Entitled "Off The Deep End," the study crunched the numbers on those bonuses and compared them to the total earnings of all full-time minimum wage workers in 2014. The gap between the two is drastic:
The study notes that those giant bonuses have only been getting bigger:
Wall Street bonuses rose 3 percent last year, despite a 4.5 percent decline in industry profits. The size of the bonus pool was 27% higher than in 2009, the last time Congress increased the minimum wage.
The author, Sarah Anderson, directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. She goes on to advocate for not only regulating those bonuses of Wall Street bankers but also raising the minimum wage, explaining why and how both actions would have a positive effect on the economy:
...every extra dollar going into the pockets of a high-income American only adds about $0.39 to the GDP. By contrast, every extra dollar going into the pockets of low-wage workers adds about $1.21 to the national economy.