To The Guardian

So our Prime Minister is resisting very modest EU proposals that bankers’ bonuses should not exceed their annual salary. Teachers, nurses, social workers and carers, who all perform valuable functions, do not normally receive any bonus at all, on top of their modest salaries. Nor do the vast majority of workers, who earn less in a year than some bankers make in a week. For most people, a bonus that doubled their annual income would seem like riches beyond the dreams of avarice. And yet it appears that this is not enough to retain the services of these apparently invaluable bankers.

What do they do to deserve such wealth? They don’t look after our children, our sick or our aged. They don’t make anything tangible. They simply look after other people’s money, generally badly and sometimes criminally, mis-selling financial products, fiddling interest rates, and gambling recklessly with our cash. We are constantly reminded that some of these banks are “owned” by taxpayers (to stop them collapsing as a result of their own irresponsible lending and speculation). It is a funny sort of ownership that seemingly does not allow us to stop the payment of obscene bonuses for banks still making huge losses, which we continue to fund. Bankers continue to receive massive rewards for failure.
Robert Leach, Silsden, West Yorkshire, UK

Huge gaps in income between rich and poor have always resulted in social disaster, but these greedy people don’t know and don’t care. Epicurus could have written a very similar letter.