People, we OWN AIG. And as of this morning, we OWN three more financial institutions- unfortunately, also two credit unions, but that doesn't matter right this second. We can tax the guys (notice how they are all guys, but this country is all about equality and we don't really have any schism between the opportunities and earnings of women vs. men?) who got giant bonuses as much as we want. We can fire the bastards if we want to do that. And what is this crap about some guy in Denver tries to give his bonus up and isn't allowed to do so? We can take it away for him. WE OWN THESE PEOPLE'S JOBS.Also, Bernie Madoff's victims are not vicitms; they are idots.
Finally, how sad is it that there are people out there forking over cash to get their faces cut up and redone so they will have a better chance at getting a job? Crap; if I lost my job, which I will soon, I would not spend what money I had left to get plastic surgery, even if I were 60 years old. I'd go back to the desert while I had a little spare time. How hard is that to figure out?
1 comment:
The problem about taxing the bonuses of specific companies has a constitutional problem that should be troubling to you and me both. The constitution very specifically prohibits the idea of a bill of attainder, oft abused by British monarchy in the past.
The sense is as follows. The government decides it doesn't like an individual or a few people. It then drafts a law that very narrowly targets those few folks to, as is generally done, confiscate their property for the crown.
I don't like what the AIG folks did, and I think AIG was dumb to write the contracts with their financial products division the way they did, but I also think it is a really bad idea to spend time writing laws to confiscate the property of a few folks that, truth be told, operated within the law.
You are saying that folks working for the companies that we are trying to eventually saved will have bonuses taxed at 90%, but they can quit & work for Deutche Bank and have their bonuses untaxed? We will end up getting people who can't get work elsewhere shepherding the recovery of the failed institutions.
We also don't want the government going in and voiding 3rd party contracts at will. What strength capitalism has is founded on reliable and predictable enforcement of legal contracts.
See Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com (http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/03/tax-banks-not-bankers.html) for a particularly lucid analysis of the AIG bonus fiasco and some of the unfortunate consequences of the bonus taxing bill as it currently stands.
Your generally less fiscally perspicacious buddy,
Rob
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