A flurry of recent articles, in particular, ones from the Washington Post, the Scotsman, and CBC have discussed the ethics behind corporations handing out bonus’ after receiving a government bailout. The question stands, is it ethical for organizations such as AIG to hand out millions of dollars in bonuses while at the same time receiving government bailouts?

Bonuses function as both a reward for past work as well as motivation for future work to be completed at a level exceeding expectations. When AIG received their bailout of 170 million from the US government, Edward M. Liddy’s said that the bonuses had to be paid out to retain top tier staff. Despite Liddy’s concern for his staff the government put AIG under a lot of pressure to restructure their method for handing out bonuses. At the same time AIG experienced many protests from concerned taxpayers. After all, the bailouts came in the form of taxpayer money, and do the taxpayers really want to hand out bonuses to employees who aided AIG on its path to being in the need for a government bailout?

Personally I do not believe that it is ethical of companies, such as AIG to  hand out bonuses after receiving a government bailout. Bonuses should come from excess funds incurred by the organization over the previous financial year; if they do not have any money to give out, then there should be no bonuses. I do not find it ethical that taxpayers, many having recently lost their jobs, are indirectly paying for the bonuses with no say in how large of a bonus each employee is to receive.