When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose

DEFINING the spirit of the age as always, there was a man from the financial services sector on The Marian Finucane Show last Sunday, voicing his concern that we are in danger of losing some of the top talent in that area, because they can get more money in other countries.

Marian, to be fair, was not having this, pointing out that we had a stunning array of such talent at our disposal in 2008, and that didn’t work out too well — no, in terms of overall performance it was suboptimal.

Still, isn’t it marvellous that there are still people in Ireland who are concerned about such things? I mean, they’re not exactly frantically worried about it but they are… concerned… that a guy on, say, €500,000 a year, may be tempted to move to another jurisdiction because they’d be offering him something in the neighbourhood of €750,000. Which is the least he deserves.

Yes there are people, right now, in this country, for whom life is very good indeed, except for this little twinge of concern that comes over them, that we’re just not giving enough to the top people, not enough remuneration, or compensation, or whatever they call the apparently inadequate rewards they receive for the wonderful work that they do.

It is particularly important that we remember such people in these days when for some crazy reason, a large proportion of the population of France has somehow got it into their heads that they are entitled to more remuneration, or compensation, or maybe just enough to live on, from one month to the next.

Of course, in this the “yellow vests”, as they are called, are wrong — they are not entitled to anything more than they are getting, they are not entitled to make a living, in fact they are not entitled to anything at all.

Because it has been established for a long time now, in the advanced economies of the western world, that the only people who are entitled to things, are those who already have everything.

Which probably explains why it’s all working so well, this idea that if you let about seven people have all the money, it will result in a feeling of happiness among the multitudes, that they are living in a just society.

But this problem has arisen now in France, and it has to be managed carefully — because these people who are labouring under the misapprehension that they are entitled to a living wage and other such extravagances, well, there are quite a lot of them. Far more, indeed, than there are people in the financial services sector who are actually entitled to good things. So when they all get together in their yellow vests, and they start demanding a bit more money, which might even mean that the top people with all the talent receive less money, what happens is, they get it. Well, they get something anyway.

Isn’t that ridiculous? They show up in Paris in large numbers demanding something, angry as hell, and they get it.

So it seems to be working for them. And while we in Ireland have been well trained not to feel any such sense of entitlement, we must hope that Macron continues to give them whatever they want, because otherwise someone who is not Macron may well be running France. And that might not be good for us, or for anyone else.

Indeed, I have seen Macron criticised as someone who lacks real support, whose main advantage in getting elected was that he wasn’t Marine Le Pen.

But you know what? That’s a very good thing not to be, all the same. Indeed I wouldn’t really regard that as a negative, I’d see it as a pretty major positive, him not being Marine Le Pen — in Italy, back in the day, they could have done with someone who was not Mussolini.

So I would say to Macron, give them everything they want, and more. When you look out and see 100,000 yellow vests, just imagine they are 100,000 chief economists or pension fund managers, and that they won’t all be taking their skill sets to another country.

You know how it works.

‘The only people who are entitled to things are those who already have everything...’