There goes civilisation...

Greasy: "those whose English ain't good" = 40 per cent of members...
:-(

no high earners pay anything like 40 percent of their income anyway. it's much much less, as they can afford the good accountants. more like 10 percent...

yes - therein lies the contradiction - so agreed. damned if you do, etc... the endless paradoxes of advanced capitalism. we're defeated before we even set out the door.

have you read a book called "a very british coup" ? it's a good, albeit fictional, insight into how things work/would work in the event of a genuine socialist government getting elected.

unless the media, the banks, the lords, the royal family, the high-level civil service, the treasury, the military , secret service and the US govt. are also socialists, it gets nipped in the bud pretty quick.

If the state's income came from taxes, but these were a voluntary donation, how many self-satisfied high earners would be donating 40%?

I don't think an automatic deduction of income for the good of society grants you philanthropist status.

No, it doesn't grant me philanthropic status. But do you disagree that I have contributed in a tangible manner?

This isn't sarcasm, and I'm not being deliberately facetious -- but I'm curious as to what other people on this forum think their contributions to society have been. How do all the other people here justify their existence?

i

have you read a book called "a very british coup" ? it's a good, albeit fictional, insight into how things work/would work in the event of a genuine socialist government getting elected.

unless the media, the banks, the lords, the royal family, the high-level civil service, the treasury, the military , secret service and the US govt. are also socialists, it gets nipped in the bud pretty quick.

I have indeed read it, and to be honest, it's not entirely fictional. Ties in to the smear campaign on Harold Wilson being a Soviet plant. Leading protagonists of the putative coup included SAS founder David Stirling and various spooks - including Spycatcher author Peter Wright. Their chosen national leader was Earl Mountbatten - who was reportedly somewhat ambivalent about the idea. As, truth to tell, he was about many other things - if you catch my drift.
If anyone wants to learn more, Duncan Campbell has written extensively about this.u

^^I'm not disputing that a tangible contribution has been taken from you. Same goes for everyone except evaders.

I think there are people out there who do more 'giving back' than others, and it's got very little to do with money, apart from the fact that many of the more compassionate professions pay the shittest salaries.

Stuff I've done that I feel good about (which is easy to measure, due to direct feedback from members of society) includes voluntary work with Stroke survivors, clinical work with the communicatively impaired, teaching language students, caring for sick relatives, those days where I really nail the whole being a loving husband and/or father thing, (free) coaching for amateur sportspeople, cycling advocacy work, making conscious decisions as a consumer about which companies I'm giving money too, etc.

But I'm not trying to suggest it's a do-gooding competition. I wouldn't have a chance of winning anyway :) What I'm probably getting at is that the tangibility of social contributions is not measured in £££.

I struggle to think of paying 40% tax as my contribution to society.
(Thinking about it I am not really sure what my contribution is, which seems a bit shit.)
I resent paying the amount of tax that I do, as i feel it is not being put to good use.
I could afford to pay more tax and would love to, if I could feel it was being put to good social use as seems to work so well in many Scandinavian countries where a lot of my friends have a far better standard of living.
I envy their life style and I guess a part of that is the amount of tax they pay.

they get paid loads of money too

and have fit blond women and cheap furniture.

Fit women yes, not as many blonds as you would think but f***k me the furniture is not cheap.

there were shit loads of blondes where i was.. they all look very similar...

"2) People have accused me of naivety as to how risk should be managed

there is no discourse without an opinion.
i would be happy to be proved wrong, right or half right in arguing against your sentiments in person or on the forum.
and nobody said putting forward an opinion requires a set of moral values approved by the majority but if you wish to state an opinion you have to be prepared to either be wrong or for people to disagree with you.

i still think your grasp of the management of financial risks is lacking, i haven't seen any evidence to change my mind on that. I'm happy to be proved otherwise.

The banker-bashing that's been going on has been criticizing bankers for being incompetent and/or immoral.

Nobody denies the incompetence... they're all well aware that they've fucked up. I don't know what crack the risk managers were on when they thought it'd be a good idea to expose themselves to so much bad risk on such a large scale. 2 of my close friends who have lost their jobs because of it. One of my trader friends has had a nervous breakdown. My trader boyfriend (he's in equity derivs, btw, not credit, so he had nothing to do with the cause of this mess) is in a constant state of exhaustion because he's at work from 7:30 am to 10:30 pm 5 days a week. Believe me, the bankers know they've fucked up.

What I object to is the blanket accusation of "bankers are all wankers / greedy immoral bastards / selfish cunts".

