As a UK taxpayer fed up with Fred Goodwins pension, I’ve mad a protest in the only effective way i can, by releasing a minor patch to Democracy 2
This patch:
Introduces a new dilemma. If the GDP falls, there is a chance of calls for banking bonuses to be curbed when companies make a loss. It has the expected effects on groups such as capitalists, the wealthy, socialists and trade unionists. It also is a new influence on the existing ‘brain drain’ situation.
This dilemma is data-only, so you can run it on any install of the game.
Cheers
I just wanted to mention that if you are relying on the media to get information on the “Banking Bonus” situation, then you’re uninformed. Stop thinking of it as a bonus. It’s COMMISSION. These people who are getting the commission they are getting are getting it because that is how they are paid.
At least one of the people in question has a $1 salary. $1. They are paid for performance only. If the company they are working for screwed up and over valued the things they were having their employees sell, then they screwed up and need to fix that. That does NOT give them, or the US Government the right to take away the earned commission that sales person made.
If their company needed a bailout, maybe that’s a sign their performance sucked? I’ve no problem with huge bonuses for good work. Its huge bonuses when you almost wrecked the company that are irritating, especially when it’s paid from my taxes.
Wrong. If the company needed a bailout, it’s a sign that what the company is selling is the wrong thing. It doesn’t mean the sales person did not live up to their contract. If the contract you have with a company is to sell lots of debt, you setup a price for that debt as a company then that sales person goes out and sells sells sells exactly what you want them to sell at exactly the price you want them to sell it at to the people you want them to sell it to, that sales person is upholding their end of the contract.
Just because the company itself F’d up doesn’t mean that salesperson did his job poorly. Withholding commission is like withholding a paycheck. It’s wrong. Like I said, just stop thinking of it as a bonus. It’s commission.
My Personal opinion based on 20/20 hindsight:
The person in charge of AIG? None.
A lower level manager implementing what the person in charge wants done? None.
My opinion as “just an IT guy on contract”:
The contract should be honored. Future contracts shouldn’t have golden parachutes. It seems like these people who get the higher up jobs in these companies are almost better off running the company into the ground so they can get an early retirement and millions to go away.
Doesn’t mean they have the right to break contract with an employee doing their job and doing it good. If you’re given a spec for a game, write your game to that spec and because the spec they provided says they want 3 alien races, you put in 3 alien races, is it right that they can refuse to pay you because they actually wanted a racing game instead?
bail them out, but a lot of the bailout monye will be paid in bonuses to the people who helped create the problem
don’t bail them out, let the company die.
I’m sure 99% of taxpayers would choose the later. So in a democracy, surely the taxpayer at least gets to dictate some terms?
Actually, I’m being very pedantic here and I apologize, but the taxpayer is not bailing them out. The government is bailing them out with future taxpayer money.
The taxpayer doesn’t have a direct say in this. That’s why it’s called a representative democracy. Taxpayers have a say when election time comes around. I’m against this too big to fail BS that has been spewed, but I’m not qualified to really discuss the merits of the bailout vs no bailout. Had these people been receiving weekly paychecks that added up to the same amount as these bonus’s there would have been no call for a 90% tax. There would have been calls for pay reductions or job eliminations, but no demand that the money be paid back.
It sucks that AIG put together a contract with the worker that was so bad for AIG, but that isn’t the employee’s fault.
The whole “Too big to fail” excuse is a red herring.
The problem wasn’t that AIG or other banks and financial institutions were too big, it’s that the problems they were having are so widespread. No bank in the world has been left untouched by the credit crunch that they’ve created for themselves. They all massively invested in these real estate instruments, basing value on anticipated sale value. So, when the housing bubble collapsed (duh!), their real estate investments all collapsed in value along with it. Suddenly, the amount of money backing up outstanding loans plummeted, and so they can’t issue new loans…
The main issue with the bailouts is the way that they’ve been structured. All the governments have done so far is to simply give these companies a ton of money. What should have been done is to attack the underlying problem directly. Governments could have, and should have, set up a system where they would purchase securities at an old (higher) price, and simply held on to them until the market straightens out some. Then, the banks would have been much healthier, and the government would have stayed out of private company ownership.
In my opinion, the way that the bailouts have been and are continuing to be structured is symptomatic of a larger issue. Politicians seem to have this need for control, so instead of dealing with the direct issue they go in and basically take over private companies. It’s silly I think.
We;ve got from the main point, that the company directors are responsable for if there company needs bailing out. The media choose poor old fred because he definately screwed up during the recession, made some terrible mistakes, and then got paid for it after he’d failed. This is also a general rich vs poor fight, in which the rich win, because they’re rich, and the poor are annoyed, mainly because they aren’t rich.
