Nate Silver has been one of the bloggers I read more outspokenly against the new tax on bonuses for bailed out companies and in his recent post about it, he discusses some of the side-effects of the new legislation.

A senior engineer at General Motors, who shepherds the production of a new hybrid vehicle that will turn out to be a best-seller, shouldn’t get a bonus for that. Really?

Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan, who has managed his company’s assets adeptly and kept it mostly off the taxpayer’s dole, is no more deserving of a bonus than an AIG crook. Really?

An mid-level investment banker at Morgan Stanley, who works her butt off to persuade her bosses to facilitate a deal for a new wind-power company that turns out to be a big economic and environmental winner, should have her incentive compensation taxed at 90%. Really?

An administrative assistant at PNC, who is volunteering to work 70-hour weeks because of cutbacks in the company’s staff, deserves a Christmas Bonus — unless her husband happens to be a lawyer earning $250,000 per year, in which case it should be taken away. Really?

$500,000 in salary for an employee that performs badly is perfectly fine, but a $500,000 bonus for one who performs exceptionally well isn’t. Really?

I’m sensitive to these issues, and I don’t know a lot of the details of the bailout process. In fact, I’d even be willing to concede that this legislation probably should’ve been limited to AIG due to their brazen shamelessness with regards to public outcry about these outrageous bonuses.

That said, fuck the bonuses. Do senior engineers even get bonuses when their products succeed? None of the engineers I spoke to when I was studying to be an engineer gave me that impression. Do successful companies need to take bailout money? If not, then no one at JP Morgan deserves a bonus, because their company on the whole didn’t succeed. If JP Morgan is “mostly off the taxpayer’s dole” it’s still on the taxpayers dole, and it’s there because of their failures.

This is ignoring the strawman inherent to a lot of these discussions. A senior-engineer creating a hybrid vehicle; an investment banker facilitating a deal for a wind-power company; a woman working 70 hour weeks while her husband makes more than $250,000.

Have the American automotive companies really shown any interest in hybrid or electric vehicles? The electric vehicles that were shuttered nearly a decade ago despite consumer demand tell me otherwise. Maybe that will change given the new incentives enacted by the Obama administration, but do we really want to pay out of both hands by giving bonuses to people working because of these industry-wise incentives?

And if there were any low-level investment bankers financing wind-power, it probably wouldn’t need a multi-billionaire like T Boone Pickens to get the marginal level of support it currently has. If wind power doesn’t succeed it won’t be because a low-level investment banker — who should do his fucking job, I don’t get bonuses — okayed a wind-power company, but because the government forces the industry into making it a success.

The assistant working 70 hour work weeks — volunteering them no less — has a husband that makes a quarter million dollars. First off, why is she volunteering to work these arduous hours? Because she’ll get fired otherwise? I don’t think that’s legal. Because she wants the bonus? Her husband makes $250,000, does she really need that third big screen TV?

None of these examples are both realistic and sympathetic, at least not to me. Even if they were, those people all still have a job, and not just a job but a well-paying job. Which is a lot more than a lot of the people whose lives were destroyed by the myopic mismanagement of all of these companies.