Re: Had enough yet?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Phil Pennock <phil.pennock () spodhuis org>
Date: April 2, 2009 9:34:59 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Re: [IP] Had enough yet?

On 2009-04-02 at 20:58 -0400, David Farber forwarded:
>     The Merrill bonuses were 22 times larger than those paid by AIG
> ($3,620 million versus $165 million).

The CIA World Factbook entry for the USA:
 https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html

lists a US population of:
 307,212,123 (July 2009 est.)
and there's an older copy which lists:
 303,824,646 (July 2008 est.)

So between $11.78 and $11.91 for every US resident has just been paid by
in bonuses to one company, from money collected as taxes?

Again from the 2009 WFB:
 Labor force:
        155.2 million (includes unemployed) (2008 est.)
 Unemployment rate:
        7.2% (December 2008 est.)

So the employed labor force can be estimated at 144 million; the 2007
figures from the 2008 WFB are 153.1m force, 4.6% unemployed, for an
employed labor force of 146 million.

So $24.78 per employed person, 2007, or $25.13 using the shrunk labor
force.

Call it roughly $25 per earning tax-payer.  Of tax money.


The AIG figures didn't upset me too much.  It was mildly irritating, but
corruption is so commonplace that less than 0.1% of the money they got
going to bonuses ... it wasn't worth getting excited over, given all the
other pork barrel excesses we see.

But this ... this irritates me.

-Phil




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