Interesting point here, we got screwed over on the sale of our home, lost 10% of the asking value because they threatened to pull out and we were already sorted with our next place. Between my wife and I, we only earn a little more than you do....Originally Posted by Rave
Is that funny??
If not, then why is it funny when it happens to someone richer than us?? It still hurts, it still screws us over and at the end of the day it happening to ANYONE is a crappy thing.
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This is bunny and friends. He is fed up waiting for everyone to help him out, and decided to help himself instead!
So, what stopped you from becoming a Doctor then Rave? Didn't fancy the chance to earn six figures? 'Wasn't my cup of tea'? You're probably right - all it takes is a few years 'learning' stuff and then scrawling prescriptions every few minutes. Doesn't take any hard graft, serious study, utter commitment to your vocation or a modicum of mental capacity. Blood, bones, muscle - there's not much too it really, is there? Brain surgery - now there's a challenge.
Seriously, £70k 'a bit much'? _ off.
A GP worth twice a bus controller? Damn right, and then some.
36 - 37k for driving a bus? Really?
My father has worked as a shift worker for a little over 38 years. His current salary is 22k. The highest it has been. Very tough, physically demanding work, 6 til 6 shifts, both ways around the clock. Is that fair?
I wonder how much the initial couple in that article paid for their house 38 years ago? It's not as if they would have to have been super-rich? You don't spare them a thought either being the victims they are?
To err is human. To really foul things up ... you need a computer.
your words really make me feel a bit sick, Doctors should seek to join the medical profession for the desire to heal and cure their fellow man/women. not for the greed of more money or the promise of a high status in life.
"To keep the good of the patient as the highest priority" Hippocrates 460bc
Last edited by j1979; 21-09-2008 at 02:38 PM.
It depends what they use their physics degree for, doesn't it? If they use it on important research to improve the lot of the human race, then yes, the chances are they're underpaid, at least in comparison to other people with a physics degree who are using it to become actuaries, or city traders, who are definitely overpaid.
I agree.There are always going to be some 'in-efficiencies', a classic example is tube drivers, who are grosly over paid, many people apply to be a tube driver, but get turned down, the wage is mainted by industrial action, their actions have a lot of clout. There are little problems like this, goverment MPs who set their own wage is a classic breakdown of the freemarket.
Yes, but recent events have shown that about 90% of such people aren't actually supermen. I daresay Lehman, Bear, Merril etc. employed a great number of such people who managed to make 30m- or 3bn- in 2006, but they're still screwed now aren't they?But a salesman who gets in a bank £30M in business, to pratically any bank he would goto? How can you say he should be paid less? He isn't paid because he's a nice bloke to work with, or because he went to the right school.......
Goldman Sachs managed to pick the real cream of the crop by the looks of things. They started shorting the hell out of everything last year- which is exactly what I would have done had I actualy had any money at all to invest.
No. I'm just saying that, if you compare the levels of sympathy I feel for the people in the article vs. the level of sympathy I feel for someone on the minimum wage, the homeowners lose. Big time.So now your complaining that a frankly immoral event (betrayal of implied trust!) is perfectly ok, because they've got an asset that most people haven't?
Depends on the car I guess. £200 banger- yes. £20k Audi A3- no.I don't own a car, i consider them a insane luxury for anyone in london, you just don't need one at all if your willing to walk or cycle. Should i be "oh haha your car got nicked, Stupid moron left it near bethnal green".
Yes I wouldWould you be laughing at me if i got screwed out of my bonus, by a sudden downturn?.
Indeed, that's comedy gold.
Right, so doctors have indemnity insurance. A few grand- we're taling low single figures here right?- is a pretty small chunk of the £100k+ you can earn from running your own practice (or from being a consultant). I'd be interested to know the last time a doctor faced a criminal trial for killing his patients? I haven't heard of one since Harold Shipman, but if you know different feel free to enlighten me.
The driver of a double decker bus OTOH can have up to 89 people at a time in his care- and if he makes a mistake and hurts any one of them he definitely could face a criminal prosecution. Obviously that's one of the reasons why a bus driver makes at least twice the minimum wage- but that's still far less than a doctor, and doctors generally have minutes or hours to review their decisions whereas a bus driver might have a few seconds- even fractions of a second.
You should have passed at least some of the cost on to the next person up the chain.
Only if you work your arse off. I made 32k in my last year of driving with a fair bit of overtime.
