Just pocket change for your average Wall Street worker
At the end of 2014 there were 1,007,000 Americans who worked full-time at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. The
annual combined earnings of all of those full-time minimum wage workers is around $14 billion. Sounds like a lot money, doesn't it? It isn't. Before taxes, those minimum wage workers are pulling down $15,000 a year, and likely aren't receiving a bonus for their hard work.
Contrast those earnings with those who work on Wall Street, who on average had a base wage of $190,970 in 2013. Pretty good work if you can get it. But that base wage is just a part of the picture.
The amount of money handed out for bonuses to 167,800 Wall Street employees at the end of 2014 was $28.5 billion. You read than right: $28.5 billion. Bonuses on Wall Street for 167,800 people were more than double the amount of total money paid to more than 1 million minimum wage workers.
To put $28.5 billion in perspective:
The bonus pool is so large it would be far more than enough to lift all 2.9 million restaurant servers and bartenders, all 1.5 million home health and personal care aides, or all 2.2 million fast food preparation and serving workers up to $15 per hour.
It's natural to think about that bonus pool and wonder how many lives could be changed if that money were not hoarded by the very rich. How many textbooks could that buy for our public schools? How much college tuition could that pay for? How many retirement accounts could that money fund? How much of our failing infrastructure could be repaired or replaced?
Yet the gap between the haves and the have-nots continues to grow, as you'll see below.
In 1962, the top 1% had 125 times the net worth of the median household. That shot up to 288 times by 2010. That trend is happening for two reasons: Not only are the rich getting richer, but the middle class is also getting poorer.
Most Americans below the upper echelon have suffered a decline in wealth in recent decades. The median household saw its net worth drop to $57,000 in 2010, down from $73,000 in 1983. It would have been $119,000 had wealth grown equally across households.
Many Americans struggle to make ends meet even if they have a full-time job. Retirement savings are practically non-existent. With defined benefits plans going the way of the dodo bird, workers have to rely on the 401(k) plan—but 401(k) plans are not all they were supposed to be. Today, the
median savings in a 401(k) is about $18,000, and about 40 percent of employees have less than $10,000 in their 401(k) plan.
That is not the only crisis facing middle and low-income Americans. Education costs also continue rise.
At public, four-year schools, tuition and fees cost about $9,139 this year. In the 1971 school year, they added up to less than $500 in current dollars, according to the College Board.
Middle-class parents have to decide: Pay tuition, or save for retirement. For low-income Americans the choices can be even more dire. How many children never get to live up to their potential because their parents could barely afford to put food on the table?
Low and middle-income Americans struggle to get by every single day while those on Wall Street earn the kind of money most of us can only dream of. Tax cuts for the rich are not going to solve the problem of income inequality. We need leaders who will dismiss the failed trickle-down theories, and implement real solutions to tilt the playing field back in our favor.