Nick Southgate on Being Wealthy

The economy may not, as yet, have bounced back. Bankers’ bonuses, however, have. Just as resilient as the bonus culture is our ability to feel indignant about it. The City defends the recipients of vast bonuses as merely employees being paid a proportionate reward for generating profits for their employers. They are just like the rest of us (all be it at a higher level). Any complaint is simply the politics of envy.

However, this economic defence feels inadequate. It is not just because bankers earn more than us that we feel their wealth lacks virtue. We do not feel the same outrage towards, for example, footballers or rock stars. Yet footballers’ earnings can be so vast they cripple their clubs and rock stars’ earnings so lavish they bankrupt their labels. Microsoft founder Bill Gates is far wealthier than any bonused banker and he does not attract such odium.

We would do well to remember a distinction Aristotle drew when he discussed the morality of money. For Aristotle, each part of our lives is governed by a particular virtue. The virtue of Courage, for example, governs how we should deal with fear and confidence. We must be strong enough to not be cowards but avoid the over-confidence of the foolhardy.

Money, Aristotle felt, needed not one virtue, as one might expect, but two. The virtue of Generosity deals with every day amounts. It tells us it is mean not to tip and spendthrift to buy shoes we will never wear. The virtue of Magnificence (as it is usual translated although there is no equivalent English word) deals with large amounts of money. This separate virtue recognises something crucial. Wealth is not simply a case having more money. Wealth, especially great wealth, imposes different requirements upon us.

What we find lacking in bankers is Magnificence. We are incensed not by the quantity of their wealth, but its quality and tone. Bill Gates is always clear he believes himself lucky. This makes him hard to hate. Footballers do something thrilling and beautiful to earn their money which makes them magnificent in our eyes. Rock star decadence is cool and warns us of the dangers of excess. Bankers, in contrast, appear only to have piles of money and the trinkets it buys them. If they could learn from Aristotle to be a little more magnificent they would be easier to love, or at least a little harder to loathe.

 

Comments

[Nic]

I wonder if we hate bankers because their wealth means that somebody else is poorer as a result? In the case of a rock star or a footballer, they do earn huge sums, but not at somebody else's expense. So although we recognise that footballer's vast wages are extravagant - profligate even - we see a banker's salary and bonus as theft. And we hate that.

Just a thought.

[Melanie]

Bill Gates and his wife have dedicated the second half of their lives to spending his fortune in ways that assist under privledged people and those in medical and educational need in developing countries. - Not many bankers do that

[Desiree]

You're quoting Aristotle Onassis, right?

[George]

And what do we think about those whose wealth is inherited?

[Marce]

Did I just stumble upon the Daily Mail?

I'm pretty sure Madoff considered himself as lucky as Bill Gates every single day that he managed to convince his investors that he was managing their hard earned money.

Are you sure the general populous do not look at footballers and rock stars and wonder how they justify their huge earnings for merely entertaining us? I'm pretty sure in Aristotles time he would have been horrified that a mere entertainer was held in higher regard than himself.

Has the School of Life become blinded by celebrity?

Perhaps if you look a little beyond the media and its politics driven obsession of bankers bonuses (you do know that we have an election in approx 6 months) you may find the majority of the population of the UK working very hard to keep their jobs (in all industries and sectors from banking to bricklayers).

Society takes all types of professions, personalities and issues to tick - isn't time you learnt to be more magnificent and understand the bigger picture?