It’s more than a matter of appearances; it’s about taking responsibility. CEO’s of the Big 3 U.S. automakers take expensive private jets to Washington to ask for billion-dollar bailouts of their struggling companies. Bank presidents and other top executives look at million-dollar bonuses at the same time their companies are laying off employees.

What is wrong with this picture?

It’s not that these executives aren’t important to their companies, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the lavish perquisites that the public might accept when a company is doing well aren’t going to set as well when people are losing their jobs and executives are coming to Washington with their hands out. It’s like someone wearing a diamond ring and a fur coat while looking for a handout on a street corner.

President-elect Barack Obama still has to prove himself as a president, but there’s no doubt that he is a smart politician, and as such, he knows when something just looks bad. Earlier this week, Obama told an interviewer that the auto executives “are a little tone deaf to what’s happening in America right now” and suggested that big-business executives forgo any bonuses this year to show their willingness to share the struggle of many of their employees.

Hopefully, the nation’s highest paid executives understand what their workers are going through right now and realize that giving up their bonuses could at least be a show of solidarity with those who are far worse off than they are.

The salaries and bonuses that have become common for top executives in recent years were starting to raise some eyebrows even when the economy was strong. During the current difficult times, they are an insult not only to their struggling employees, but also to the taxpayers who are being asked to shore up companies that have made questionable business decisions.

When the people who made those decisions climb into their private jets or pocket a multi-million dollar bonus, it’s no surprise that both their employees and taxpayers do a slow burn. Should taxpayers help companies that can afford such excess?

Appearances are one thing, but the abuses by many in the nation’s largest investment and banking firms goes far deeper. Even more concerning is that such disregard for fiscal excesses helps feed the “class vs. class” philosophy that some in the United States are trying so hard to promote.