As one ages one acquires the right to become a curmudgeon, or at least one tends to believe that to be the case. Having reached a not yet ripe, but still old age, I am going to indulge myself. The object of my not-quite-wrath? Why, as often, the New York Times, whose style book, in my cranky opinion, needs some fine tuning. Today we learn that British bankers, much like their American counterparts, are getting paid big pounds for destroying the institutions for which they work.
But the region’s banks cannot easily defend their outsize pay in the current environment. British institutions, already struggling to bolster profits since the crisis, have been tarnished by a series of scandals. In the latest disclosures on Friday, Royal Bank of Scotland, which is 82 percent owned by the British government after receiving a bailout during the financial crisis, announced on Friday that 93 of its employees earned more than more than £1 million, or $1.5 million, last year. The payments came even as R.B.S. reported a multibillion-pound loss last year. The bank did not disclose the similar figures of staff compensation for 2011.
Barclays, which came under fire after agreeing to a $450 million fine with American and British authorities related to the rate-rigging scandal, said in an annual report on Friday that 428 of its staff members still earned more than $1.5 million in 2012. (Emphasis decidedly added)
(via NYTimes.com)
I would humbly submit that in context the word “earned” is misused here.
I suppose that one could make the argument that the first definition in my dictionary might apply, if only faintly:
obtain (money) in return for labour or services,
though it is hard to argue that these bankers provided either labour or services from which anyone derived a benefit. But really, isn’t the second definition far more germane, and (perhaps) unwittingly implied by the Times:
gain deservedly in return for one’s behaviour or achievements.
Most objective people would be hard pressed to argue that these guys (and a few gals, I suppose) did anything to actually deserve these outlandish bonuses, unless you believe that tanking their own bank and the economy is an achievement, or, in the alternative, engaging in a massive conspiracy to commit fraud. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to substitute “were paid” for the more value laden “earned”. This may sound trivial, but can you to imagine the term being used by the Times to refer to a drug dealer’s ill gotten gains?
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