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The story
A Nikkei report that senior executives at Goldman Sachs are pulling in bonuses on the scale of $500 million (roughly ¥79 billion) became a hot topic on 5ch. Against the backdrop of the sharp sell-off in AI semiconductor stocks and moves to fund data-center firm CoreWeave, attention turned to how the firm itself makes its money. In the thread, opinions clashed head-on — some saw the payout as fair compensation for brutal workloads, others as runaway capitalism fueling inequality — showing how the same facts can be read in opposite ways.
Why Goldman Sachs handed out a ¥79 billion bonus — a London x Tokyo conversation
AI semiconductor stocks sold off, sending Japan’s stock market into turmoil. Attention also turned to the finances of U.S. data-center operator CoreWeave. Looking back at the U.S. financial institutions backing CoreWeave’s funding and their earnings reports, we also dig into the strategy behind Goldman Sachs, where executives are receiving bonuses of $500 million (roughly ¥79 billion).
Continued 2026/10/16
Source: nikkei.com / Original article here
What people said
We need to actually fix wealth redistribution.
These are people who've been grinding nonstop for decades, working late into the night every single day.
Why should any of that get redistributed to useless, lazy people?
Capitalism is a system that creates a gap between rich and poor, then works people to the bone using the desire to get rich and the fear of falling into poverty.
Setting aside how happy the people inside it actually are, this system is the optimal solution for driving scientific and technological progress.
That said, how big you make that rich-poor gap is debatable — but personally, ¥79 billion or so seems… fine?
Idiot. Under meritocracy, this is exactly how it's supposed to work.
Even taking home ¥30 billion a year, you're not exactly going to struggle.
A personal jet or something?
Buying up a few castles, probably.
The company and its investors must be making even more than what they pay out in compensation.
In other words, they're being worked insanely hard.
Exactly right.
The deals they bring in are trillion-yen scale.
They live in a completely different world.
Flying around the globe on a weekly basis, closing deals without fail.
Entire nations scramble over these guys' earnings,
and meanwhile ordinary people are stuck suffering through inflation.
This, exactly.
They're not out there working for the good of humanity.
Why's that?
Talented people get rewarded.
I think that's a wonderful thing.
If someone pours talented ability into pure self-interest and ends up throwing society into chaos, that's nothing but harmful.
Even so, that's way too lopsided.
Castles, huh — I wonder if Japan's castles will end up getting bought up too eventually.
Though it sounds like there aren't any privately-owned castles left in Japan.
Let's get him to buy the Imperial Palace.
That's just what capitalism is.
It absolutely can be helped.
Public funds were pumped in during the Lehman Shock, remember.
No, that's wrong.
That's neoliberalism.
Total idiot.
It's stock options (lol).
Not really, not at U.S. price levels.
What's the minimum wage at the bottom end, anyway?
Because the world doesn't run on rich people alone.
You clearly don't get it.
Even for elite graduates with top academic records and the physical and mental toughness to match, it's brutal enough that only 1 in 100 survives.
The only thing they share is the 'Golden' in the Golden Eagles (Rakuten's baseball team) (lol).
Rakuten actually builds infrastructure and runs a baseball team, so if anything it's the more legitimate company.
Background and key points of this debate
Bonuses at investment banks like Goldman Sachs are often tied not to base salary but to the scale of deals closed, and for senior executives a large chunk is paid out as stock options rather than cash. The thread’s point about ‘bringing in trillion-yen-scale deals’ reflects this kind of compensation structure. On the other hand, some pointed to how major financial institutions were bailed out with public funds during the 2008 financial crisis, arguing this isn’t money earned purely through self-reliant effort — so the debate doesn’t boil down to a simple ‘hard work vs. laziness’ split. Differences in tax burdens and price levels between Japan and the U.S. also mean people have very different intuitions about how much of that sum would actually end up as take-home pay, which likely contributed to the split in opinions on the thread.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “U.S. Goldman Sachs execs receive ¥79 billion bonuses.”
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