The Best $165 Million Ever Spent

As we all are well aware, there is a huge firestorm surrounding the payment by AIG of $165 million in bonuses to the executives of its financial services division, the creators of those wonderful credit default swaps that have resulted in AIG owing orders of magnitude more money than what the company is worth. And, as we all are well aware, that $165 million was paid for by U.S. government bailout money i.e. taxpayer money i.e. our money.

Never has $165 million in taxpayer money been better spent.

For decades, we the greater American public have uttered hardly a whisper of protest while being raped by many (not all, to be fair) of the titans of the capitalist system. We have funneled billions of dollars into our ex-VP's corporation for the rebuilding of a country we should never have destroyed. We have spent millions on building logging roads so that timber companies can stripmine our national forests. Medicare is paying full retail for prescription drugs for no better reason than that the pharmaceutical companies have better lobbyists than the taxpayers. We have spent tens, if not hundreds, of billions on cleaning up the toxic sludge left behind at Superfund sites. We have stood quiet while well-paying jobs were outsourced to foreign sweatshops, so that the company's stock would go up and the CEO could afford a new place in the Hamptons. We have willingly assented to allowing coporations to evade hundreds of billions of dollars in tax obligations by renting post office boxes in the Bahamas and calling it their headquarters.

Can you believe that last one? But god forbid that the IRS acquire some muscle and teeth and some new rules that would force these corporations to help pay for some of the infrastructure that has enabled them to do so well. Our freedom would be threatened!

I have always been amazed by the success that conservatives have had in convincing us of their Norman Rockwell version of the very wealthy--that they are people who have worked hard, come up with a great idea, implemented their vision, left society the better for their efforts and have been justly rewarded. The fact and extent of their wealth is a function of the value that they have added to the economy. Okay, for many of the very well-off, perhaps even the majority, this version of events does in fact hold more-or-less true. This is how capitalism is supposed to work, and very frequently does.

But it is also far too easy in this country to become very very rich without adding any value to the economy. Far far too many have reaped fabulous rewards by doing the exact opposite. A significant subset of our economic ruling class has managed to become very well-off by destroying wealth. This is not new for 2008-2009. This has been happening all along, right under our noses, and the response of our elected officials has been to make it ever easier for them to do so, yet all too many people are more worried that the government is going to take away our guns than about our government's complicity in the robber barons' destruction of our 401ks.

Which is why the AIG bonuses are so absolutely wonderful. Because now, finally, FINALLY, the masses have learned that the economic ruling class does not consist solely of an enlightened and motivated group of people who are creating great products, creating jobs for Americans, and letting the wealth that they have created trickle down to the rest of us. No, now we realize that there is a huge subset of them that would happily send the economy into the toilet if by so doing they would be able to afford to hire the Rolling Stones to play at their 60th birthday party. And there always have been. And finally people are pissed off about it. Probably still not pissed off enough, but pissed off nonetheless. And maybe a miracle will occur and our government will start doing its job and begin to actually regulate corporate America the way it should have been all along.

And if it only cost $165 million for this to happen, it will be the bargain of the decade.