Photo: “Capitalist Pig” by planetgordon on Flickr
President Obama today said it was “the height of irresponsibility” for financial corporations to have doled out $18 billion in bonuses to their employees in a year when many banks shed jobs and turned to the government for funds.
What a change from the previous administration. Obama is using the bully pulpit to send messages and he just told Wall Street their piggish behavior is no longer acceptable. Expect shrieks of anguish from the bloated porkers.
As an added bonus, the above quote was posted on the White House blog. Wow, we have a president who actually lives in the 21st century.
How far into the ditch have we gone when a failed notion like ‘capitalism’ and its practitioners can thumb their noses at us so willfully. It is way beyond knowing they cannot be prosecuted or otherwise punished … they’ve got the world by its marbles and are playing with us like spoiled, amoral children daring us to call a time out and put their toys back in Pandora’s Box.
There’s a simple way to fix this, which was done in the late 1930s with great success. Up the tax curve on the upper 1%. The tax back then was jacked up to as high as 94% for monies made after the first million. Executives that were making 3 and 4 million at the time suddenly found ways to re-invest what used to be salary, and cut their own pay to just over a million. Put the same cap on salary over $10m and I’d be willing to bet CEO pay would plumet within the year, and most of these “hurting ” companies would be flush with cash.