I'm kind of puzzled here. See, I can see why Wall Street is not real keen on having the Federal Government have some kind of Czalary Czar hand pick how much of our tax dollars can go to the bad boys who nearly brought the financial system to its knees and had to be bailed out by the suckers taxpayers. I mean, those guys really depend on their bonuses to prove to the world the ginormousness of their fiscal manhood. (It's a testosterone thing - they don't seem to let girls play those games for some reason.)
Anyhoo, is it really fair? They didn't get where they are today because they understand prudence or personal limitations, or - and this is a real stretch for them - humility. (I guess that last adjective was doomed the moment W started throwing it around early in his reign of error. But I digress.) It's not like the Masters of the Universe were ever going to let anyone out in the Loserverse do anything useful with that money anyway, like shore up mortgages or create jobs where people actually make stuff. Hey, it's their due, as some famous war criminal said somewhere.
Still, I can't help but wonder....
It's kind of funny - as in do you smell something kind of funny - the way this is working. It's not all of the financial hotshots getting a wedgie in their wallets, just those that haven't paid off the government yet, and not even all of them. Plus, it's not just the money they haven't paid back yet, it's also the gigundo line of credit the Fed is still letting them play games off of, if you catch my drift.
Sure, this can be taken as a kind of punishment or a negative incentive, and maybe a sop to the people still able to be outraged by the money mob's egregious greed. But how is this really going to work over time? Are they going to get their paychecks scrutinized every payday? Who gets targeted next time, and for how much. And suppose (like they keep saying they'll do) they go to some other company so they don't have to put up with this? Because these guys are so brilliant, the rest of the world is desperately seeking to sign them up, right?
I keep thinking there's something wrong with the fundamental assumptions at work here. See, I really have to wonder if the problem is larger than just these individuals - what's the deal with compensation at these levels to begin with? I had somebody tell me they deserve this because of the tremendous risks they take. What risks I countered? - it's all other people's money, and now they don't even have to worry about that because they're too big to fail.
Well size DOES matter. Above some level, it stops being about making enough money to live a comfortable life or to be able to use it for important things that take a lot of money, like creating jobs, creating new businesses, investing in things that lead to innovation, etc. etc. After a while it's just about the money. Period. It ceases to have a meaningful connection to the real world. It begins to be toxic.
Once upon a time there was this crazy idea that income taxes should be progressive, that is, above and beyond some consensus about what a basic income and some kind of cushion was reasonable, it made sense to expect that those with more money than God ought to be expected to kick back a larger share of that hoard. How many houses can one person live in after all, how many cars can they drive at one time, how many 5 star restaurant meals can they eat, yachts sail, private jets fly, etc.? A case could be made that someone who is piling up that kind of moolah has developed a compulsion that's distorting their lives - and the lives of everyone around them, like some kind of behavioral black hole.
Once upon a time, the federal government used to take a much higher percentage from those at the top. Under Eisenhower, it was around 90%. Nixon in the 50's, Reagan in the 40's and W took it down into the low 30's. Going back through time, it seems like life wasn't totally impossible back then. Families didn't have to have people working 2-3 jobs between them to get by; the boss didn't make all that much more than the guy on the shop floor - and he had a lot more reason to worry about how well the company was doing at those pay rates.
Seems that wasn't good enough for the money guys - and the more they got, the easier it was to keep getting more. Except we've reached the point where they can't just skim more and more of the economy's growth over the last 4 decades into their pockets any more - they've gone beyond that to the point where they're strip mining it down to bedrock. They've killed the economy - and they've been taking more than their share for decades.
The idea that making life easier for the rich would be good for everybody, because their wealth would 'trickle down' has to be one of the most fatuous con jobs ever. Wealthy people don't let anything trickle down - quite the reverse. If anything, the trickle down theory was their scam to shape government policy to funnel more and more of that wealth right to them.
So here's my suggestion. I say we let all those bright boys give themselves all the pay perks and bonuses they want - then we use the Federal Government to tax the hell out of them and everyone else in that income bracket. It'll be good not just for the rest of us - but for them too. To elucidate:
• Having after tax income more in line with the rest of us will help them remember what it's like to live in the real world.
• They'll still be able to brag about how much they make - they'll just have to add "before taxes".
• They can boast about how much of the economy is on their backs - for real.
• Finally, they can enjoy the benefits of living in a world where the government can: balance its books again, make education affordable for everyone, keep the roads and bridges in repair, prepare for natural disasters, afford to pay for a reasonable defense policy, invest in science and technology to keep the country in a position of leadership, make decent food, housing, and healthcare possible for all.... well you get the picture.
So, I suppose what I really don't understand is, how we ever got suckered into this mess to begin with, and why we're all dancing around what looks like an obvious answer.