The average American may earn something like 125k in 30 months. 700k in exchange for a small chance of 30 months in jail probably sounds like a good deal to a purely rational and amoral person.
The average executive in a high money industry like film is clearing a lot more than that and is looking for any and all advantages that come from the position. It can come in any form from having a company car to getting an executive producer credit on some show they actually didn't produce. You're naive if you actually think this doesn't happen everyday in the film industry / culture. That's just business and it's part of the free market. I don't see how any of this is any business of the feds.
But it's not usually the average American in a position to receive bribes like that. 700K for an executive might not be a good deal for most.
Depends on the probability of being caught, which is usually extremely low.
True, but at those levels the marginal utility of money is much lower than 30 months of your life. Clearly some people take the chance, I wouldn't.
The average American likely isn't in a position to make business spending decisions that would warrant a 700k bribe, though.
Except that he has to return the 700k, Pay additional fine of 50K , go to Jail for 30 months and not to mention that his reputation is ruined and he will never get another high profile white collar job. Yea, totally worth it.
In retrospect yes. If you can prove the probability he would be caught is low enough, then you could probably show it was worth the risk. I don't know what that probability is, but based on how rare executives are actually nabbed over this sort of thing I'm not so sure we can say with certainty he made a bad bet.
Edit: Half-awake, math wrong, ignore me.
If 700k - p_caught * (value of 30 months of your life + 700k + reputation + fines) is greater than 0, a rational and amoral person should execute the trade.
Am I reading your comment correctly? GP says that, over 30 months, the average American makes $125k. Given a $68k per year average that you provide, that's $170k after 30 months, which is even more than GP estimated. Even if the average were $40k/year, that's still $100k after 30 months.
Said they made "something like." I'm sorry for not making it clearer it was meant to be a rough guideline not a precise number.
Looks like jjulius used 20 months in a year.
I used 12 months in a year and went up to 20 months, too tired to realize that they were talking about 2.5 years instead of 1.5. Original comment edited, my mistake, let's all go back to sleep now.