What's the point of wealth beyond utility?

DJ TAYLOR

Sunday 17 February 2013

Why stinking rich bankers can't imagine why there's an almighty stink when the public finds out.  

Reading the remarks uttered by Sir Philip Hampton, chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland, in defence of his chief executive's "modest" £7.8m annual pay package, I was irresistibly reminded of Martin Amis's short story "Career Move". The piece – one of Amis's very best – is a variation on the "world turned upside down" motif, in this case examining a futuristic entertainment industry where poetry commands the attention of Hollywood ("We really think Sonnet is going to work, Luke"), while screenplays are written by desperate men in bedsits and printed in obscure magazines for little or no payment.

This wholesale role-reversal prompts a fascinating question. If the really serious and important jobs, of guaranteed practical value to humanity – social work, for instance, or school teaching – attracted stratospherically high salaries, while investment banking and currency dealing were only averagely remunerated, would Sir Philip and Stephen Hester – the beneficiary of that £7.8m-worth of largesse – suddenly itch to work with disadvantaged children? In other words, do they like doing their jobs for the satisfaction that the work affords, or do they merely want to wallow in the filthy lucre that comes with them?

Clearly, this question in unanswerable. But there is a second, associated, puzzle that the disinterested observer may be able to solve. Why does Mr Hester think that he needs to be paid £7.8m a year, other than as a rather bizarre testimony to his caste and status? What is the point of having wealth beyond utility? The explanation, alas, is that Mr Hester, and perhaps Sir Philip, altogether lack what used in bygone eras to be an absolutely vital part of the nation's moral repertoire – a puritan conscience. This may be defined as having the sort of mind that impels its owner, if taken to an expensive restaurant, automatically to order the cheapest thing on the menu.

Naturally, the puritan conscience has much to be said against it. After all, it brought us Shakespeare's Malvolio, Mrs Whitehouse and the Lady Chatterley trial (and also, ironically enough, D H Lawrence himself). On the other hand, its absence means more people like Sir Philip Hampton, who not only wants to offer his chief executive £7.8m a year, but can't imagine why there should be such an almighty stink when the public finds out.