Simple Alternatives To Being Regarded As A Greedy Bastard

This piece on Jamie Dimon's pity party is the latest entry in what's becoming my favorite journalistic genre. You've got a guy, you see, who's making tons of money on Wall Street. But he's not in it for the money. Maybe like Dimon "he sees himself as a financier/statesman." Or maybe he works at Citigroup because he loves the data. But nobody believes him! People think he's just a greedy SOB. So he needs a press strategy to persuade the world.

It's a thorny problem. So here's my idea to help Dimon out. The median household income in Manhattan is about $70,000. For work, I bet Dimon needs more fancy suits and so forth than the typical person, so let's say he needs quadruple the median household income for one of the country's richest and highest-cost jurisdictions. Then maybe we round up to $300,000 a year. That's peanuts compared to what he makes. So give the rest away! You don't even need to bother with charity. Take the income. Pay the taxes. And have your assistant pick a few addresses at random each year and put checks in envelops. If your assistant doesn't want to do it, get in touch with me and I will volunteer my own time to facilitate the semi-random disbursement of unwanted funds.