Well, under the criteria I've laid down in this thread I'd say: NO.My father has worked as a shift worker for a little over 38 years. His current salary is 22k. The highest it has been. Very tough, physically demanding work, 6 til 6 shifts, both ways around the clock. Is that fair?
No, they like as not paid no more than 3.5x the local average wage, that being the historical norm. But now they seem to think that they can't possibly take a <10% reduction on their asking price- which is ~10x the median average wage for London.I wonder how much the initial couple in that article paid for their house 38 years ago? It's not as if they would have to have been super-rich?
No. Greedy old bastards. I've no time for them at all.You don't spare them a thought either being the victims they are?
Well, since you ask, I only got two As and a C at A-level- the C being in Maths, which I'm relatively poor at. I say relatively, because my A* at GCSE put me in the top 1.8% of candidates in the country in 1995. Anyway, that's not enough to get into medical school. But should that stop me training to be a doctor? I dunno- how many diseases are diagnosed and treated as a result of the doctor's ability to do advanced differentiation/integration/matrices/Euler functions etc.?
Indeed. And it's paid very handsomely as I understand it. But one of the main qualifying criteria as I understand it is a very steady hand. You only have to look at my handwriting to see that I have mild dyspraxia, so I'm not going to be much good at cutting brains. Is having a steady hand and a 4A-at-A-level level of intelligence enough justification for earning well over £100k PA? IMO, no.Brain surgery - now there's a challenge.
Well, judging by your posts in the cars and bikes forum you don't catch a lot of buses?Seriously, £70k 'a bit much'? _ off.
A GP worth twice a bus controller? Damn right, and then some.
Look, I don't have a particular problem with doctors earning £65k salaried, or £120k managing their own practice. Compared to the arseholes earning £100k plus in local government for wasting our council tax they're making a great contribution. I just don't see that they're 5-10x more valuable to our society than a road sweeper.
Look at Cuba- the highest number of doctors per capita in the world AFAIK. I doubt the doctors over there live it up at 5x the average wage.
Its still not the same thing. For a bus driver to crash a bus and kill all of his passengers is going to happen very rarely and would have to be a big balls up. A doctor makes decisions every day that can adversely affect a patients life- hopefully not but they can. Doctors can and do face criminal charges- this BBC article from 2006 gives examples. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5033198.stm
Also indemnity does, for a GP cost high single figures- how would you feel about paying nearly 10% of you wages (before tax) just to give you legal protection for your job. Bus drivers certainly don't- they are just back up by their employer.
Sorry mate, but your simplistic views just don't work in this case.
Not around too often!
You have to remeber its a very ruthless environment in city trading, NO ONE gets paid a penny more than they can justify. I get paid LESS than my mentee, because i'm so young and have such few years of experiance. Yet at the same time i'm in a posistion to teach someone who's got more years of experiance and an extra £17.5k a year on his basic. You really do get paid the bare minimum they can get away with.
Really, i'd of thought it would of been the other way round, the banger does it ok, why do they need the 20k audi when people are been paid minimum wage?Depends on the car I guess. £200 banger- yes. £20k Audi A3- no.
Yes I would
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
It would, but crashes where one passenger is killed, or more likely, pedestrians or other road users are killed are fairly frequent.
Yes, and so can a bus driver. Rare bad luck notwithstanding, doctors don't get into trouble unless they're obviously negligent or worse.A doctor makes decisions every day that can adversely affect a patients life- hopefully not but they can.
I'd feel pretty agrieved, but then 10% of my wage is a far higher proportion of my disposable income than it is for a GP, since they're paid (usually) at least twice as much and our costs of living are the same.Also indemnity does, for a GP cost high single figures- how would you feel about paying nearly 10% of you wages (before tax) just to give you legal protection for your job.
Oh right, simplistic eh?Bus drivers certainly don't- they are just back up by their employer.
Sorry mate, but your simplistic views just don't work in this case.Clearly, since bus drivers are heavily unionised, our wage more or less reflects the work we do and the responsibilities we take on. If bus companies were to insist that drivers take out individual liability insurance then we would demand a commeasurate wage increase. Since doctors are also unionised, their (higher) level of pay must also reflect the costs they incur in the course of their work, like liability insurance- if not, then their union is crap.
Yes, sorry, I misread the question and thought you'd phrased it the other way round.
