Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/09/23/your-tax-dollars-subsidized-1.html
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The thing that sticks out for me - is the 10.4 billion in penalties - which they paid and still made plenty of money. That (over the same period of time) would translate into a $6.53 raise per employee if it were used to bump pay. I’m sure it would go up if you took all the bonus money and used it also to help the average worker - and then go up even more if you limited the pay increase to just those making 100k or less per year.
But paying people (a living wage) would bankrupt the economy.
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Of course! Ungrateful swine, we give them jobs, barely pay them and expect them to be loyal until they die! What more do they want?!?!
- Possible Tea Bagger/Republican/Trump supporter.
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The biggest bonus I’ve ever received in my life was around .4% of Tolstedt’s 2015 bonus. We don’t do the same work, I’m not an executive for a large corporation, etc., but still. The numbers are staggering.
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“Most powerful woman in banking.” Swell. Gee, the ladies are gaining parity.
You know, it’s good to see women breaking the glass ceiling in most fields. However, the levels of compensation for everyone above that ceiling in what we now loosely call “finance” is simply obscene and immoral by any standards of right and wrong.
No problem with the risk takers, innovators, and ethical entrepreneurs, That’s what free enterprise is all about,
Free enterprise is NOT about the corporate minions slinking about the financial sector, contributing little to nothing to the greater prosperity while blithely manipulating obscure fiscal levers for exponential personal gain. The sheer enormity of the compensation hauls reported in this case should make every fair-minded person puke. That it does not is a measure of how inured American society has become to such abominations, and how warped our “education system” has become in winking at the situation to bring certain types of people into the game.
Everyone knows it’s wrong…but most everyone still holds such foul “success” up as a worthwhile career goal. Just take a look at any of the …uh…“top” MBA programs.
This executive will be personally vilified…but she’s going to take the hit for everyone else in the shell game.
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We should absolutely vote for candidates who promise to stop the corporate welfare. But I heard on teevee those guys want to kill all the police and put your guns in a FEMA camp. Kind of a tossup.
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It’s not just evil; I find it genuinely mind-boggling. If I were to be awarded a single million of dollars, I’d look at that as a full decade that I could take off work completely, and still maintain a slightly better standard of living than I have now (but with all the time in the world to enjoy it each day, instead of just nights and weekends). Five million dollars? I’d never work again in my life, I could have a very nice second home, my kids would have it even easier than they do now. How could I possibly want more than that?
I mean, sure, I could give money to my siblings and nieces and nephews and close friends. But I can’t think of things I could only buy with eight or nine figures that would mean more to me than just plowing that money back to people who genuinely need more money to survive. What the hell use would I possibly have for a house with more than five bedrooms? Or a garage with more than a handful of cars? What oceanfront view is so gorgeous that I’d pay eight figures to live within sight of it? And I’m a perfectly materialist person. I like having stuff, and I wouldn’t mind having nice stuff. But if I were handed $100 million, I couldn’t think of a more entertaining use of it than to take $95 million of it in fifties, stack 'em loosely in the back of a large pickup truck, and drive it from one end of Sepulveda to the other, letting all those bills flutter off into the breeze.
I wonder how far I’d get.
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More entertaining? Naw, that sounds fun.
More productive, I can think of a bunch.
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That would be a genuinely fine day for Angelenos. Then think of the good life you could live with the measly 5 mil left over! We communists and socialists like a good time too.
You made my point better than I did. Money can buy happiness…but only so much of it can do that. For a single individual, the rest is just profligate waste.
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It can buy marshmallows, which are pretty much the same thing.
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Oh, most certainly. The Pollyanna in me likes to think that dumping a truckload of $50 bills down the longest thoroughfare in Los Angeles would be at least as productive (and probably no more harmful, if the fistfights are kept to a minimum) as enriching some bank executive’s personal lifestyle. But yeah, I could buy and/or build housing for the homeless, I could buy a fair few congresscritters to do my high-minded bidding, I could provide free medicine for a number of people without the resources to get what they need, I could do lots of stuff.
Or I could be Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire, and own a mansion and a yacht.
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That’s actually pretty good for a mammal. Well done you 
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In what way are modern banks not simply parasites sucking nourishment from our economy?
Do they perform any real function aside from enriching themselves?
Why do we need private, for-profit banks to handle our money at all? Aren’t they simply an unnecessary middle-man?
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You don’t know until you see it. Or better, you don’t know until someone else who owns it shows it to you, and then you will want it even harder. Why is this entitled/privileged person owning something so beautiful?? I’m sure he doesn’t even appreciate it properly! I just need a few more millions so that I can snatch it from him (or get a similar one elsewhere)…
Human nature, ain’t it a bitch.
Is that a place? I thought it was just a writer. [Mind blown]
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Ha. I’m from Boston and even I know about Sepulveda. It’s a magic byway in LA. Doesn’t matter where you are…you are likely to cross it or be on it at some point in your travels about town.
Seriously, has anyone investigated this? There’s got to be some sort of quantum physics involved.
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I had long suspected it but didn’t know for sure until I looked it up: it really is the longest street in Los Angeles County at almost 43 miles in length. Spend more than a day or two in L.A., and it will inevitably affect your life. Probably adversely.
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It ends at Long Beach, @Nell_Anvoid and @toyg. Actually, the name changes and it continues as Willow Ave. and then turns into Katella Ave., which traverses Orange County.
Coincidentally, my new job is just off of Sepulveda near the southern terminus.
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Did somebody say Sepulveda?!
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We actually sing that song any time Sepulveda comes up!
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