I think it's funny that over the past week Wall Street has been called shameful, greedy, and selfish by numerous politicians. While I partially agree to a degree, these statements are primarily being made in reaction to the size of bonuses being received at the end of 2008. These people work 70 hour weeks at minimum, through one of the most tumultuous periods in U.S. history. Oftentimes, these bonuses represent the bulk of one's pay for the year. Meanwhile, for the third time in the past few weeks, it has been made public that a prospective member of Obama's cabinet has failed to properly pay their taxes (Geithner, Daschle, Killefer). By the way, not paying taxes is illegal- receiving bonuses for working hard, no matter how excessive or stupid, is perfectly legal at this time.
These are not low level staffers that have not paid their taxes- these are individuals that Obama has selected as being the most capable people in the entire country to serve the nation in a given expertise. This has now happened three times. That is a small sample size with a pretty high number of occurrences if you ask me. How about you pay your taxes before you start calling others greedy and selfish? I doubt that these taxes were avoided maliciously, and in most instances I'm sure these politicians are good public servants, but how stupid do you have to be to have back taxes when you know you can possibly be nominated for the cabinet?
In the words of Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, "We have a bunch of idiots on Wall Street that are kicking sand in the face of the American taxpayer." Hey Claire, I think we found more idiots kicking sand in the face of the American taxpayer, and they are in Washington. I think the moral of this whole recession is that we are all idiots. Let's stop pointing fingers and actually do something about it.
1 comment:
Joshua,
First time/long time. Anyway, the issue here isn't with Wall St bankers receiving bonuses. It is the fact that the bonuses are being derived from taxpayer dollars that were used to finance TARP. While the banks are still not lending (one of the original goals of TARP) they can find the time to buy corporate jets, do a million dollar redecorating job on Jon Thain's office, and dole out these exorbitant bonuses. According to Maureen Dowd, "Until it came to light Tuesday, Wells Fargo, which received $25 billion in federal funds, was blithely planning a series of “employee recognition outings” to Las Vegas luxury hotels this month." Everyone is making sacrifices during this recession (except my beloved New York Yankees, but that's another blog entry), and it is offensive to the American public at large that the banks, who are largely (thought not solely) to blame for this mess, are not following suit.
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