Why our bankers can't afford to live in Geneva
Rich bankers whine about how raising taxes will "force" them to relocate to places such as Switzerland. But that makes no financial sense at all.
Pop down to Waitrose in Bayswater (the nearest one to the natural Notting Hill homes of Britain's bankers) and buy a basket of essentials (milk, bread, a chicken, some pasta, couple of bottles of Medoc and so on) and it will cost you around £40.
Do the same at a co-op in a small town within commuting distance of Geneva, as I did last week, and it will, as it turns out, cost you going on double.
And that's not the only thing that will give the average Brit serious sticker shock. Think houses. Your average four-bed Notting Hill pad comes in at about £2m. In Geneva, if that's all you have to spend you'd better get used to the idea that you aren't going to be living in the centre of town: in the city even the most modest of three-bedroom apartments now comes in at a million plus francs.
The point here is a simple one. The rich, and bankers in particular, spend a lot of time talking about how rising tax rates at home will "force" them to relocate to places such as Switzerland there probably isn't a hedge fund manager left who hasn't told one paper or another that he's looking into moving to Zurich or Geneva.
But why would you move somewhere where your living costs will more or less double simply to avoid a shift in the top tax rate from 40% to 50%? Unless very little of your income is to be spent (and I accept that is the case with the very rich) it makes no real financial sense.
After all, the point of living is not just to spite tax collectors. It is, as a poster for the Conservatives in the 1955 elections (reprinted in the Guardian this weekend) points out, "the standard of living that counts." Yet another reason why all those hedge funds will still be here this time next year.