It can often be difficult to effectively capture how vast the gulf between wealthy executives and low-income Americans truly is, but the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) attempted to do just that on Monday with the help of newly released Wall Street data and a handful of expressive GIFs.
"The average Wall Street Bonus was $184,220, while the typical "tax reform" bonus was $1,000."
--Institute for Policy Studies
According to numbers (pdf) from the New York State Comptroller's office, total bonuses for 176,900 Wall Street employees totaled $31.4 billion in 2017. Demonstrating how paltry the pay of low-income workers is by comparison, IPS estimates that this Wall Street "bonus pool" is 2.5 times larger than the annual earnings of every minimum-wage employee in the U.S. combined.
Sarah Anderson, executive compensation expert at IPS, noted in a statement on Monday that this massive bonus pool is "disturbing" both because it contributes significantly to America's economic inequality--which is at its highest point since the Great Depression--and because it is "a sign that the reckless Wall Street bonus culture which contributed to the 2008 financial crisis continues to flourish."
In a series of tweets on Monday, IPS further fleshed out the new Wall Street bonus data, contrasting it in a variety of ways with the income of most American workers, and using matching GIFs to express a mixture of astonishment, frustration, and outrage.
Since 2009, the average Wall Street Bonus has increased 31 percent, from $140,620 to $184,220, while the federal minimum wage has remained at $7.25 per hour:
The total bonus pool for 176,900 Wall Street employees was 2.5 times the combined annual earnings of all 884,000 U.S. full-time minimum wage workers:
The 2017 bonus pool holds enough dollars to lift the pay of all of the country's 3.2 million restaurant servers and bartenders up to $15 per hour:
The average Wall Street Bonus was $184,220, while the typical "tax reform" bonus was $1,000:
"While we're still waiting for the Wall Street pay reforms in the 2010 Dodd-Frank law to be implemented, Congress is busy deregulating the financial industry":
The 2017 Wall Street bonus pool holds enough money to lift the pay of all 3.4 million fast food workers to $15 per hour:
