Bonus

There is one thing everyone seems to agree upon since the first credit crisis this century. The rewards for top bankers and top executives have been unjust. They were exorbitantly high, exorbitantly manyfold, and most of all without any meaningful results. Shame.

Therefor these rewards, salaries and bonuses must be pruned down. Not only because our prime minister Balkenende would then earn less than the rest. It's really not just for his ego. He is one of the pack even if his name is not on top in the Quote 500. Just give it a maximum. All top bankers should earn the same. You'd expect that this proposal would be unanimously voted in. Even internationally.

But no. Many negotiators for the USA and Britain at the latest G20 thought it a bad idea. Leave the bonuses as is. They would disappear underground otherwise. You'd get illegal bonus dealers, bonus smuggle, bonus addicts and an endless war on bonuses.

Would it really make a difference, if you could forbid these exorbitant rewards? Except morally, that is? How many human beings might actually be paid from such a bonus? Let's count. A one million bonus could pay for ten typical managers, or you could hire forty secretaries for a year, or maybe you could keep eighty mothers on welfare. For ten million you could buy ten times as many people. If there are a thousand bankers who each get a million too much, they misdeal eighty thousand welfare mothers. And for the three hundred million ING held in reserve for rewards one could indeed avoid three to five thousand layoffs.

The top five of bankers in the US of A divided ninety million dollars among themselves, last year. That is seven thousand welfare mothers. Would all these mothers fit in their five pleasure estates with pool?

But of course that's not how it works. Not exactly anyway. If all went well the top earners would also pay a hefty tax on their bonuses. If that would be a fifty percent income tax, then fifty percent of mentioned mothers on welfare would also profit. Or at least the civil servants who would be paid from that tax. Bonus catchers would be a welcome help in fattening the treasury. Each on his or her own would actually add an exordinate amount to our common wealth.

It's another matter that the tax will seldom come close to fifty percent in practice. Indeed, most of the moneys probably disappear in tax havens and secret back pockets. That's slightly unfortunate.

But what interests me much more, is that there are obviously parties who are prepared to pay these bonuses in the first place. And the rewards are also paid when businesses go entirely to waste, because of the deals made. If you were a cynic, you might think that this was exactly the purpose of the whole exercise. Who pays these rewards? And if they are willing to shell out such sums, how much profit do they make for themselves? Who are these people?

Suppose that top executives merely made a deal amongst themselves, and hollowed out businesses and economy to reward just each other. Wouldn't that be a simple case of theft? And if there really are others who pay them consciously, aren't then these others eluding justice? Should we not regard as a crime exactly the destruction, plunder and sucking dry of our economic livelihood, instead of the bonus you might receive for accomplishing these things?