Why a good job no longer gives you a good life

The idea that you can work in a skilled manufacturing job in the West and enjoy a comfortable lifestyle belongs in the stone age, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

In a probably vain effort to keep them safe from the simplistically weird fantasy world of modern children's television, I have taken to only allowing mine to watch cartoons from the 1960s. At the moment we are watching The Flintstones.

But it has now occurred to me that while it is based on a pretty innocent idea two nice families live next door to each other and have various adventures to do with bowling and camping trips its storyline is just as damaging as those of the shoddily written programmes I'm trying to avoid.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.