What's in a million?

Now I don't want to be thought a sympathiser with the banks and financial institutions. Like pretty much everyone I think they have spent the past decade behaving appallingly and largely unprofessionally. But I do think we might need a sense of proportion over the bonus issue.
First I think we have to accept that while the bonus might have been virtually unheard of outside the world of sales until the early 80s, since then motivation by reward has become a by-word in management terms and it is a global reality. So bonuses won't easily go away now.
It is, however the scale that causes the greatest reaction among the public and the media. I would suggest we are getting it wrong. The issue of the crippling of western states by financial greed and idiotic risk taking is not about bonuses in reality. We can fix the risk factor and the under-secured assets by regulation - or rather by actually having some decent regulation. But I suggest we won't fix it by denying decent reward for success. Which is not the same of course as bonuses that are given regardless of performance. They are indeed fraudulent in name if not in intent.
No, the issue is the amount and to be precise the perceived value against the actual buying power. To put it bluntly today's millionaire is not much more than an averagely well-off person in the 60s or 70s because today's million won't make you rich.
Basic online research shows that today one million pounds will buy the following and leave no change: A Rolls Royce Phantom (£300k); a detached house in Buckinghamshire (£400k); a Rolex Oyster Daytona (£10k); a Sunseeker Predator 56 yacht £290k (but secondhand!). And that's it; all spent. Very nice too if you are already very well off because the running costs are ridiculous.
Now let's scroll back to when a million really was a million. Let's try 1970, forty years ago. That house in a leafy suburb would have been about £10k. The Rolls Royce about £5,000. A similar Rolex would have been about £250 and while actual prices for boats in 1970 are a bit elusive the change in buying power suggests a similar ten year old boat then would have cost about £25,000; memory suggests about £6k actually. A grand total of just over £40,000. Indeed, taking the change in purchasing power overall the £million of 1970 would be worth about £10 MILLION today.
So its about time we stopped treating million pound bonuses as quite so obscene. They are worth less than £100,000 in real terms. Too much? Maybe but today's thousands of millionaires are not what they were.
So, until we have QUINTILLIONAIRES with more than £5,000,000, we are not really talking rich at all. Mind you, a million would still change my life bit.

A new year's revolution...

Well maybe not exactly a revolution but I really do think the coalition will fall apart this year and probably sooner rather than later. Not soon enough to limit the damage of course.
Those of us who believe that the crisis we face was created by the banks far more than New Labour and that the worst of it should start to clear if and when the banks demonstrate the sorts of skill, endeavour and success they keep paying themselves bonuses for. Just today I saw someone blame Labour for an alleged £4.8 trillion of debt. Since no such debt existed before the banking disaster they have done really well to run that up on their policies alone in some two years!
Of course a lot of it isn't really debt anyway - it is the worthless shares we had to buy to stop the banks collapsing. They are yet to return anything like the value we put in but it will happen in due course.
On top of all that the stock market has just had a good year. Stone me, the nations is reeling until the pips squeak and the FT goes through 6,000! Again! Anyone old enough to recall the 70s share phenomenon will forgive me for calling this the Poseidon effect! Some people will bet on anything and sometimes they win.
Now quite apart from the cuts hurting children, the poor, mothers and the elderly and disabled there has been another cut - in support for the Lib Dems. As I write the good people of Oldham will be withdrawing their support for Clegg and co and handing either a black eye to Labour or the Tories. Interesting that Clegg has decreed there will be no election pact with the Conservatives. Bet they are glad - they couldn't afford the handicap!
So what will 2011 bring us? Massive unemployment, rising repossessions, soaring bankruptcies, lengthening waiting lists for everything, increased mortality among the newborn, the young, the poor and the disadvantaged, falling spending, lower pay levels, higher interest rates, probably climbing inflation.
But the FT will soar to 7,000, profits will climb while corporate taxation falls, Tesco will open another 5000 stores including an Express on The Mall, M & S will be taken over by Walmart, the NHS will be sold to a consortium of Russian oligarchs and the City will pay itself the biggest bonuses of all time. Cameron may even announce himself Tsar and scrap elections as unaffordable.
I shall moan and possibly cry. Happy New Year.