If 'The City' does well the country does well?
- Thread starter jsmoke
- Start date
In simple terms, it trickles down to other millionaires who don't pay all their taxes on it, then the Govt. gets really angry at them for being very, very naughty so takes it out on the poor people. It seems to be a very good system as no-one has really done anything about stopping it up to now.
The stigma around bank bonuses currently amuses me. If a particular person receives his/her bonus it will mean he/she is actually doing well hitting their particular targets that they are contractually obliged to hit and therefore generating profit for the bank.
It's the guys who aren't getting their bonuses we want to worry about...
Soldato
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- 29 Oct 2002
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somewhere between 250,000 and 350,000 are employed in the COL financial sector (not including the accountants and solicitors that get work from the sector).
the people inhabit one of the most prosperous regions on earth per capita so the income tax received to the treasury is massive.
the people inhabit one of the most prosperous regions on earth per capita so the income tax received to the treasury is massive.
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Associate
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- 6 Feb 2008
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Whenever people moan to me about their managers, etc at work getting bonuses and having a nice car I always tell them that if they don't like it, they should become the manager themselves and then they can have the nice car and bonuses.
The number of times they turn around and say "but they have to put up with lots of stick" or "they are good at selling the product though and I don't think I could do that" or "but I don't have the right qualifications" amazes me.
The number of times they turn around and say "but they have to put up with lots of stick" or "they are good at selling the product though and I don't think I could do that" or "but I don't have the right qualifications" amazes me.
Just like RBS made a huge loss and still paid out massive bonuses.
To be honest i have no time for people in finance and banking, lowest of the low leeches.
Agreed, also annoys me when people are just purely jealous that someone has a highly respectable well paying job and try to justify their lack of career achievements by saying inane comments like "but I'm from a working class background", "it is not what you know but who you know", "It is just an old-boys club".
All the CEOs/top managers/IBs etc. that earn high salaries (e.g. 200k> more + bonus) who I know personally achieved that by working from the bottom up, from a working class family at the poverty line. They all share similar traits:
- All are very smart, very adaptable, outright intelligent people
- All are very hard working, to the point of workaholics and will enjoy spending most of their evening and weekends working (normally split between their actual work and side projects).
- Are confident, well spoken, often a slight arrogance that helps them succeed. Good communication skills and ability to debate, reason, and defend their PoV.
- Gave 110% to everything they do from when they were at primary school. They studied hard to get their first class honours etc. Since they were smart and hard working a lot of them finished school/uni/phd early.
- They made their own luck through perseverance , positive attitude, not getting caught up in failures but focusing on the next success. E.g., one of them has set up 3 start-ups all of which have failed but he picked himself up and his 4th attempt quickly succeeded in making him a millionaire. Most people would have given up on the first or second failure!
The people that do the complaining typically have these values:
- Try to do the minimum effort to succeed. Never over deliver, merely provide what is requested.
- View the working day as a strict 8 hour limit, when 5pm hits they race home.
- View work has a boring necessity rather than a fun challenge.
- Would rather drink beer with friends than try to solve a difficult problem.
- Count down the days until their next vacation
- View taking a dump at work as winning 10 minutes of the companies time.
- Work out how much money they earned during their 15min fag break
- Will only work overtime if they get paid additional money
- Hates when a project deadline is due and longer hours are required (winners love the challenge and experience of working furiously to meet tight deadlines)
Don't get me wrong, many of the traits in the second list a natural and I have many of them (im counting down the days until I honeymoon in Maui, my boss was in Maui at Christmas and took a laptop to work form the hotel for most of it, there is the difference!). But that is what separates me from people with highly successful careers. I do however have enough of the traits in the first list to put me into a career that is paying in the top 5-10%.
Also it is not obvious that being the type of person in the first list is really a positive. I don't think being a workaholic is healthy.
A simpler questions is do you work to live or live to work. Most successful people are of the latter, while most of the rest of us are of the former.
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This just simply isn't true.
We should be worried about the people (or companies) that are setting the bonuses.
I've no problem with individuals earning a bonus, for reaching targets.
I do have a problem with companies setting huge bonuses, to encourage reckless or risky behaviour, in order to meet targets - to such an extent that when things go wrong, the public has to bail an entire system out (or at least a sizeable percentage of it), to stop the countries economy from going down the pan. I do also then have a problem with large bonuses still being paid (by companies that were bailed out), for achieving much reduced targets (and even just for reducing losses), meanwhile most 'normal' people are seeing their pay frozen, and bonuses cut, by companies who're trying to watch every penny.
Some of these banks and bankers seem to live in a different world. Oh, but they're good at their jobs and if we didn't pay them properly, then they'd go elsewhere. Well they're clearly not all that good - because if any of the rest of us were involved in a business that performed as poorly as some banks have recently, then we'd be out of a job - not waiting on a tidy bonus.
Just to be clear, this isn't a rant at people earning a big wage, or a big bonus. Fair play to them. It's a rant at a system which seems to now operate out with the normal expectations of any other business. Some people now seem to expect to be paid a big bonus, because they're a 'top banker', not because they've actually been part of a top performing business.
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Would like to see them say that if the farmers shut down and refused to create food for us.
Life can and will go on without bankers, the same can't be said about farmers.
total ********, the country doesnt have to do well for the bankers to make money. Just look at this ****ing ******** bailout, we taxpayers cough up BILLIONS !!!!! to save these useless ****s.
I am all for rewarding success and that if there is no incentive to get to the top then no one will bother.
But all british banks are totally screwed and heavily debt. The people running them are proven to be completely **** at their jobs.
Not only that they are criminal negligent or thieves, there need to be arrests made and seize their assets.
Not really...
for most of the non senior management earning big bonuses its simply a function of the P&L they generated (or can try and claim they generated)... i.e. traders, sales people etc.. can point at a figure that they directly contributed towards the bank earning and essentially expect to get a % of it...
for others (back office, IT types etc..) its going to be a more modest % of their salary and (like lots of careers) more geared towards a general perception of their performance by their managers
For senior executives it ought to be based on how well the bank is doing overall but then if banks as a whole are doing badly and you want to attract certain people to the role then the incentives are going to be more in line with making the bank do less badly than it would be doing otherwise
problem is that when the bank does badly paying large bonuses to senior people looks really really bad... also all the IT bods/ops people will still want some bonus to stop them from jumping ship and the hot shot trader or sales type who actually made the bank millions (despite the bank losing loads overall) is still going to want his percentage else he might as well go to a rival firm and make them more money
arguably if policies are made in favour of the interests of say 'the city' or the south east then yeah other regions with conflicting interests might not be so well off
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That's it really, something like 30% of tax revenues are from the unstable financial sector.
The City brings in revenue from other countries by selling knowledge I. E. It exports it's services and this revenue is really important.
If the UK was a closed system exports wouldn't matter but because we buy things/services from other countries having something we can sell is really important as this is how we essentially pay for these imports. This country doesn't have so many exports now, the City is a major one.