Is your Bonus Enough?

The current worldwide conversation about the bonuses paid to senior bankers is extraordinary: to the point of being surreal. Did anyone outside the rarified world of global banking even know how things were before the credit crunch threw a spotlight on these practises? Can it even be true on Planet Earth that some of these senior employees earn compensation worth 1000 times the salary of their average colleague, and hundreds of times the salary of some of the world's most significant political leaders? And that those same world leaders, now also major shareholders in some of the biggest banks, can't do anything to change this situation? Someone, somewhere in recent years of world economic history, flicked a switch on a machine that is now running out of control, and the people responsible for it are saying 'we don't know how to switch it off'. We thought Michael Douglas was being ironic when he said in the first Wall Street movie 'Greed is good', but here are the senior leaders of the world's biggest banks asserting that, without the motivation of greed, no-one will work for them. Greed and acquisition are so built-in to the system that to suggest even tempering compensation, in a time of crisis, with a voluntary cap on bonuses is received as tantamount to dismantling the banks. And the same politicians who claim that they can't 'micro-manage' such matters are micro-managing public spending down to the detail of local library closures…. Something is rotten in the state we're in. "Ideas have legs" theologian Al Wolters said several decades ago. Belief systems become political and economic reality and in this case either bless the poor with bread or deprive them of life itself. We have been failed both by the rigours and excesses of Communism and by the unfettered liberties of Capitalism.The world has never more urgently needed an economic model that allows for the possibility of personal gain but balances it effectively with solidarity and social responsibility. Centuries ago, when a ragtag gathering of wandering tribes, recently released from slavery, formed themselves into a nation, they did so on the basis of just such laws. The economic impact of Sabbath and Jubilee went deep and offered to the entrepreneur the freedom to benefit from hard work and to the poor protection from complete destitution. And they did it by the application of a single, simple concept: enough. When you have enough, take a break. Lie fallow for a while. Give some back. Spread the love. Help others to achieve their 'enough'. The laws were complex, but this was their impact: a yes to the motivation that comes from personal gain, but a yes, too, to the right of each new generation to also benefit. The only answer to a rampant bonus culture: enough is enough.