City fat cats taking us to the cleaners

Hospital cleaners give greater value to society than city fat cats, new research has found.

The New Economics Foundation (NEF) discovered that elite city bankers, those in receipt of £1 million-plus bonuses, destroy £7 of value for every £1 they create, while hospital cleaners create more than £10 in value for every £1 they receive in pay. Advertising executives appear to provide even less value to society, destroying £11 per pound created, with tax accountants the worst – they destroy £47 for each pound they create.

The report calls for the establishment of a High Pay Commission – including the introduction of maximum pay differentials – the launching of a green industrial policy to replace the middle income jobs (or ‘missing middle’) of manufacturing, and the building into prices of social and environmental value, i.e. “making good things cheap and bad things expensive”.

NEF also propose the adoption of a transaction tax to reduce high risk and unsustainable trading, the feasiblility of which Left Foot Forward outlined earlier today.

Download a copy of “A Bit Rich: Calculating the real value to society of different professions”

8 Responses to “City fat cats taking us to the cleaners”

  1. nef

    RT @leftfootfwd City fat cats taking us to the cleaners: http://is.gd/5mTCg

  2. boosterfire

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  3. David Ritter

    RT @leftfootfwd: City fat cats taking us to the cleaners: http://is.gd/5mTCg

  4. Richard Blogger

    This report shows why I rarely talk to social scientists: they cannot use one word when ten could be used instead. OK, so after wading through lots of guff I get to the real meat of the methodology. (Appendix 1 and 2, p29 and p30). I trained as a scientist, so I know how important it is to get the methodology right. Once I got to read the methodology I realised the other reason why I rarely talk to social scientists: it was mostly nonsense.

    Let me first say that I really dislike bankers and what they have done over the last three decades, but come on guys, you have taken a one-off financial crisis as the only negative aspect to bankers. That is, for their contribution to the country the paper gives (summary on p15): their contribution to economic activity, their tax contributions and the jobs provided in the wholesale finance sector. These are contributions that occur every year (the contributions will be different, but they are recurrent), there is nothing exceptional about them. For the negative contribution the paper gives the cost of the financial crisis (loss of GDP and impact on public finances)! The crisis was an exceptional occurrence! It happened once, it is not a usual occurrence. In any area of science this “blip” would be removed as a non-typical value, because it adds no information toward the general trends.

    If I accept their analysis then I should also accept that in 2007, since there was no financial crisis, there was no negative aspects to bankers! So according to the paper, in 2007 bankers were good, in 2010 bankers are bad. Sheesh. Social scientists.

    I like to give bankers a good kicking, but this is not how to do it. This reports reads like the conclusion was decided at the beginning and the figures made to fit.

  5. Rev2Nexus

    RT @leftfootfwd: City fat cats taking us to the cleaners: http://is.gd/5mTCg

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