I personally think financial markets are the biggest cosmic joke of all time... it's completely artificial and man-made, somebody went and made up a bunch of rules, and everybody decided to play along. Something is "worth" only as much as people are willing to pay for it. The markets are at the mercy of the mob. The mob is composed of individuals who want a good P&L, and don't think so far ahead as to consider the repercussions if their actions are multiplied by thousands or millions.

They're not immoral, they're just human. Human beings tend to learn their lessons after the mistakes have been made. For over a hundred years, people were burning coal, driving cars everywhere, not recycling, etc. Then we realized that carbon emissions are bad for the environment... oops. It's a bit too late, we're so deeply entrenched in carbon-emitting technologies that it's impossible to completely back out of it.

Somebody mentioned Primark earlier. Loads of people advocated the boycott of Primark after it emerged that they use sweatshop child labor. Key emphasis on after, not before. Do those people conduct background research into every single product they purchase to make sure it was produced ethically?

We as a species are inherently short-sighted, and we make some pretty whopping big mistakes. Often, people who suffer from those mistakes aren't the people who made them. It fucking sucks, but life isn't fair, it never has been, it never will be.

I admit that I have quite a Darwinian dog-eat-dog outlook on things. I come from a country that's seen some really tough times over the past couple hundred years. Very few things are given, everything must be earned and fought for, and one must always be prepared for the possibility that the good times won't last, for whatever reason. (Of course, when that happens, it's always somebody else's fault...)

In summary: bash some (not all) bankers for being incompetent if you like. But I do not believe their actions came out of deliberate disregard for the wellbeing of others. Their mistakes come out of a human failing that we are all guilty of.

Oh, and regarding greed: yes, the financial industry is fueled by greed. If you put money into a bank account that earns interest, or into a pension fund, hoping to earn something for doing nothing... that's greed.

food for thought.
i'm not thinking of a reply until tomorrow though as i'm laughing at family guy on the telly.

we're so deeply entrenched in carbon-emitting technologies that it's impossible to completely back out of it.

it most certainly isn't impossible.

it most certainly isn't impossible.

I'll believe it when I see it.

At the very least, it's proving to be extremely difficult, isn't it? Or have you already switched to using solar panels to power all your electronics at home?

[Edit] Btw... I'm not saying that because it's impossible, we shouldn't try. We should still try. No sense in making things any worse than they already are.

No, it doesn't grant me philanthropic status. But do you disagree that I have contributed in a tangible manner?

How do all the other people here justify their existence?

I hope you don't justify your existence on the basis of paying a tax levied by the government. It's not a voluntary thing. You get paid a certain wage and you pay various percentages of it back in tax. Sorry but just because you don't consider you "use" it doesn't mean you're doing something charitable.

If you put money into a bank account that earns interest, or into a pension fund, hoping to earn something for doing nothing... that's greed.

no it isn't greed, it's attempting to save and offset inflation over thirty to forty years so you can build a realistic nestegg so that your annuity can pay your gasbills in the winter when you're eighty years old.

come on cg5154, even I know this shit and I'm not even hip to money matters.

How do all the other people here justify their existence?

I don't and will not, the fact that I, or any one else exists (in whatever form they do) is down to chance and some happenstance. Any attempt to add value to existence is intrinsically flawed.

oh someone's been attending object's evening classes I see......

oh someone's been attending object's evening classes I see......

I was reading on Turgenev, and Dostoyevsky when Object was learning to be an accountant.

A Rash Thing To Do?

no it isn't greed, it's attempting to save and offset inflation over thirty to forty years so you can build a realistic nestegg so that your annuity can pay your gasbills in the winter when you're eighty years old.

come on cg5154, even I know this shit and I'm not even hip to money matters.

Target inflation in the UK is 2% (only recently has in gone above that, it's currently 4.7%), and there are loads of savings accounts that pay over 5% interest (4% after tax), and loads of ISAs that pay 6% tax-free. I'd say the interest more than covers inflation.

A Rash Thing To Do?

I'm just not a product of Object.

I don't and will not, the fact that I, or any one else exists (in whatever form they do) is down to chance and some happenstance. Any attempt to add value to existence is intrinsically flawed.

He said it, not me!

I agree. I only posed the question because I keep getting attacked by people who think that we're all obligated to "do our bit" for humanity. So I'm curious, what have they done?

er... I was talking about saving for an annuity that would leave you starving for the last twenty years of your life, inflation was just something I mentioned along the way to explain why you can't just put savings under the mattress. Specifically because you mentioned putting money into pension funds as a form of greed. I think you are currently living in a world of yuppiedom and have this notion that a pension is something a CFO gets to buy his yacht with when he retires. For most people it's an often meagre income to see out their days after working hard long hours all their lives.

^^^^But the cost of utilities like gas is increasing at more than the rate of inflation, so you need to put aside a bit extra, particularly if you have no assets to speak of.