I went to buy Yankee tickets last weekend. Some friends and I are headed out to NYC this summer to see the new ballparks there. The thinking was that if we didn’t jump on day one, we’d be at the mercy of the scalpers. Lo and behold, what showed up when I asked the computer for five “best available” seats but a quint of prime ducats in the lower deck. Booya . . . no. Face prices on these babies were $2,600. A ticket. No, I didn’t leave a decimal out. (Anything under $50 was sold out, natch.)

I don’t begrudge the Yanks what the market will bear, but even the scalpers didn’t want these. Not this year. I mean, Ticketmaster’s “convenience charge” was $60. Talk about robbery.

But when the Yankees put their pricing together a year or so ago, they figured someone did want to pay $2,600 a seat, even though a helicopter ride from Wall Street wasn’t included in the deal. Make no mistake, these seats were to be sold to corporations or money-is-no-object status jerks in search of some sort of bragging rights. And the bulk of the debauched spending that flowed in New York flowed through Wall Street.

So when I hear that we’ve been too hard on AIG and the rest and that the sick bonuses that begat a $10K day at the ballpark and $45 entrées and $250 Cabernets and pet concierges are essential to keeping the best and the brightest in-house, I am appalled on many levels. But most profoundly, I’m appalled because this is what America’s best and brightest now see as their professional bull's-eye.

I don’t know about you, but I want our best and brightest solving global warming, curing diseases, coming up with an electric car that doesn’t need to be charged every night, figuring out where to put spent nuclear fuel. Not developing tax dodges for Fortune 500s and skimming 1 percent off financial transactions so they can treat their buddies and the models they shack up with to a five-figure day at the ballpark.

The root of the problem is two-fold: We are not using our tax code and other government initiatives to foster essential public efforts, and the Wall Street culture is just as depraved as that of gangsta rappers and NFL criminals. I don’t want this gang in jail, I don’t want to take back their ill-gotten gains. But I would gladly use the tax code to redirect this flow of money to places where it benefits more of us and by consequence, directs the best and the brightest into endeavors where foie gras in every course isn't the apotheosis of their achievement.