I know that just about 99.999% of the people out there are going to disagree with me 100% on this post, but hear me out. I am not mad at AIG for giving out bonuses to their employees. (I am mad at them for taking the bailout money to begin with, but that’s another topic for another time.) Why am I not mad? Well, I’ll break this out by points:
Point One: Basic Math. $165 million in bonuses, $170 billion in bailout. Revisiting 2nd grade math, I’ve deduced that we’re talking about little more than one-tenth of one percent (0.1%) of the money given to AIG that was used for bonuses.
Point Two: Cost Of Doing Business Expense. The bonuses paid to the employees were contractual. That is, when they went to work for AIG, they entered into a contractual agreement with AIG that they would be given these bonuses. As far as AIG was/is concerned, they are spending 0.1% of the money given to them to operate business as usual.
Point Three: Stimulus. Chances are that these guys who are making this money are going to do something with it. Maybe, remodel a house, take a vacation, or maybe just let the money sit in a bank. The point is, short of just liquidating their bonus to cash to keeping it in their mattress, that money is going to trickle into the economy. Isn’t that private sector stimulus?
Point Four: Quality Work Force Retention. If these employees had not been given their bonuses, they could have legally sued AIG for breech of contract. On top of that, if the bonuses were taken off the table, the work force could have left their positions at AIG (taking their working business knowledge and expertise with them) to work for a non-government funded agency, leaving AIG short on experienced workers.
Any first year business student will tell you: the most valuable, and expensive to replace, commodity that any company has is the people that work for it. That is why businesses offer incentives (often called bonuses) to keep the quality people that they have. I can almost all but promise you, in the long run it would have cost AIG more to replace these people than pay them incentives. (Are there workers out there who get too much money that aren’t worth their salt? Sure… but they’re often found in government run agencies. Give AIG enough time with big government and it will be loaded with these dead beats.)
And Point Five: It’s none of my business. It’s no more my business what you’re take home pay is then it is theirs.
So what has actually been accomplished by the government (yet again) turning the private sector in the bad guy? They’ve made a lot of people angry at AIG and… well… that’s pretty much it.
Even if the workers were to give these bonuses back, would this improve your life at all? No. Would somehow that 0.1% of the bailout money go to better your financial situation? No. All they’ve done is played with the emotions of the American people, and made them angry to the point were the people are turning to the government with pitch forks and axes crying out for “fairness?” when we should be turning against the government and this ridiculous spending with said pitch forks and axes.
You (those 99.99% who are probably disagreeing with me as you read) are being played like a fiddle by the government to hate the private sector to give the government more authority to get their fingers into more businesses. You are helping to grow a bigger government. This is not a good thing. You’ve been reduced to nothing more than a petty, angry, bitter people who seems to have to interest in “getting even” (thanks to class envy) that being “fair”.
If you want to be angry about wasteful spending, be angry about wasteful spending. The biggest culprit is the government itself. And I promise you that Obama, Nancy, Harry, Barney have spent way more than $165 Million of our tax payer dollars on themselves as some form of “bonus”.
March 17, 2009
Thoughts