Well we now read exuctive pay increased on average by 4000% over last 30 years...where the national average for the rest was 90% !! Just last year in the middle of a recession and when tough spending restrictions are hitting us all, we find the increase was 49% for exuctive pay...whilst national average was 1.2% !!
The chief executive at Barclays Bank last year had a salary a shade over 1 million pounds and earned a bonus of a further 6 million !!
I have to say I find these levels of salary and bonus to be obscene. Where on earth are you going to spend that sort of money ??? Maybe a cap of salary and bonus structure needs to be put in place.
Is it any wonder people are protesting at St Pauls and across the world about this greed. When so many young people are out of work, and desperate for some sort of employment, it must be so deflateing to think these companies are laying off workers, whilst paying out a salary and bonus like this !! I just can not see any justification for these sorts of payments.
The rich certainly are getting richer whilst the poor get poorer !!
I hear what you are saying, but I am also uncomfortable with the idea of capping pay
I would suggest that rather than 'capping' pay anyone over a certain threshold is taxed back to that level regardless of how much they're paid, i.e. anyone paid more than X amount has the surplus taken back in tax ... this way the money enters the public purse and doesn't disappear into some corporate black hole or get payed out as dividends ,I'd further suggest that these taxes are ring fenced and used to incentivise investment in industry and infrastructure
It is the lowest pay that should be controlled. Bear with me - I'm not into depriving the coal-face workers of their hard earned money.
The highest paid (including non-salaried benefits) person in a company should get no more than 10 times the lowest paid person. And controls should be in place to stop the greedy sods fiddling it by playing with company identities etc.
The usual envious twaddle and entirely expected responses on this Site. Just want to remind you that we live on a very small planet and big Corporations need to attract the best talent and this needs to be paid for. Perhaps some of you are too young to remember "the brain drain," when personal taxation rates were as high as 90%.
If you are saying that The Chairman of (for example ICI) should earn no more £60-£70 hour then you are completely deluded. It would never happen anyway because ICI would have de-camped long before any nonsenical tax regimes like that arrived and the UK would be awash with workers and no leaders.
If anyone increases profitability, creates growth (employment & tax take) and generally improves the standing of any Organisation then they deserve a share of that success. They would get that share in almost any country in the world and yet you propose capping them to 10X the minimum wage? Nonsense.
The real issue is reward for failure - that needs to stop very quickly.
I live in terror of the day that there is a shortage of " captains of industry" to whom I can doff my cap.
I agree with too hot, tax them too much and they will simply register companies abroad, have offshore bank accounts paying thier employees wages into other offshore bank accounts or simply re-locate to other countries, the morals are right to stop them but the realities don't work.
I don't mind successfull people earning good money but I do hate it when we hear about huge bonuses paid to executives of failing companies, or companies that hike prices and lay off workers.
And what about the price of razor blades, how can a poxy razor blade cost more than a mobile phone ?
You are obviously too young to remember the brain drain when personal taxation levels were at 90%. No-one with half a brain was going stand for that if they were in a qualifying pay bracket. They did de camp and in a big way.
I imagine the lowest paid worker would be on the minimum wage no?
The Chinese Prime minister referred to British workers as fat with complacency and he is right. As an aside there is talk about capping social benefits at £25,000 p.a. and all of this is because we all feel that we are owed something. But we are not. To get on in life you have to get off your arse and make things happen. Do you think the very many people who have worked they way up from the shop/factory floor to positions of high management duid it for any other reason than to better themselves? Complacency kills you in war and makes you poor in peace. Unfortunately life is not fair and the people who realise that become successful whilst others look for cause and blame and excuses. Like it or not we are animals and our world is small and competitive - it is a dog eat dog world BECAUSE we are not an isolated little island anymore and we are now incapable of living our lives unaffected by global events and global condations.
Shop floor workers are the poor bloody infantry yes they are, but with education, ambition and attitude anyone can rise above the life of plod as you call it.
I have very strong feelings about all of this having being made redundant from an industry made uncompetitive by Unions whilst in my early 20's. At the time, I thought the Unions were great at the time fighting the bosses and getting us better and better conditions until in the space of 5 years the entire Industry disappeared from these shores with thousands upon thousands of redundancies - I am talking about shipping. Shipping went foreign flag because it was cheaper for the companies to operate out of almost any other country than the UK.
I am all in favour of strong leadership both political and Industrial and men/women who will put their balls in the drawer to make tough life changing decisions and when they get it right they deserve reward. My argument is they should NOT get rewarded for failure.
The poor bloody infantry had choices to get a better education and choices to help improve their own position but as long as they continue looking for someone to blame and being envious of others success then they will stay plodding.
C'est la vie
A company employing 300 'plods' has maybe 3 top bosses. If the plods want to imprive their positions only 1% will find a position to fill and only then if one of the 3 at the top bugger off and die.
Saying, if you don't think conditions as a plod are acceptable work your way up is overly simplistic. Even the plods shold benefit from the work they do.
It isn't the execs that make the money in a company - it IS the plods. The execs facilitate that. But the plods MAKE the money by doing the WORK.
All I argue for is a reduction of the appallaing and in some cases obscene disparity between the top bods and the plod bods.
I think I fall more in line with Toohot,I am not comfortable with capping what people can earn.
I have no problems with anyone earning bundles of money.
IMO, the people who moan about it are jealous.
169 times 30,000 equals over half a million and that is obscene.
How sad is it...that people measure success by how much money they earn !!!
I'm not jealous at all. I am happy and content in my life, my daughter is well balanced and happy in her life, and I would never swap that for a million pounds.
What I do feel, is compassion. There are people being put out of work, plunging families into debt and despair, while the cheif executive of thet company earns a 6 million pound bonus !!! No..in my eyes that is not right. They are indeed at the bottom of the rung, in the company structure. However it is not their fault the company has taken the wrong decisions and not making the profits they used to do. Yet it is them that have to suffer, whilst the ones that made those decisions continue to feather their nest.
Jealous....NO
Sad........NO
Compassionate....YES
All this I'm alright Jack...fuck you... is what exactly gets us in this mess in the first place.
Money does not make you a successful person.
As for thge Swiss 'loophole', then the HMRC/Swiss withholding tax of 48% on investment income and 27% on gains will be levied by banks on any accounts held by UK residents in Switzerland doesn't become effective until May 2013, And then it's only applicable to those who still have assets in Swiss bank accounts at that time, giving people months in which to move their assets into one of the many other tax havens available.
Eh! what's this all about please, I have a few pennies in my suisse account can someone please tell me what is going to happen and what I should do about it, all advice greatfully recieved.