Working class wages have been stagnant since 1973. But
for the bankers and the capitalists, compensation has been beating inflation. “Things
are shifting back to where they were before,” one expert told the Wall Street
Journal.
Total Wall Street compensation has hit a new record
of $135 billion. The average pay of a Wall Street manager is now $141,000, 3
percent higher than last year. Some are really raking it in: Bank of America
CEO Brian Moynihan saw a 67 percent rise in his total compensation last year. An
average worker makes around $39,000 per year.
In 2010, Congress put some restrictions on pay for
the top executives at bailed-out companies, but that was limited to bonuses,
not salary. Wall Street has worked around these restrictions by increasing base
salaries of executives to compensate for smaller bonuses.
Wall Street produces nothing, yet makes billions of
dollars each year off the unpaid labor of the working class around the world.
