City workers salaries

Tojo_Ralph

studentphil wrote:

No, but city workers earn tens of thousands in extras.

And I know of some professional women in the city who earn twenties for extras. :whistle:

Imelda

My OH is one of those city workers, certainly doesn't earn £58m! but does get a 6 figure bonus. I wouldn't do his job for all the tea in China, long hours, stress of making the wrong trading call, being bullied by co-workers, not being able to sleep with worry. He will quit before 32 (or maybe even 3.20pm this afternoon...)
I also work in the City and although I have similar qualifications and knowledge I have chosen to work in a less stressful environment and earn considerably less as a result. It also means I can spend a lot more time on here....

Markyt

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet, but City / finance workers make a significant tax contribution to the economy - it's something like 10% of the workforce giving 17% of the total tax paid.

peter999

ben500 wrote:

No it's not unique but the wealth that bearing this pressure and still functioning above average yields for the employer far far ofsets the wage.

Yawn.

A few people work in industries where there is a lot of money floating about, most people do not. They are making money off vast amounts of pension/company/government assets.

It's nothing to do with amount of work or pressure.

It's not a fair world.

peter999

reduceditem

Hi everyone. I've read through all the posts in this thread. I'm not convinced that anyone has tackled the moral question that the OP is trying to bring up. peter999 is the closest in post # 66.
A common theme so far has been for people to talk about pressure v reward or knowledge v reward. Neither experiencing pressure or having knowledge amount to a justification for financial reward. Also trying to show that you are cleverer than someone by a series of questions and answers does not tackle the real issue.
I am not speaking without experience when I say that large financial companies are almost entirely SELF-SERVING. Their reason for existence is to make as much money as possible. It's not surprising therefore that they offer high financial reward to those who help them achieve this...all perfectly logical, but morally questionable. Why? Because it is simple greed, almost devoid of humanity and reality. In fact its the 'coal-face' of the type of greed which is gobbling up our world as fast as possible.
Everybody has their own idea about what is right and wrong and everyone has morals because morality is about what is right and what is wrong. We all bend and break morals (I'm as guilty as anyone) but ultimitely we must align ourselves with the direction of our moral compass (horrible phrase, I know)

My moral compass points in the opposite direction from these companies and I'm glad that it does.

Gabriel-Ernest

Good post, Reduceditem - at what level does a salary become greed? If commodities traders, for example, stop working because of ethics, then the producers AND the consumers globally would suffer. Like it or not, the financial industry is the 'backbone' of the country - it doesn't excuse everything they do, of course, but I suspect we'd all suffer in unexpected ways if they upped sticks and simply stopped - we'd have no pensions for starters so the elderly would probably starve.

So you do voluntary work or work for minimum wage, yes? At what point would you consider a salary unjustifiable for yourself?

quidsinquentin

reduceditem wrote:

Hi everyone. I've read through all the posts in this thread. I'm not convinced that anyone has tackled the moral question that the OP is trying to bring up. peter999 is the closest in post # 66.
A common theme so far has been for people to talk about pressure v reward or knowledge v reward. Neither experiencing pressure or having knowledge amount to a justification for financial reward. Also trying to show that you are cleverer than someone by a series of questions and answers does not tackle the real issue.
I am not speaking without experience when I say that large financial companies are almost entirely SELF-SERVING. Their reason for existence is to make as much money as possible. It's not surprising therefore that they offer high financial reward to those who help them achieve this...all perfectly logical, but morally questionable. Why? Because it is simple greed, almost devoid of humanity and reality. In fact its the 'coal-face' of the type of greed which is gobbling up our world as fast as possible.
Everybody has their own idea about what is right and wrong and everyone has morals because morality is about what is right and what is wrong. We all bend and break morals (I'm as guilty as anyone) but ultimitely we must align ourselves with the direction of our moral compass (horrible phrase, I know)

My moral compass points in the opposite direction from these companies and I'm glad that it does.

Quite agree.

It's interesting that everyone has an opinion on MSE about these people, but few actually know anyone in these jobs. In fact there even seems to be some grudging admiration.

I know two people who work in this area in London. Neither is in a top position but both earn vast amounts compared to the average. And they are both tw*ts. If they were not boyfriend/husbands of close friends we'd have nothing to do with them.

No-one I know likes them, (except that when they arrive they've always got something expensive as a present). They have no redeeming qualities that I can think of, and as reduceditem says, their sole goal in life is to make/produce money/profit. I always find it difficult to deal with them, as they're so immoral - they have not the slightest compunction about treading on anyone (even their OH's). They make Gordon Gekko look tame.

The stories they tell are always about deals or effects of deals, or how they've just sh*t on another worker - colleague or opponent. These people would let you die for a profit - seriously.

If these are not the top of the tree, imagine what the ones at the top are like, and what they'd do for a profit.

magyar

I also think Reduceditem's post is a good one. The problem is that morality is not something which has a tangible value. I don't mean that to be facetious, what I mean is that the global economy is based upon assets which can be valued. Some are tangible, like corn/steel/oil and some are intangible like futures/bonds/interest rates.

The net result is that morality has to be either enforced, either
- by regulation, which we see in most countries;
- by the individual, which generally fails (e.g. it look legislation to stop the slave trade); or
- by creating substitutes for morals (e.g. carbon trading systems).

Ultimately unless you have massive consumer shifts, you need something like this to inject 'morality' into the global economy.

In the same way as we currently have carbon trading systems to disassociate the production of carbon with the reduction of it, then we could similarly envisage other system which deal with problems man is inflicting on the world.

quidsinquentin

Not sure I agree with the analysis. Reduceditems point (I think) is that what they do has no value to society at all - possibly the reverse. These people do not work to produce anything except money. They do not produce a service to society or to fulfill a need, except greed.

nearlyrich

I know people who run companies who know nothing about business, luck? skill? who knows, good luck to them if they have the bottle to strike out and have a go.