Doesn't your job involve writing software that analyses trading trends and thus enables you to make predictions about where markets are headed, and thus trade accordingly? If so, I cannot see where you are adding value to the economy. This is not Buffet style value investing that puts funds into undervalued companies and grows them to make a profit, it's essentially gambling. I cannot see how short selling, for example, can make a positive contribution to the economy (or at least, the world economy as a whole, I suppose George Soros must have enriched someone's economy at the expense of ours).
And in any case, if that's your job, then surely the only way you'd get 'screwed out of your bonus' by an economic downturn is if you didn't see that downturn coming? Otherwise you'd have positioned yourselves accordingly
If I've got the wrong end of the stick about what you do though, please put me right.
Unionised? The BMA are about as much use as a chocolate teapot. As soon as the government starts to change things, for better or worse they just roll over and take it. If doctors had a decent union then they would be paid twice the amount they are!Oh right, simplistic eh?
And you seem to answer your own problem- yes, bus drivers pay DOES reflect the amount of responsibility, as does that of doctors.
Not around too often!
It's not whether they will or won't take a <10% reduction in price that's the issue, in my opinion. It's the way they're effectively being blackmailed into it. It's a ploy that deliberately preys on the inadequacies of the legal system, relying on the fact that by the time it gets to the point people do this, others have invested quite a lot of money, and usually a lot of time too, leaving people screwed whatever they do. And it isn't just 'wealthy' people that get done over this way - it can happen to anyone that's selling a house.
If the buyer was to offer 10% less up-front, I'd have no issue with it, because people are free to accept or not.
And, after all, another way of looking at gazundering is not that some over-wealthy property owner is getting screwed, but that some amoral <bleep> is making thousands out of a very nasty, despicable and dishonourable trick.
You've got the wrong end of the stick. I can't tell you what we do exactly, but we don't go round shorting willy nilly.Doesn't your job involve writing software that analyses trading trends and thus enables you to make predictions about where markets are headed, and thus trade accordingly? If so, I cannot see where you are adding value to the economy. This is not Buffet style value investing that puts funds into undervalued companies and grows them to make a profit, it's essentially gambling. I cannot see how short selling, for example, can make a positive contribution to the economy (or at least, the world economy as a whole, I suppose George Soros must have enriched someone's economy at the expense of ours).
And in any case, if that's your job, then surely the only way you'd get 'screwed out of your bonus' by an economic downturn is if you didn't see that downturn coming? Otherwise you'd have positioned yourselves accordingly
If I've got the wrong end of the stick about what you do though, please put me right.
But in short, i find, via market phonominon, stocks that look undervalued. We then call them, but also take some puts to provide a hedge. In effect this means we need movement up, but if something really bad happens (like it has now) we have some insurance.
Now lets take on the moronic ideas that "we don't contribute anything", plenty of people can't see or comprehend what oxygen is, but wouldn't hazard to say it doesn't contribute anything. The same is true of people who are market bears. Plenty of economisits argue that the best way to prevent a bubble is having clarity in a derivatives market. If you imagine the US had a widely traded and respective property index, from the volume of puts, the market makers would gague market sentiment. This really does help prevent bubbles, at the end of the day no one takes a crank seriously, there where plenty of 'economists' who where saying that the housing market was due to crumble in the US, many even wrote how they'd been saying this for years! (oblivous to the fact if i said "oh houses will collapse" and people listened to me, and houses took 3 years to collapse, you're advice would of been so wrong, it would of cost them very dear). A derivs market allows for such sentiment to be really quantified into something VERY rational and tradeable.
So that's how the evil short sellers are in fact very useful component to help prevent bubbles. In fact if there had been more, this whole mess might of been avoided.
Now lets actually have a look at banks, fundamentally they end up in a leveraged position, one of the reason senior types get paid so much is because they're having to think so hard, to make sure their isn't any un-necessary risk. In the case of Lehmans, it was a very small segment of them who are responsible for the entire downfall, much like with Bearings it was one man and miss management (because that 1 man knew the system, after all he came from the middle office) that allowed it to all come crumbling down.
Now onto my situation, my wage is determined by market value, they will pay me just enough for me to not leave to another institute, its then that allocation that is so performance based. If the market goes sour, then they will not give me anything they don't have too, regardless of how good my performance has been. Last year i had a minimum amount in my contract (golden hello), this year i do not. I really hope they wouldn't do something like that because i would feel somewhat mislead (given that my salary is simply described as 'a notional') and i've been working at a rate i'd only work for a hell of a lot more than my basic. It would be like someone not getting overtime after it been alluded too.
