How do you spend half a million?
One thing that has baffled me for a long time is this desire people have to earn massive amounts of money.
I’m not talking about a reasonable living wage, rather the obscene amounts that bankers, politicians and The Plank fight over.
Take for example this latest claptrap about Doherty becoming the boss of AIB, and the government saying he isn’t allowed a salary of over €500,000. The poor chap has had to take a drop of €133,000.
But what the fuck does anyone want even half a million a year for? That is nearly ten thousand a week. That is €1,300 plus change a day. How do you spend that? What use is it?
He could afford to buy a new car every fortnight?
He could afford to buy a new house every six months?
How does anyone need €1,300 every day to survive? What the fuck does he spend it on? I can live quite happily [if a little frugally] on that much in a month, yet he needs it every day?
Is it purely a status thing, that he can brag down at the golf club that he is on half a mil a year? Is he going to save it all so he can die a very wealthy corpse?
We all need to eat and drink. A good diet will cost no more than a hundred a week? We all need shelter, and the more fortunate of us have that, but even renting a reasonable kip will cost around a grand or two a month? A car to get us from A to B won’t cost more than twenty or thirty grand? A really good holiday shouldn’t cost more than five grand? So, adding that lot up, one would have change out of €100,000, but I’ll be generous, and allow for a couple of pints a week, and say €150,000. And that is allowing for a brand new car every year, and no trade in.
I could live a very extravagant lifestyle on €150,000 a year. So extravagant, that I would probably be uncomfortable with it, yet this bloke reckons he is worth four times that?
Forget swine flu.
Worry about affluenza.
Well put !
Affluenza, lol !
Ah Grandad, you’re not taking into account the education of their chislers, then a house & a car for each of them. Then there are their high end, high maintenance wives & their trips to NY, Paris and the like for shopping and pampering etc no 3* or 4* stays here you know.
Unfortunately “affluenza” doesn’t spread as easily as swine flu, although a lot of those who have managed to catch it are Swine.
I heard a banker at a wedding telling a part time waitress in work:
“Ah well, at least you’re working. Even I’m feeling the pinch these days.”
He was a bank manager. She’s a waitress on €9 an hour, two shifts a week and trying to struggle through.
I wanted to kick him in the nuts until he vomited them up.
Lafsword – I had forgotten about “the other women”. Trophy wives can be a bit of a drain too, which is why I married Herself. €50 a week does her.
Maxi – I must comment you on your restraint. I would have smashed him in the nuts. It reminds me of the famous time when P Flynn bragged on the Late Late that it was so expensive having to run three houses.
Completely agree, but (and I could be very wrong here) if they don’t pay him the extra 133K then it will probably end up in the banks profits for the year – on which they pay 20% tax (I think). If they did pay it then he’d be paying 41% tax on it. So we lose out as per usual.
So what they should do is remove the cap on the salary, and introduce a tax band of 90% on salaries over €500,000. That would solve a few problems. 😈
Now ye’re talkin’ – hope boards don’t sue me for that!
Be cheaper to pay a hitman from Clondalkin to take him out and we’d have change left over to bring in a proper banker from Liechtenstein or Switzerland…
What a brilliant post Grandad. I couldn’t agree with you more!
I don’t if she could spend the entire half million, but I am sure that given a year my wife could make a serious dent in it.
I also keep in mind that I am paying for a car what my father paid for a house and that a house costs more then my father made in a decade or more.
It’ll be benchmarked against the going rate for bank CEO’s which bank boards have been busily fiddling upwards via their ‘Remuneration Committees’ over the years.
What you do is get a whole load of Non-Executive Directors recommending what pay should be and the higher they pay the CEO’s the more board members can seek.
Its self-regulation at its very finest- ie non-existent. I like the windfall tax idea on any pay scale above the upper limit at 100%.
The reason banks and companies generally get away with screeching that it would make the economy uncompetitive is because the threat is these financial geniuses would open their wings and fly away if they aren’t paid obscene salaries. Let ’em fucking fly. Dublin is not Wall Street nor Threadneedle Street or even Hong Kong.
How many of these fuckers are registered as ‘non-domestics’ for tax purposes anyway? I think they should have to declare whether they are non-doms or not because to my mind someone who does not pay income tax in a state does not have the right to put forward an argument on tax rates, salaries or anything else in that country.
If you ask me, those wbankers should be forced to work for the minimum wage, considering they are the bastards who got us into this mess.
Just don’t use them, banks that is.
Refuse to do business with people/companies you simply don’t trust or like.
Do the same in every part of your life and get rid of the slimey, underhand, thieving bastards for good.
Nolan – Unfortunately my savings would make my mattress a little bulky. Maybe I should just make a bed of solid gold?