America's New Math: 1 Wall Street Hour = 21 Years of Hard Work For the Rest of Us

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/americas-new-math-1-wall-street-hour-21-years-hard-work-rest



The new Rich List is out -- yet another example of financial pornography. While nearly 15 million Americans still can't find jobs due to the 2008 Wall Street-created crash, the top hedge manager, David Tepper, earned $1,057,692 an HOUR in 2012 -- that's as much as the average American family makes in 21 years!

America's new math: 1 Wall Street hour = 21 years of hard work for the rest of us.

Together the top 10 hedge fund managers waltzed off with $10.1 billion in 2012, which is more than enough to hire 250,000 entry level teachers or 196,000 new registered nurses.

It's not just that these financial gurus are filthy rich. It's that they are the richest of the rich and we don't even know what they do. Overall, hedge fund managers make 50 to 100 times more than our top athletes, movie stars, CEOs, lawyers, writers, doctors and celebrities. Yet, their activities are treated like state secrets

[subterranean]

1. AND they pay a lower tax rate than middle-class taxpayers.

Thanks to a special tax rule written just for them, hedge fund managers' compensation is taxed as capital gains, which means they now pay a maximum rate of 20%. Because apparently they would lose all motivation to work if they had to pay the same tax rate as other people.

[BethanyQuartz]

3. That's because they're all spoiled entitlement kiddies

Too lazy to do honest, hard work for subsistence wages like the rest of us.

[SharonAnn]

8. They didn't "earn" it. I object to using that word for this kind of money-grubbing.

The highly compensated individuals did nothing to actually "earn" the money. They were good at manipulating data and financial ownership and managed to get paid that much. But they didn't "earn" it.

[fleur-de-lisa]

2. K & R - n/t

[Ash_F]

4. "we don't know what they do" - They don't do shit

Mystery solved.

[eridani]

5. How about trying them for treason?

Then stripping them of their assets and putting them in jail for the rest of their lives?

[meow2u3]

6. Great idea. Question is, do they have the will to do it?

I say their assets should be frozen until they're convicted, so they can't afford to hire the high-powered lawyers that could get them off scot-free. Once the Wall Street entitlement brats are convicted, then their assets should be stripped.

[reformist2]

7. Here's what they do... they take 2% of people's money each year (and 20% of any profit).

Considering that most of them just ride the wave of the stock market up and down, they're basically in the business of siphoning off money. What's especially disturbing is that increasingly it's not just rich people giving them money, but mutual funds, pensions, etc.