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Goldman Sachs Bonuses = $18 billion; Health Care for 12 million children = $10 billion
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by mindanarchist | December 18, 2007 at 01:46 pm
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Is this capitalism run amuck or appropriate reward for commensurate risk? Call me Canadian (I'm a dual US-Cdn citizen by the way), but the massive disparity of wealth in the USA is somewhat off putting. 12 million children without health insurance could use some of that $18 billion. Or should they be pulling harder on their boot straps? What will be collected through taxes just isn't enough.
And while year-end bonuses are expected to be flat or smaller across Wall Street, Goldman payouts will rise to roughly $18 billion. On average, that is about $600,000 per employee, or double the average paid at other firms.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (2)
at 16:03 on December 19th, 2007
You know that there are other ways to get health care to children other than the government. Think about all the companies Goldman Sachs funds; if it weren't for their investment dollars many of those companies would die. Think about all the charities that are funded by the rich, like Goldman Sachs' employees; these charities give millions of dollars to the poor every year. How about the "normal" people who work at Goldman, like the receptionists and the custodians; they also get very nice bonuses for working there.
I know it seems unfair for a few to have so much and so many to have so little but without these types of "massive" rewards for a good job I don't think many would work as hard as the men and women at Goldman do. They work upwards of 20 hours a day almost every day of the year. They have specialized knowledge that took them years to cultivate. They take gigantic risks with their and their client's money. If there wasn't the chance of making millions of dollars every year they simply would quit.
Besides taking away the incentive to do this type of job, having confiscatory tax rates on big bonuses won't lead to better health care for anyone. America's government already spends tens of billions of dollars on the poor every year and yet they remain poor. Another ten billion dollars is not going to make any difference. If you really want to reduce the number of poor I would suggest moving towards a flat tax like so much of the Former Soviet Republics have done.
at 07:42 on December 24th, 2007
I knew you were going to comment. You raise some good points indeed, BigT, and the motivation to create tremendous amounts of wealth are diverse and complicated. Perhaps the essence of my point, is that trust in the individual to 'give back' only works to a certain degree and is not guaranteed and in a situation like child health care there is no excuse - it is a inalienable right and must be provided by society. The Public Sector, while by no means a perfect arbiter of funds, is the only institution that can be trusted to provide such necessities on a consistent and unwavering basis. Such enormous concentrations of wealth in the hands of the few is rarely a positive thing, that is unless you own a Ferrari dealership.