Time Travel Inequality

Here is another idea in the same vein as my previous post. I wrote before that the problem of inequality can be explained by the fact that a section of the population can make up how well they are doing and therefore decide how much money to pay themselves. Here is another example: the back-dating of options.

Employee options can have strike prices set by the market price of the stock at the date the option was granted. When it comes time to exercise the option, backdating allows you to make your option more profitable. All you do is change the date the option was granted (at a time when the stock price was lower than the original strike price) and you automatically have more money. Not because you did a better job but just because you traveled back in time to change the date the option was granted.

This sounds illegal. It also happens quite a bit. Two WSJ reporters won the Pulitzer for their investigations into this. More can be found here.