Minimum Wage Would Be $33 Today If It Grew As Fast As Wall Street Bankers Bonuses

By Mayukh Saha / Truth Theory

Would you be immensely jealous, if we tell you that the bonus of Wall Street traders, albeit slipping away by 17%, has seen a 1000% rise since 1985? Would you be even more jealous if we tell you that the annual bonus stands at around $153,700? Trading seems like a very cool job right about now, doesn’t it?

Put that into a comparison with the minimum wage that we get. Now, the minimum wage has gained a 116% increase in about the same time, as reported by a left-leaning research center- Institute of Policy Studies. The irony here is that if the minimum wage increased at the same rate as annual bonuses, workers would get paid $33.51 per hour. Now, THAT is minimum wage.

Last year, the total bonus accrued by Wall Street Traders amounted to $27 billion, almost thrice the combined earnings of 640,000 minimum wage workers. It is fortunate that many states are increasing the minimum wage from its stagnating $7.25 an hour (fixed back in the year 2019)due to increasing criticism about it not being suitable for living.

Now, the payment for people working the upper echelons of the American economy has seen a steady rise, which has led to economists believing that this ‘exacerbated’ the inequality that is present. The rich got richer, and the poor, poorer. Also, paying bigger bonuses also helps in increasing the gender and race gap, as most of the top executives are male and white.

And when we say that Wall Street suffered a slip last year, it doesn’t in any way indicate that the banks had gone into a deficit. Surprisingly, Wall Street still recorded around 11% increase in pre-tax profits, as New York Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli mentions.

So, the slip in 2018, was because people were paid more in 2017, owing to the change in Federal laws that allowed banks to pay more.

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Isn’t it so ironical that the slip in 2018 wasn’t really a slip, but more of a decrease due to the ‘bonus’ drain the previous year?

To put all this into perspective, the average salary of a Wall Street trader is $422,500. Makes you a bit furious, doesn’t it?

IMAGE CREDIT: Luca Bertolli