Wall Street Bonuses Are More Than All Minimum Wage Worker Earnings
While Wall Street Bankers’ bonuses were down slightly, “the average bonus (and it was likely weighed heavily in favor of those at the top) was nearly triple the country’s median household income.”
According to a new report by Sarah Anderson of the Institute for Policy Studies,
Tthe bonus pool was enough to offer a $15 an hour wage to any of the three following groups in the country:
- 2.6 million restaurant wait staff and bartenders $15 an hour
- 1.6 million home healthcare and personal care aides
- 2.6 million fast food workers
Robert Reich on Wall Street's Untethered Greed
The 2015 bonus pool for Wall Street, just announced, was more than double the combined annual earnings of all 895,000 full-time minimum-wage workers in the United States last year, according to a new report by Sarah Anderson of the Institute for Policy Studies. Although the Street’s bonuses were a bit down from the year before, they're still large enough to raise the pay of all of America’s 2.6 million fast-food workers to $15.00 an hour – had they been spread over all fast-food workers rather than the denizens of the Street.
Anyone who believes Wall Street bonuses are determined by neutral market forces isn’t paying attention. According to researchers, the hidden subsidy to the Street for being too big to fail is $83 billion a year. That's bigger than the 2015 bonus pool. That the federal minimum wage is still stuck at $7.25 an hour, and the Street’s banks are still too big to fail, are political decisions.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Hillary’s solution was to tell Wall Street to: “CUT IT OUT!”
Bernie is the only candidate stepping up to take on Wall Street.
Bernie on Income and Wealth Inequality
America now has more wealth and income inequality than any major developed country on earth, and the gap between the very rich and everyone else is wider than at any time since the 1920s.
Warren's Glass-Steagall bill that Sanders has endorsed
That bill would repeal some major perks Congress afforded to shadow banking in 2005, allowing anybody involved in a repurchase agreement -- "repo" in Wall Street lingo -- to get paid back before a bankrupt firm enters bankruptcy court. That provided a major incentive to firms to keep lending money to banks taking huge risks, even after it became clear that the banks were in trouble.
"The Warren bill would be a very dramatic change in repo lending and shadow banking more generally," Miller said. "Sanders has not been given much credit for that, but it is a much more substantive plan than anything that Clinton has put forward."
