Here’s a Wall Street whopper for you. Goldman Sachs, where former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was once CEO, switched from an investment bank to a bank holding company last year so it could qualify for $10 billion in bailout funds. They then spent $6.5 billion on bonuses for their financial staff. Goldman’s recklessness is one of several scandalous stories of Wall Street giants abusing the bailout at the expense of taxpayers and the economy. But in this case, Goldman’s excessive spending has had an immediate and profound impact on the American work force.
Goldman Sachs is one of the largest owners of Burger King, which employees about 360,000 workers nationwide. The average Burger King salary is $14,000 a year–three grand less than the federal poverty line. According to the SEIU and a new campaign from Brave New Films, had Goldman used the $6.5 billion blown on bonuses to help Burger King’s woefully underpaid employees, each BK worker would have received an extra $18,000 last year
Meanwhile, in the UK the bad news of workers at the BMW mini plant losing their jobs, of Woolworths closing down is supposed to be balanced by the “good” news that KFC is expanding. As if trading in your (reasonably) highly paid job doing skilled work for frying chicken nuggets is a good thing.