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Someone here stated earlier that their taxes would feed a family of four for a year

That was me. And yes, it would.

I also live in Whitechapel, in the middle of a bunch of council estates, in a flat shared by 3 people that I found on Gumtree. One of the reasons I got a bike is because I think £93 per month for an Oyster card is absurd. The last time I went shopping for clothes or shoes was in May... and I'm a girl!

Does my lifestyle sound that drastically different from yours?

^ Is that directed at me?

Will I can only speak for myself but I am in no way being personally vindictive. I'm not conscious of posting in language that has any malice to it at all. cg5154 has posted a ton of stuff here - voluntarily - that people are responding to, some people more personally than others. A lot of what she's saying is genuinely bewildering me.

You've been quite nice, Jimjams. You disagree, but more or less politely. No hard feelings whatsoever. I hope you can recover from the bewilderment soon.

Hey, I have met CG, albeit briefly, and some of you would stop being so personally vindictive if you did likewise. This forum is full of people who work in the so-called creative industries, basically advertising, basically selling shit that no-one needs and fueling the kind of crappy consumerist society that in other posts they deplore and you are happy to go to 'drinkies' with them. I work, at one remove, for companies that I would never want to work for directly. Does that make me a hypocrite? Yes, I think it does. All my close friends work in the state run 'caring' sector and yes I do think they are contributing a lot more to society than I am or CG is. But I wouldn't have them look down their noses at me the way some of you have with CG, let alone make public the contents of a PM, so can some of you get off your fucking high horses.

Awww thanks Will. I guess you'll be my fwiend, even if nobody else will.

The money could come from somewhere else (e.g. diverted from funding wars - simplistic, but true).

Also, these bankers that are leaving have had UK tax spent on them as much as any other resident that lives in a community where the streets are cleaned, emergency services are ready for action, and so on. So them going lessens the tax burden.

Going back to something pj(pj) said, there are more important jobs that need doing. Imagine if all cleaners downed tools tomorrow...

Yeah, but all the bankers leaving have paid a lot more in taxes than most of us will ever earn in a year. When you net the amounts, I'm pretty certain they'll come out in the positive. Especially since they all think the NHS is crap and prefer to use private health care or go back to France for medical treatment.

Well if I lose my job because of those idiot fixed income monkeys, I'll swing by your street and give it a good clean. Oh wait no I can't. The council probably won't give me a work permit. Damn.

Alas, my dear Jimjams, all the opinions expressed heretofore have been, I'm afraid, mine and mine alone.

I don't see why you think my justifications are half-baked. It seems quite simple to me. Fewer people paying taxes = less money for the state = less money for whatever it is that the state subsidizes... wars, schools, roads, whatever.

Anyway, now that Velorution and I are tied for the position of Most Despised Forumenger of the Year, I bid you all good night.

I don't see cg5154 having an epiphany here.. you're coming across like one of those 80s tory minister's kids. You obviously feel you pay too much tax but dude - saying that shit about a family of four living off your taxes for a year is really ugly. That's like saying I'm keeping a family in Chad alive for a month by buying a soul record for £2 in a charity shop. A rare soul record which I then sell for £50. You get the idea I'm sure, however opaque an example that was.

So let me get this straight. Unless I've voluntarily sacrificed myself in some way, I haven't contributed anything?

You're not the only person subsidising the state.

No, I'm not. But haven't people been complaining that there isn't enough money going into the welfare system? So if my money goes away... or, in a more extreme example, if the half a million French investment bankers in London all decide to go back to France (a bunch of them have, because they lost their jobs)... there's going to be even less money.

The state will feed them. Or concerned members of their community. Or themselves. Etc.

You could get a much harder job that pays a lot less, tutoring kids in maths and science; or something.

Superior numeracy skills amongst Easterners owe a lot to the interface between working memory, and the simpler phonotactic structure of your number system. Lucky, if you enjoy maths ;)

Um... where do you think the state gets money? It doesn't grow on trees.

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.

Dude, I've been working 3 years and I completely ignored all the pension schemes my employers have sent me until the past 2 months. And only because my mother nagged me into paying attention. I don't know what the hell CFOs do with their pensions... I doubt they really need it anyway, if they had half a brain, they would've had enough saved up to live quite happily, pension scheme or no.

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.

I'm a computer geek. I like to express things in quantifiable terms. So I say this: a family of 4 can live off my taxes for a year.

Let's say I do this: I get a much easier job, make a lot less money, pay a lot less tax, and have lots of time for volunteer work. I've always wanted to tutor kids in math and science... you Westerners are abysmal when it comes to these subjects. Come to think of it, you could do with some spelling and grammar lessons as well.

