Thoughts on the economy and the issue of wage disparity in Britain.

[pantheia]

Martin Sorrell, who is CEO of WPP Group, a marketing company, and regularly receives annual wages of 20 million, defends the right of top earners to pay these massive amounts even within a recession. The justification he gives is the same I heard repeatedly on TV during the recent banking crisis of (2009?) - that massive bonuses must still be

Comments

[charlycrash]

t’s all very well to say, ‘Hey, in dire straits? Get a good idea, and start your own business!’ but that’s obviously easier if you’ve begun your life with mummy and daddy helping you out with your trust fund, your university fees, your rent.

The fact that by and large conservatives don't seem to understand this always puzzles me, and it's led to me to one of several conclusions:

1) They don't realise it, and quite possibly because a lot of their worldview hinges on not seeing it they've subconsciously decided to not countenance it.

2) They do realise it, but again because it's so critical to their worldview they try and find reasons why it might be false without trying to take a dispassionate stance on it - the same sort of thing that the religious do to maintain their wacky views.

3) They do realise it, and don't give a fuck.

I think 2 is most likely.

The problem with the maximum wage idea, as I said when you were here, is that it'd most likely cause a brain drain. Or it'd never happen, because the government is so profoundly in thrall to the leaders of business in one way or other.

It's a horrible situation, but I'm not sure there's really that much that can be done about it without resorting to fairly authoritarian measures like stopping people leaving the country.

As misanthropic as it sounds, human nature and not politics is the problem. If heads of industry and all the rest of it were willing to take one for the team in order to improve the general state of the country there'd be no problem, but they're driven by improving their own lot (and as you said, I'll never understand why someone who makes a bazillion quid a year is desperate to make two bazillion quid a year - what on Earth difference does it make? You can have 20 Ferraris instead of ten?).

If human nature could be sufficiently improved then there'd be no need for.. well, government full stop, really.

My solution is to let the big cheeses have their thirty pieces of silver but try and improve the lot of the working class and everyone else by socialist means, or rather social democratic means - good education, healthcare, social security and so on, so that people aren't punished for the circumstances of their birth and have just as much chance to become one of said big cheeses as anyone else. Although I think "socialist" is a possibly unhelpful term to use: I see myself as more of a meritocrat. Or a meritocratic socialist, or something.