It's not a bonus

Insularity - when we loose awareness of the wider world.  Wall St. Bonuses, the wider world sees greedy selfish employees getting a lot of money as reward for loosing a lot of money.  The truth is a bonus of some amount for most employees on Wall St., is part and parcle of the expected compensation.  Most of these men and women are paid a salary less than 50% of what they and their employers expect will be their total annual compensation for satisfactory job performance.  Some smaller part of that bonus is in fact based on individual performance.  But most of the bonus is just a way for the employer to delay paying compensation for 13 or more months to it's employees. Yup, those employees do earn more than the average worker in the US.  But most of them work very long hours. I mean a 60 hour work week is a week where the employee had emergency surgery.  And it is alwo true they are amongst the best and the brightest of our workforce.  Wall St. as an industry, just doesn't see the word bonus, for the rest of the country's workers is a rare and unexpected reward for extraordinary achievement, not deferred compensation for satisfactory performance.  Imagine the outcry if a factory floor worker making $10 per hour opens his pay envelope and sees he only made $8 per hour.  Same deal.  But Wall St. I urge you, change the name, don't call it a bonus, call it "the part of your salary we should have paid you last year, but got you to wait a long time to get"  Because that is what it is.

I know, it ain't gonna happen.