Congressional Help Wanted Sign: Only Lowest Talent Need Apply

I've been listening to the political braying about the bonuses paid to AIG employees and the rush to condemnation. This morning I saw this headline:

House sets up vote today on taxing AIG bonuses
House sets vote today on taxing employee bonuses at AIG, other companies with big bailouts

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House is scheduled to vote today on a bill that would levy a 90 percent tax on bonuses paid to employees with family incomes above $250,000 at companies that have received at least $5 billion in government bailout money.

"We figured that the local and state governments would take care of the other 10 percent," said Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee. [emphasis added]

You know what's missing from all of this? One word about the individual performance of the employees who did receive the bonuses, many of whom were apparently hired specifically to figure out how to cut losses and limit damages. Granted, there is a bit of a problem with getting this info since there are people out there threatening to harm these employees, their spouses, and children (and I hope you people making these threats are rounded up, shot, and dumped in an ocean like you should be - you are a cancer in this society). But our politicians have had no problem forging ahead without that information. They got bonuses?! Clearly they don't deserve them, even if they did steer their portfolios into millions of dollars of losses instead of billions of dollars of losses!

So the likely result is that the only people who will take these jobs will be those who are least qualified, least talented, and least proven, because if you are otherwise talented enough to land a contract with a large potential bonus, you certainly should not apply at AIG, or any other institution that received significant amounts of bailout money. Go somewhere else where your abilities will be fairly compensated in terms of that particular labor market, and let AIG et al. succumb to government management, just like most everything else the government has its hands in, which almost always is failure.

$165 million, when you divide it by $182 billion, that being the amount of bailout money AIG has received thus far, is tiny percentage. It is a small amount to pay to those who know how to steer their struggling portfolios away from even bigger losses, but, hey - it's better to let ignorance and envy steer the ship while the talented paddle away in the lifeboats, right?