Strippers & Bankers

Strippers can show us bankers’ just rewards:

Lap dancers receive performance-related pay. Miserly and overenthusiastic customers aside, they get £20 per lap dance. The more beautiful, charming and determined the dancer, the more lap dances she will sell and the more she will earn. By allowing a woman with these qualities to work in his club, Peter Stringfellow puts her in the way of potentially large cashflows.

The same goes for investment bankers. Their roles vary but all can earn bonuses for their performance. For example, a foreign currency trader is typically paid a bonus equal to about 15 per cent of the net revenue he generates for the bank. By giving someone a job at an investment bank, its owners are putting him in the way of potentially large cashflows.

But here is one of the many differences between lap dancers and bankers: whereas Mr Stringfellow makes his lap dancers pay for the privilege of being put in the way of their bonuses, with a “house fee” of about £100 a night, investment bankers are paid to have the chance of earning bonuses in the millions, with base salaries ranging from roughly £50,000 to £300,000.

This is silly. Investment bankers, like lap dancers, should have to pay to go to work ..