Just pocket change for your average Wall Street worker

Just pocket change for your average Wall Street worker

At the end of 2014 there were 1,007,000 Americans who worked full-time at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. The annual combined earnings of all of those full-time minimum wage workers is around $14 billion. Sounds like a lot money, doesn't it? It isn't. Before taxes, those minimum wage workers are pulling down $15,000 a year, and likely aren't receiving a bonus for their hard work.

Contrast those earnings with those who work on Wall Street, who on average had a base wage of $190,970 in 2013. Pretty good work if you can get it. But that base wage is just a part of the picture.

The amount of money handed out for bonuses to 167,800 Wall Street employees at the end of 2014 was $28.5 billion. You read than right: $28.5 billion. Bonuses on Wall Street for 167,800 people were more than double the amount of total money paid to more than 1 million minimum wage workers.

To put $28.5 billion in perspective:

The bonus pool is so large it would be far more than enough to lift all 2.9 million restaurant servers and bartenders, all 1.5 million home health and personal care aides, or all 2.2 million fast food preparation and serving workers up to $15 per hour.

It's natural to think about that bonus pool and wonder how many lives could be changed if that money were not hoarded by the very rich. How many textbooks could that buy for our public schools? How much college tuition could that pay for? How many retirement accounts could that money fund? How much of our failing infrastructure could be repaired or replaced?

Yet the gap between the haves and the have-nots continues to grow, as you'll see below.