Profits "Not Satanic."

[Toro]

Barclays Plc Chief Executive Officer John Varley stood at the wooden lectern in St. Martin-in-the- Fields on London’s Trafalgar Square last night and told the packed pews of the church that “profit is not satanic.”

The 53-year-old head of Britain’s second-biggest bank said banks are the “backbone” of the economy. Rewarding high- performing bankers with more pay doesn’t conflict with Christian values, he said. Varley was paid 1.08 million pounds ($1.77 million) and no bonus in 2008.

“Talent is highly mobile,” Varley, a Catholic, said. “If we fail to pay or are constrained from paying competitive rates then that talent will move to another employer.”

“Is Christianity and banking compatible? Yes,” he said in an interview after the speech in the 283-year-old church. “And is Christianity and fair reward compatible? Yes.”

Varley joins Goldman Sachs International adviser Brian Griffiths and Lazard International Chairman Ken Costa as London bankers who’ve gone into London churches in recent weeks and invoked Christianity to defend a banking system that critics say has created wealth and inequality in the U.K.

“The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest,” Goldman’s Griffiths said Oct. 20, his voice echoing around the gold-mosaic walls of St. Paul’s Cathedral, whose 365-feet-high dome towers over the City, London’s financial district. “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieving greater prosperity and opportunity for all.”

Profit `Not Satanic,’ Barclays Says, After Goldman Invokes Jesus - Bloomberg.com

 

[JD_2B]

Nothing wrong with profit.. It's sharing the wealth that one acquires with those less fortunate that the rich seem to have a problem with.

The bible says that someone with a surplus (meaning that they have more than they need) should give that surplus to those with a deficit (meaning that they have less than they need) so that everyone can get their needs met.

The bible also says that a man should enjoy the fruits of his labor, so it is not a communistic ideology.. One with more, who labored for it, should enjoy the prosperity and be allowed to keep more of the result.. But I think that the bible means, overall, that they should not hoard over it, and should be generous in relation to their personal results..

So, relatively speaking-

A very needy person will require very much help
a moderately needy person will require moderate help

and if that is true..

Extreme prosperity= the need to be extremely generous
moderate prosperity = the need to be moderately generous, etc..

Say you have five groups of people..

One makes a profit of a million dollars a year= The very rich man
One makes a profit of 80 thousand a year = the moderately rich man (above-average joe)
One pretty much breaks even every year (average joe)
One is in the hole 10,000 for one bad year
One is in the hole for 15,000 a year, for several bad years

It makes sense then that the average joe cannot be generous or any more generous than he already is.
It also makes sense that the ones in the hole are definitely not in a position to be generous.
That leaves those with a surplus of wealth to share.

In the spirit of loving thy neighbor, I think that this is very fair.

 

[Old Rocks]

A salary for a top exec of $1.77 million is reasonable. It is not reasonable for that same exec to recieve $100 million. And particularly not when his company is failing and laying off other employees. Note that I said "other employees". For the CEO is just another employee of the stockholders in that company. For him to recieve such a high compensation package that it negatively affects the profits of the stockholders is against the idea of capitalism.

That is a worms eye view of things, from a fellow that has worked on the factory floor for most of his life.

 

[Mr. H.]

Easy for Jesus to say. Take some fish and loaves of bread... bingo- feed the masses. From what?

Nuttin'.

Now that's a profit margin!

 

[PoliticalChic]

Nothing wrong with profit.. It's sharing the wealth that one acquires with those less fortunate that the rich seem to have a problem with.

The bible says that someone with a surplus (meaning that they have more than they need) should give that surplus to those with a deficit (meaning that they have less than they need) so that everyone can get their needs met.

The bible also says that a man should enjoy the fruits of his labor, so it is not a communistic ideology.. One with more, who labored for it, should enjoy the prosperity and be allowed to keep more of the result.. But I think that the bible means, overall, that they should not hoard over it, and should be generous in relation to their personal results..

So, relatively speaking-

A very needy person will require very much help
a moderately needy person will require moderate help

and if that is true..

Extreme prosperity= the need to be extremely generous
moderate prosperity = the need to be moderately generous, etc..

Say you have five groups of people..

One makes a profit of a million dollars a year= The very rich man
One makes a profit of 80 thousand a year = the moderately rich man (above-average joe)
One pretty much breaks even every year (average joe)
One is in the hole 10,000 for one bad year
One is in the hole for 15,000 a year, for several bad years

It makes sense then that the average joe cannot be generous or any more generous than he already is.
It also makes sense that the ones in the hole are definitely not in a position to be generous.
That leaves those with a surplus of wealth to share.

In the spirit of loving thy neighbor, I think that this is very fair.

I wonder if you have seen the works of Arthur Brooks on the subject of giving to the poor.

" to the values that lie beneath political views. My book explores four areas of our culture that lead people to give, or not: religious faith, attitudes about the government’s role in our lives, the source of one’s income, and family. These are the big drivers of giving in America today, and the biggest is religion. Religious folks give far more than secularists in every way I’ve been able to measure. For example, people who attend a house of worship every week are 25 percentage points more likely to give to charity each year than people who never go to church, and give away about four times as much money. And this is not just a question of religious people giving to their churches, as meritorious as that might be: They also give and volunteer significantly more to explicitly nonreligious causes and charities.

Obviously, religion also correlates pretty strongly with politics, which is one reason why conservatives appear to give so much.

According to the popular lexicon, “bleeding hearts” are those who most want to raise taxes and redistribute income from the rich to the poor. Yet the data show that these folks are actually less likely to give away their own money than are those whose hearts apparently don’t bleed quite so much. For example, people who disagree that “the government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality,” privately give away, on average, four times more money than people who agree.

And speaking of bleeding, one survey in 2002 asked people about their views on government welfare and how often they gave blood. It showed that, if everyone gave blood like “hard-hearted” opponents of government welfare spending, the nation’s blood supply would rise by about 30 percent."
The Right Cares by Interview on National Review Online

 

[amrchaos]

I guess the only reason this thread is located here and not in politics is due to Jesus christ being mentioned.

Tell us--is Profit compatible to Hinduism?
How about Atheism? How about Taoism?
How about Islam, Judaism or Buddhism??

We do know one thing--profit is not compatible with left wing think. Thus I sense that this article has more to do with politics than Theology.

Religion need no profits.