Wall Street banksters raked in almost $27 billion dollars in bonuses last year, yet Congress can't even get it together to raise the minimum wage. According to the New York State Comptroller's office, the gamblers on Wall Street raked in $26.7 billion dollars in bonuses in 2013 – 15 percent more than they did the previous year. That's enough money to double the paycheck of every single minimum wage worker in our country.
Our economic system is so completely broken that banksters got another pile of cash after wrecking our economy while millions of real working people put in long, hard hours for paychecks that leave them in poverty. And, this keeps happening even though it does not make a lick of economic sense. Every extra dollar paid to a low-wage worker generates about $1.20 for our economy. When that dollar goes to line the pockets of the super-rich instead, it adds less than 40 cents to our GDP. The banksters and the corporate elite can afford to stash their money away in foreign countries and high-return risky investments, while real working Americans have to spend every single dollar just to get by.
If that $26.7 billion in bonuses went to the working poor, instead of the gamblers on Wall Street, our economy would grow by more than $32 billion. That makes a whole lot more sense than gifting billions to the very people who crashed our economy. It's time to fix this broken system, to stop rewarding the people who gamble with our economy, and time to put this money back into the hands of the real working people in America.
