Arncha sick of all those articles about ‘fat cats’ in the City and elsewhere,  proclaimed to be ripping us off right and left?

The Daily Mail has them. The Independent urges revolt against them. A soon-to-be disgraced former Minister says that they should be ‘made’ to hand over their money.

And P Toynbee’s headline writer turns them into one word, not two!

Although even the Guardian puts in a good word for them now and again.

A couple of points.

First, whereas politicians wanting a cheap headline rave away against City fat cats, they do not have a go at footballing/golf/tennis/pop-star fat cats who earn more money to less overall public utility. Thus in 2006 the average (average) Premier League player salary was £676,000 pounds per year – before bonuses.

Why is it OK to give vast rewards to footballers, clever at football as they are for a while, but not to financiers?

Maybe the public sees the results of football and understands them (this one is a nifty example), whereas the ‘results’ of financiers are thought to be less obvious and/or trivial, and therefore less meritorious – ‘all they do is juggle money’ etc.

More generally, a cosmic failure of our education system is that it does not explain to children where stuff comes from. This (deliberately?) creates a culture prone to moronic populism and irresponsibility.

Why exactly can we go into a shop and buy cheaply untold thousands of different products, each one there thanks to the ingenuity of individuals and teams of people all round the planet?

When we flush the loo do we give thanks to the clever engineers decades ago who saved us from sewage-filled streets?

When we turn on the computer to read PollyToynbee droning on about ‘fatcats’ or to watch Robbie Keane lash one into the net, do we praise the millions of people out there who make that stunning technical feat possible, none of whom we have met or paid directly for their efforts?

Why do poor people in Africa get to benefit massively from cheap mobile phones without having invented a single component of them? What/who is creating these astounding machines, making them cheaper and better every day, and distributing them across Africa’s vast distances?

The point is that we are all by any historical standards Fat and Greedy Mice, living selfishly and often gracelessly off the cleverness of other people.

The dimmest laziest welfare recipient whinging and wheezing on benefit-funded cigarettes is guilty of a far greater crime than the Fattest City Cat. He/she is leeching on the labour and intellect of others now and before us, while offering nothing in return.

The City person is working to give that leech some sort of chance by making the planet’s money match up with the planet’s clever ideas. Big complex risky stuff. Deserving generous rewards if they get it right.

Or, to be precise:

Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes.

Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time.

Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions – and you’ll learn  that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean?

It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it?

Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy?

Money is made – before it can be looted or mooched – made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced…