A certain brutality here, yet also a certain truth

Mr. Lutnik will no doubt be demonised as a very bad man, even a brutal one:

Junior bankers who complain about being burned out by long hours in the office should stop moaning and think about changing career, according to an American banking boss.

Howard Lutnick, who runs Cantor Fitzgerald, said bankers should go into the job knowing it will involve late nights and weekend work.

His view is a stark contrast to his American rivals that have given junior staff extra time off, higher pay or gifts such as Peloton bikes or Apple Watches this year amid fears of a revolt.

"Young bankers who decide they’re working too hard - choose another living is my view," Mr Lutnick told Bloomberg TV. "These are hard jobs."

With reference to the difference between American and British practices, the British already work fewer hours, even in this sector.

But as Adam Smith said - and as has been shown to be true subsequently - compensating differentials are a real thing:

The five following are the principal circumstances which, so far as I have been able to observe, make up for a small pecuniary gain in some employments, and counter-balance a great one in others: first, the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employments themselves; secondly, the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expence of learning them; thirdly, the constancy or inconstancy of employment in them; fourthly, the small or great trust which must be reposed in those who exercise them; and fiftly, the probability or improbability of success in them.

First, The wages of labour vary with the ease or hardship, the cleanliness or dirtiness, the honourableness or dishonourableness of the employment.

There is also the allied concept of efficiency wages - bankers get paid lots in order to make dipping into the cash flow an expensive thing to do if it risks losing the high income from the employment itself.

But there it is, right there. One reason bankers get high pay is because of the hardship, those long hours. Those who find it not a sufficient compensating differential should find another way of making a living.

Mr. Lutnik is right.

The whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock must, in the same neighbourhood, be either perfectly equal or continually tending to equality. If in the same neighbourhood, there was any employment evidently either

more or less advantageous than the rest, so many people would crowd into it in the one case, and so many would desert it in the other, that its advantages would soon return to the level of other employments. This at least would be the case in a society where things were left to follow their natural course, where there was perfect liberty, and where every man was perfectly free both to chuse what occupation he thought proper, and to change it as often as he thought proper. Every man’s interest would prompt him to seek the advantageous, and to shun the disadvantageous employment.

In terms of employment in finance we are in something as close as anyone ever has been to such a completely free market. The pay reflects the hours. Sure, that might not be a trade off that all are happy with but so what? There are, as we all know, alternative employments out there with different trade offs.