Hey Guv can you lend us a fiver?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

tired of being lectured by these people, and being told that you can't ask them to pay even 50 per cent tax on annual incomes that are often paid in millions, and that you can't do things because "the markets" won't like it, even though the only things that markets like is things that make them rich.

Christina Patterson in today's Indie

[teamsaint]

so here we are.

Things getting tougher for those at the bottom.

Things getting better for those at the top.

Government money being targeted at big corporate projects and away from people. (bank bail outs, HS2 etc etc).

Tax the super rich hard so that they go abroad. We might even be poorer(though I doubt it) but we will be more equal and thus happier.

plus we will be rid of some arrogant bullies.

well it would be a start.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

this takes several biscuits, if not packets ... a disgrace

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

so much for the contribution to national wealth of the City of London then ....

[Simon]

That's a silly comment, Calum - there's no question about the money that the City brings in to the UK, thank heavens - which area has little to do with how executives are paid.

Leaving such irrelevancies aside, your earlier link should surprise nobody. In fact, I'm continually amazed about how little people seem to know about senior staff payments. The article is well behind time, as some shareholders have been complaining about this for years.

The problems are several. Firstly, many large companies have the bulk of their shareholdings held by other large investment and corporate groups. Managers of these latter are also in receipt of big bonuses and payouts, so in a sense they are all pigs in the same trough, with no incentive to push out their fellow feeders.

Secondly, and certainly in relation to the past few years, most senior managers are aware that there is a collapse on the horizon. They are therefore trying to make as much as they can, whilst they can.

Thirdly, bonuses have been seen for some years as a way to increase pay without the flak that goes with a major salary hike. The often spurious links to "added value" are simply window-dressing - and creative accounting can in any case cover up a multitude of things.

I'm in agreement with most people on this subject: I value, in many ways, the contributions of those in the City who often work to exhaustion, but I also deplore the "make money at all cost" attitudes so many of them (have to) demonstrate. Which of course leads to these fantasy structures, gambling with non-existent funds.

As regards bonuses, my view is that it wouldn't be so bad if, along with bonuses for excellent performance, there were penalties for underperformance. Sadly, this is extremely rarely the case.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

you miss my point Simon, i am well aware that the City creates wealth [or better gathers and loses cash] ... the issue is the distribution of its surplus, the use of its capital and its contribution to society in general ... the burden of taxation on the City was well illustrated by Mr Diamond when he conceded that most of the money paid by his bank to HRMC was in fact staff PAYE payments ... despite having a major financial services industry we still manage to come bottom of a pretty common sense evaluation of quality of life ... the City of London has a dominant share of the foreign exchange casino which trades nigh on fifty times global trade per annum ....

[vinteuil]

... from Robt Preston's blog on the BBC homepage this morning :

"Since it is the British government which may end up as the main obstacle to the introduction of a financial transactions tax, it may be worth pointing out that (more than two years ago) the first serious figure in Europe to argue for such a tax in the wake of the great crash of 2008 was Adair Turner, the UK's most powerful regulator as chairman of the Financial Services Authority.
His point was that much of the explosive growth in the trading of complex financial products - CDOs, ABSs, CDS, EFTs and so on, until we were all alphabetty crazy - may have been (in his words) socially useless.
Or to put it another way, a good proportion of all that innovation and trading was not serving the wealth-creating instincts of businesses and households, but was (consciously or unconsciously) picking their pockets or extracting rent from them - by selling them stuff that was impossibly complex and whose true risks were hidden.
So how much of the financial trading falls into the category of deals that the world would be better off without, such that we shouldn't weep if it were taxed away? Probably no small amount.
If you take the increase in foreign exchange trading as a proxy for the growth in financial trading, that rose 234 times from 1977 to the crash - whereas global nominal GDP increased (a perfectly respectable) seven times. Or to put it another way, the vast majority of foreign exchange trading was supporting market speculation, not genuine wealth-creating activity by businesses.
So for the world as a whole, if a financial transactions tax put a bit of a dampener on financial innovation and trading (whether low frequency or high frequency), that would probably be no reason to weep - unless (to state the obvious) investment banking is your life.
None of which is to argue that it would be rational to introduce a financial transactions tax in the European Union and nowhere else: banks and hedge funds could probably avoid it reasonably easily by relocating to Singapore, or Wall Street or Zurich.
That is why the Treasury says it would not oppose a global financial transactions tax, but is set against one for the EU alone."

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i am not so pessimistic about tax in one country vinteuil, all it takes is for governments to see the revenue generated ... and if the casino wants to relocate, why should we care?

people who play markets only ever argue for what makes them rich, they argue for freedom when what they want is license to steal ... they have no argument but self interest and greed but they have immense power and influence eh .... they have even invented money that does not exist, was never printed, and has no collateral except a bank's word and capital balance to fund their derivatives .... never never land is not in it, it is a dream world stealing capital, time and intelligence from the real world .... there can not be much more than about two million individuals on the planet who benefit from this trading ..... a somewhat larger number go without water, food or education ..... or employment or transport or very much in the way of culture but we can gamble trillions daily eh

[amateur51]

... from Robt Preston's blog on the BBC homepage this morning :

Robert Preston?

http://cache2.allpostersimages.com/p/MED/27/2769/JWJTD00Z/posters/robert-preston.jpg

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Media/Pix/pictures/2008/09/18/peston460.jpg

What a difference an 'r' makes

[greenilex]

I'm not sure why there was a Forex advertising supplement with the Guardian this week...

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

because somebody paid for it ......... just as they pay for the Tories

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

demand for food charity is rising see this

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

from here USA


it is the affordability of food that drives a revolution .......

the Republicans and mainstream columnists have missed the point in their critiques of lack of policy or naivety or socialism .... it is not about that; it is an obvious and basic statement from people ... this is our country give it back ..... the 'or else' is not expressed yet ....

the most frightening sign for any establishment, if they know their history, is women taking to the streets ... it is about fighting for the family and it does not get more basic than that ... our Dave is losing the ladies and it is not because he is a knockabout lad at the dispatch box ... it is because he has threatened their families ... and food is becoming unaffordable ...

[Serial_Apologist]

Not that I agree with Lenin on a lot of things, but I think he was right in defining (in so many words) the preconditions for revolution as being when the ruling class is unable to rule in the old way, and the proletariat unprepared to be ruled in the old way. Proletariat is an old-fashioned concept, arguably, but ruling class shouldn't be.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i am a prole