Bonuses for Bankers, Bankruptcy for Public Services

[inna]

Published on Thursday, January 20, 2011 by The Guardian/UK
Bonuses for Bankers, Bankruptcy for Public Services

by Richard Wolff

So, now we know about the $15bn-plus 2010 pay package for Goldman Sachs partners and employees . The top rungs will get their many millions each , with lesser and lesser amounts going down the GS hierarchy. The mass of its more than 35,000 employees will, as usual, get much, much less than the top. In addition, the appreciation of Goldman's share prices likewise adds billions to employees who got stock options, which were likewise distributed very unequally throughout the firm. The unequal division of rewards within Goldman Sachs mirrors and mocks the far larger social divide it feeds.

While vast wealth flows for the tops of finance, austerity is the watchword across the United States. Every one of the 50 state governments and nearly all of the thousands of city and town governments are sharply reducing their citizens' economic wellbeing . Their debates concern the mix of raised taxes and reduced public payrolls and services to impose on a citizenry already reeling from the continuing economic crisis conditions: high unemployment, home foreclosures, job insecurities and benefit reductions.

US capitalism continues to dole out wealth for a few and austerity for the mass. Economic and social divisions helped bring on the crisis. Wage stagnation since the 1970s had enabled profits to boom, but it also provoked family debts and financial speculation that spiraled to the far side of sustainability. As the crisis deepened, rising unemployment turned wage stagnation into wage and job benefits declines. Home-ownership for millions deteriorated into a mass of empty homes confronting stunned ex-homeowners. Economic and social divisions deepened and hardened.

Now, in the next act of an accumulating social tragedy, the governments' responses – austerity – drive yet another degree of separation between the 10 % at the top of the nation's corporate pyramid, and of its income and wealth distributions, and everyone else.

More: http://www.commondreams.org/print/64622

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