"Our" New Paymasters?? Define, "Our"

Confusing "Us" and "Them"

Today's Wall Street Journal is running a house editorial decrying government wage controls on the top 175 executives at seven companies that are still using money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program ("TARP").

The title of the piece?

"Our New Paymasters: wage controls are politically easier than genuine reforms."

I can see how if you're one of the 175 affected executives, it would certainly seem like the government was your new paymaster.

But where does "our" come in?

"Our" presumes an "us."

"Us," of course, would be the 99.9999% of Americans who don't make millions annually running banks that were bailed out by the government, and are being sustained even now by free money from the Federal Reserve.