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
Strange - that seems rather obvious to me too..
I've rather enjoyed Rave's rants but this one is way off the mark for me - sorry. How terrible to believe that those who do well (and may well have done so off their own backs) have 'it coming to them'.
Crosshair VIII Hero (WIFI), 3900x, 32GB DDR4, Many SSDs, EVGA FTW3 3090, Ethoo 719
As I've already said, I'd support a change in the law to make offers, once accepted, legally binding. I don't think Gazundering is either fair, or morally acceptable. The point of this thread was to point out what I saw as hypocrisy on the part of the Mail, who I don't recall moaning about the problem of Gazumping when the market was going up (and no-one has posted a story to prove otherwise, though it's possible that they did). I also thought the tone of the article was laughably outraged, and I thought that they'd chosen some extremely unsympathetic examples to illustrate their point.
That's my last word on the original subject of this thread. Although edit to say: I accept that my original post contained unjustifiable schadenfreude.
Now:
Fair enough- your union's crap then. But whose fault is that? Should I feel sympathy?
While we can still import fully trained doctors from poorer nations I doubt it- and like I say, I firmly believe that the lack of qualified doctors in this country is due to a paucity of university places, rather than a lack of suitably intelligent candidates.If doctors had a decent union then they would be paid twice the amount they are!
My point is that the issue of indemnity insurance is a red herring. The question is whether doctors contribute six times as much to the country as someone on the minimum wage. You could make the same argument for bus drivers of course, but I was chatting to one of our instructors yesterday and he reckoned that some of our garages are 20 drivers short. A simple supply and demand argument would suggest that the wages my company pays its drivers (one of the highest rates in London) isn't all that attractive.And you seem to answer your own problem- yes, bus drivers pay DOES reflect the amount of responsibility, as does that of doctors.
Well, fair enough, but you're still trading on the basis of market sentiment rather than intrinsic value.
Yes, and they were right.Now lets take on the moronic ideas that "we don't contribute anything", plenty of people can't see or comprehend what oxygen is, but wouldn't hazard to say it doesn't contribute anything. The same is true of people who are market bears. Plenty of economisits argue that the best way to prevent a bubble is having clarity in a derivatives market. If you imagine the US had a widely traded and respective property index, from the volume of puts, the market makers would gague market sentiment. This really does help prevent bubbles, at the end of the day no one takes a crank seriously, there where plenty of 'economists' who where saying that the housing market was due to crumble in the US, many even wrote how they'd been saying this for years!
It would have cost them dear if their plan was to make money by flipping houses, yes. But since the majority of people just want to buy a house to live in at an affordable price, it would not have. Renting has been cheaper than buying since about 2004 in the vast majority of cases, and prices will certainly fall back to 2004 levels- probably much further, IMO.(oblivous to the fact if i said "oh houses will collapse" and people listened to me, and houses took 3 years to collapse, you're advice would of been so wrong, it would of cost them very dear).
There have been no restrictions on short selling until now as far as I'm aware. And yet we've still had a big bubble followed by a big crash. So clearly, the market isn't working very efficiently, is it?A derivs market allows for such sentiment to be really quantified into something VERY rational and tradeable.
So that's how the evil short sellers are in fact very useful component to help prevent bubbles. In fact if there had been more, this whole mess might of been avoided.
Hahahaha!Now lets actually have a look at banks, fundamentally they end up in a leveraged position, one of the reason senior types get paid so much is because they're having to think so hard, to make sure their isn't any un-necessary risk.
What about Bear? What about HBOS? What about all the bloody rest of them apart from GS, who seem to be the one bank who were well ahead of the curve?In the case of Lehmans, it was a very small segment of them who are responsible for the entire downfall, much like with Bearings it was one man and miss management (because that 1 man knew the system, after all he came from the middle office) that allowed it to all come crumbling down.
Well now I have a better idea of what you do I feel a bit more sympathy, but at the end of the day it was your choice to accept such a contract and your choice to work in an area that is so tied to volatile markets.Now onto my situation, my wage is determined by market value, they will pay me just enough for me to not leave to another institute, its then that allocation that is so performance based. If the market goes sour, then they will not give me anything they don't have too, regardless of how good my performance has been. Last year i had a minimum amount in my contract (golden hello), this year i do not. I really hope they wouldn't do something like that because i would feel somewhat mislead (given that my salary is simply described as 'a notional') and i've been working at a rate i'd only work for a hell of a lot more than my basic. It would be like someone not getting overtime after it been alluded too.
