for hedonistic causes and their influence to achieve ends that benefit no more than themselves. If you don’t believe me you need to look no further than a Google News search on Paris Hilton. Just today I was reading about investment bankers using their bonuses to buy $250,000 Ferraris. This all reminds me of the scene from the movie Wall Street where Bud Fox asked Gordon Gekko “how many yachts can you water ski behind, how much is enough?”

 

As a believer in freedom, I believe people should be free to work as hard as they want, make as much money as they want, and spend their money however they wish. But I also believe that in a moral society, which I am interested in building, there should be self-imposed restraints on the excesses that such enormous wealth can produce. And in this holiday season of Christmas sharing and making resolutions for the new year, it’s something I’d like for all of us to keep in mind.