But if I do that, who's going to feed that family of 4?

[Edit] Mind you, I'm not saying I busted my ass in school and uni just so I could make enough money to feed a low-income family. I busted my ass because I wanted a comfortable life and a stable income. And as a happy coincidence, a family of 4 can survive because of it. Everybody's happy.

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?

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.

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.

"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.

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?

OK, Pajamas was right, I couldn't help coming back for a peek.

I've noticed that:
1) People have accused me of donating to charity so I can feel better about myself, or to earn the love and respect of you lot
2) People have accused me of naivety as to how risk should be managed
3) People have told other people to be civil and not turn this into a cg666-attack

Regarding issue #1: I didn't feel badly about myself to begin with, so why would I need to try and feel better?

Thanks to Gabes who posted a PM that I sent rather than responding directly to me, everybody now knows I'm in the 40% tax bracket. Given that the median yearly wage in the UK is about £25k, that means I pay more in taxes than a significant portion of the population earns in salary. These taxes fund the NHS, dole, schools, etc -- none of which I have ever used. The way I see it, I have given more than I have taken.

Regarding issue #3: thanks. As Horatio said, I can handle it. I'm sure he wouldn't have called me silly if he'd thought it would shatter my self-esteem.

Regarding issue #2:
I have loads to say on this subject, perhaps I'll expouse my sentiments if I ever make it to any of the drinks, and if you lot haven't decided I'm too much of a "morally void idiot" to associate with.

Right. I'm hitting Ctrl-W and shutting this tab. And a pox on me and all my future descendants if I check this thread again today.

But that's the point, if the market were free, then government wouldn't bail out Northern Rock or anyone else and if they were efficient Lehmann's wouldn't have collapsed.

How about one that works better?

I eagerly await the news of a Nobel Prize from our own esteemed fruitbat for his work on coming up with a better economic system than what we have now.

Free markets and efficient economies, alas, exist only in theory. The system we have now is a weird mix of capitalism and socialism. We try to approximate the capitalist ideal as best as we can, while protecting the less privileged and less able.

I hate to sounded jaded and cynical but someone somewhere in the company did a presentation to the board to show why that specific amount would be the most cost-efficient in terms of tax relief. Sorry cg5154 but I suspect that's what happened.

I'm sure you're right. But again... just because it's tax-efficient, doesn't mean it's worth any less to the people receiving it. The complaint here is that the banks aren't sharing the wealth, isn't it? Well, they are, and it's not peanuts either.

Again, like I said... banks are in the unfortunate position of "damned if you don't, damned if you do".

What about the sector, hyped on fees pushing the mortgages?
Or what about the proportion of 2nd/3rd/4th/5th property owners taking the housing stock, pushing up the prices that help make these mortgages unaffordable?

You can't blame somebody for buying something if they have the money to do it! What about all the people who own the equivalent of 5 bikes in parts? Or all the girls who love shoes and handbags? Are we going to blame them for pushing up prices?

my parents raised £2k+ for kent air ambulance and another 2k for a defib unit for the local doctors surgery. they are pensioners living on a council estate. it took a lot of time and effort on their part to do so. the amounts you mentioned in your above posts to make financial institutions sound alturistic just make them look stingy.
your fundraising efforts are commendable those of the comany are a drop in the ocean.

The company had over 10,000 employees in London alone, not counting the other 65,000 in NY, Frankfurt, HK, Tokyo, Singapore, Zurich, or Moscow. And they were committed to matching up to £3000 of each of the London employees, I don't know what the amount is for the other parts of the world, but I believe it's comparable. That's a bit of a commitment, isn't it?

i know its not just the bankers fault, but when everything settles the bankers are going to be able to get new jobs, new bonuses and will be able to go back to what they did before, however those people who got into too much debt and took out mortgages they couldnt keep up with are going to loose their houses, their possessions and are going to find it a whole lot harder to get back up again.

Crap. I can't resist it. Must reply.

No, these guys won't be able to get good jobs. What jobs are there available? Banks everywhere have been making job cuts by the thousand. Lehman had over 25,000 employees. All of these people have flooded the labor market. If the jobs were available, they wouldn't have been cut in the first place!

Right. No more posting on this thread from me. Spending way too much time on this. Must get back to work. (Hopefully I can continue to say that in the months to come...)

I've been told many a time that I'm far too argumentative for my own good, and I should learn to shut up and leave other people to their own opinions. It might kill me, but that's what I will do.

If I post on this thread again, flame me.