Wall Street ‘fat cats’ pocketed $26.7 billion last year in bonuses, a sum—according to a report published Wednesday—more than twice the amount earned by the 1,085,000 Americans who work full-time at the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
According to report author Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project at the Institute of Policy Studies, if that $26.7 billion was instead paid to minimum wage workers, the economic ripple effect would have grown the United State’s Gross Domestic Product by about $32.3 billion.
Low-wage workers tend to spend nearly every dollar they make to meet their basic needs, such as on groceries or utilities. “Every extra dollar going into the pockets of low-wage workers, standard economic multiplier models tell us, adds about $1.21 to the national economy,” Anderson explains.
By contrast, she notes, every extra dollar pocketed by high-income Americans—who “can afford to squirrel away a much greater share of their earnings”—only adds about 39 cents to the GDP.
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT