I’ve been thinking about parity lately. It’s hard not to when bankers are crying over salary caps of $500k a year while minimum wage (even with increases) is still far behind the actual cost of living.

If you or I were to rob a bank (no guns, no violence, just a scary note and the threat of violence) we’d be facing some serious jail time. But if you are a banker and you rob the treasury department with threats of violently collapsing the entire world economy, you don’t get jail time. You get TARP money. And you still get to hand out annual bonuses and bitch about salary caps.

Now if you or I had to apply for government assistance, there would be some serious investigation into our finances. If you own a car worth more than a couple thousand bucks ($5000 I think), you have to sell it and use up that money first. If you have stocks or bonds or a 401k even a prepaid funeral plan, you have to use that up first. Then maybe you can get some kind of government help. Maybe.

But if you’re a banker, and you’ve run your company into the ground, your own assets are safe. The government will not require you to sell off your vacation house and pump the proceeds back into the bank before writing a check. They won’t even require salary cuts or end bonuses (who the fuck gives out annual bonuses at failing companies anyways?)

Now the bankers are screaming that if you put restrictions on salary, you’ll run off all the top brains who will take their wads of cash and go elsewhere. Good riddance I say. But isn’t it both morally and fiscally responsible to subject failing businesses that receive government money to the same kinds of pressure and investigation that we subject poor people to?

But one of these things is not like the others. The mere act of having money makes you insulated from the requirements we place on every other person in the country. And that is not ok.