The people who sell fancy sports cars and high-end Swiss watches look forward to the time of year when the big Wall Street banks hand out their annual cash bonuses.
According to new figures, those bonuses added up a whopping $27.5 billion last year. That’s a lot of Rolexes.
Unfortunately, this huge payout also means the reckless bonus culture that crashed our economy in 2008 is still flourishing.
And there’s another reason we should be disturbed: These Wall Street payouts drive racial and gender inequality.
That’s because the people pocketing Wall Street bonuses are overwhelmingly white and male, while the people stuck with stagnating wages at the bottom of the pay scale are disproportionately women and people of color.
A new Institute for Policy Studies report I co-authored found that if the minimum wage had increased at the same rate as the average Wall Street bonus since 1985, it would be worth $33 today, instead of just $7.25.
Women make up 63 percent of those minimum wage workers, but as little as 20 percent of senior executives and managers at big investment banks like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.
The share of top executives who are white is even higher — around 84 percent at JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America.
Need I even mention that every single CEO at the top five banks is a white guy?
Reining in Wall Street pay would make our economy more equitable and secure.
In 2010, Congress recognized that fat banker bonuses had encouraged the high-risk behavior that caused the 2008 crash, costing millions of Americans their homes and livelihoods.
As part of a broad financial reform, lawmakers adopted new restrictions on Wall Street bonuses and ordered regulators to implement these rules within nine months. Instead, regulators bowed to pressure from powerful Wall Street lobbyists and never put the law into force.
Meanwhile, members of Congress have been dragging their feet on raising the federal minimum wage. Low-wage workers haven’t gotten a raise for nearly a decade.
Let’s face it: For too long, Wall Street has had too much power in Washington while advocates for the working poor have had too little.
If you’re in the business of selling yachts or Ferraris, the Wall Street bonus bonanza might be a good thing. For the rest of us, not so much.
Help us Prepare for Trump’s Day One
Trump is busy getting ready for Day One of his presidency – but so is Truthout.
Trump has made it no secret that he is planning a demolition-style attack on both specific communities and democracy as a whole, beginning on his first day in office. With over 25 executive orders and directives queued up for January 20, he’s promised to “launch the largest deportation program in American history,” roll back anti-discrimination protections for transgender students, and implement a “drill, drill, drill” approach to ramp up oil and gas extraction.
Organizations like Truthout are also being threatened by legislation like HR 9495, the “nonprofit killer bill” that would allow the Treasury Secretary to declare any nonprofit a “terrorist-supporting organization” and strip its tax-exempt status without due process. Progressive media like Truthout that has courageously focused on reporting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza are in the bill’s crosshairs.
As journalists, we have a responsibility to look at hard realities and communicate them to you. We hope that you, like us, can use this information to prepare for what’s to come.
And if you feel uncertain about what to do in the face of a second Trump administration, we invite you to be an indispensable part of Truthout’s preparations.
In addition to covering the widespread onslaught of draconian policy, we’re shoring up our resources for what might come next for progressive media: bad-faith lawsuits from far-right ghouls, legislation that seeks to strip us of our ability to receive tax-deductible donations, and further throttling of our reach on social media platforms owned by Trump’s sycophants.
We’re preparing right now for Trump’s Day One: building a brave coalition of movement media; reaching out to the activists, academics, and thinkers we trust to shine a light on the inner workings of authoritarianism; and planning to use journalism as a tool to equip movements to protect the people, lands, and principles most vulnerable to Trump’s destruction.
We urgently need your help to prepare. As you know, our December fundraiser is our most important of the year and will determine the scale of work we’ll be able to do in 2025. We’ve set two goals: to raise $86,000 in one-time donations and to add 1260 new monthly donors by midnight on December 31.
Today, we’re asking all of our readers to start a monthly donation or make a one-time donation – as a commitment to stand with us on day one of Trump’s presidency, and every day after that, as we produce journalism that combats authoritarianism, censorship, injustice, and misinformation. You’re an essential part of our future – please join the movement by making a tax-deductible donation today.
If you have the means to make a substantial gift, please dig deep during this critical time!
With gratitude and resolve,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy