SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Executives from the financial institutions who received TARP funds, Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein, JPMorgan Chase & Co Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon, The Bank of New York Mellon CEO Robert P. Kelly, Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis and State Street Corporation CEO and Chairman Ronald Logue testify in Washington, DC. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Six Infuriating Statistics (With GIFs to Match) Help Explain Recklessness of Wall Street Bonus Culture
"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."
Mar 26, 2018
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:
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
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:
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:
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.