Last edited by Rave; 24-09-2008 at 03:29 AM.
Rave, it seems to me that the basis of your argument is that people who are more privileged (and by 'privileged' I mean better off financially) than you are moaning about getting screwed over when they, as you perceive it, had some sort of head start over everyone else.
Coming from you this seems an unusually blinkered view.
You've made it very clear that the life choices people make are, in your view, their choices and so, if they should land a good job, earn a load of cash and then lose a load of it as the value of their house falls, then they'll get no sympathy from you and possibly they're undeserving of sympathy from anyone. After all, it was their choice to buy an expensive house and they probably bought in the hope of making a profit on it when they came to sell.
Also, from your argument, many professions are overpaid, to a greater and lesser extent. GPs, as the thread has been debating, are overpaid for just learning stuff and regurgitating it to patients. That's your opinion. And if they did deserve or want more money, they have a crappy union and that's their fault, because they made that choice and therefore they have no right to moan.
You'd feel some sympathy for TheAnimus because, (aside from his epically poor spelling which I personally see as one of those superb quirks that make HEXUS a great place to post), he may have been misled by his employer as to how much he'll be paid but that sympathy will still be limited as, after all, it's his choice to work for them.
So the pattern here is that people are free to make their own choices and shouldn't whinge when stuff doesn't go their way... and unless something is blatantly unfair, (measured on your personal scale of right and wrong, which may be different from my scale), you've no sympathy for them as they should've seen it coming or those were risks they knew they were taking.
And you know what, that's all fair enough. I agree. I can see where you're coming from. Your philosophy speaks to me.
So stop whinging about how you can't get on the property ladder and the disparity in pay between the boardroom and the shopfloor. You did ok at school, your grades are, as you said yourself, well above average. So it's purely the choices you made that have gotten you to where you are now. Whether you're happy with your lot in life so far is no concern of mine, I have no sympathy... you knew what you were doing when you did it and your own lack of foresight is your own fault, so stop moaning.
That you can't afford the mortgage to be able to gazunder somone isn't my problem... you chose the path that put you there. That you have to work overtime to earn 35-37k is no-ones fault but your own, you chose that job. That 35-37k isn't enough to allow you to save isn't my problem, you chose to rent where you do and pay the high cost of living there.
And now I sound like an uncaring ******.
Which isn't me at all... and I did think that it wasn't you either...
How do you think you get a job in risk control? Outstanding academic achievements, and a proven insight into the market, this makes the good people rare as rocking horse sh!t. They are actually very clever people who are doing everything they can to be risk adverse whilst still helping the economy develop.
It sounds like you simply say oh its easy job, they do nothing. Well then why not go do it yourself? Do you not want shed loads of cash?
The same goes with plenty of the other institutes, there was this sudden black swan where perfectly good credit is undervalued. Much like the share price of Barcap atm is considered by some industry analysts to be undervalued (this is NOT investment advice, i'm not qualified to give such advice, if i do, don't listen too it). The toxic CDS stuff has poisoned the well, and the blame for that can be largerly put onto complacency with a large portion of the ratings agency, an A rating means nothing right now. People where conning them with dodgy bond backing techniques.
So the problem was a frankly small segment (Eqd outnumbered CD by about 7 to 1 at my last place, but where responsible for losses of half the profit of Eqd!) of the banking industry has brought it to its knees, this has snowballed into a race to the bottom. Many what seamed prudent decisions are now costly because they didn't take into account such end of the markets as we know it.
And that fundamentally is the key, people will always screw up, there not infallible, but the fact for many that they've only screwed up so little is actually quite impressive when you comprehend whats going on.
Oh and to get an idea of how undervalued the whole banking industry is (this causes the nasty snowball that makes things worse than they are, much the same way the governments NRK announcement caused ALL their funding to dry up) look at Buffett's buy of GS.
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
whats odd, is Rave probably has better grades than me (5 GCSEs, C's at A-Level, 2-1 from redbrick uni)
Is clearly better at written communication.
Instead of saying about how you'd feel little sympathy for me if i get donut'd, why not take some risk and apply for a city job? You would get 37.5k starting at most places so you wouldn't have to take a up front cut. And join the next bubble
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
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