Top bosses have already made more money in 2015 than most UK workers will earn all year

Thought I would ask the Great Elders for their opinion on this:

As of last week (Edit): Britain’s top bosses will have made more money in 2015 than the average UK worker earns in an entire year, according to calculations by the High Pay Centre think-tank.
Sauce:
http://highpaycentre.org/blog/top-b...ore-money-in-2015-than-most-uk-workers-will-e

 

I think it's ridiculous, to be blunt. IMO, everyone is replaceable, no matter who they are. Therefore, no one is worth that much money. Something needs to be done to reign in these people who arbitrarily decide they deserve everything, while the people whose bodies they climb over to get it can manage on the scraps. I have to question though, what level of complacency does it require on the part of the general public, to allow things to reach this state? Why is everyone content to sit around and watch? It'd be one thing if they had comfortable lifestyles, but in a lot of cases, that just isn't true.

 

Huh odd that that comes up same day as this article. It says that soon the 1% will own more than 50% of the world's wealth.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/19/world/wealth-inequality/index.html
Quote in Spoiler

Spoiler

Turns out, the rich really are getting richer. And they'll soon own more than the rest of us put together.

So says a new report, which estimates that the richest 1% will have as much wealth as the other 99% combined by next year.

"The richest 1% have seen their share of global wealth increase from 44% in 2009 to 48% in 2014," Oxfam says in a report Monday.

At that rate, the wealthiest will own more than 50% by next year, according to the report.

Truthfully I think that it's ridiculous. I mean the economy would be much more vibrant if everybody got a little bit more, allowing more spending, but nope, the iron law of wages (that the more competition the lower the wage can fall) seems to be in effect for so many people. So, the lower classes expand but not at the benefit of the middle class but the very highest echelons. In the US, I think a lot of it can be attributable to tax dodges and the fight over the minimum wage not gaining much steam, but really I don't know how one could combat it efficiently. Tax more, more tax havens that still rob the economy of the money they would've spent with the liquid resources. Increased minimum wage is a temporary stopgap until the increased cost leads to more productivity research which causes them to lower their workforce anyways. By that I mean that if fast food workers successfully formed a union or got a minimum wage increase, I can only imagine they'd try to come up with machines that could decipher orders like most call centers, and then shuffle it onto an automated small assembly with one guy there to make sure they didn't put chicken nuggets in between the buns. There doesn't seem to be a methodology that fixes the problem of wealth disparity as long as there are effective means of dodging the mandate.

 

^Yeah, I saw that article going around Facebook a lot last week, too. Normally, I'm sceptical of statistics like this when they don't come straight from the paper that produces them (or an article that cites the paper), and even then, there's room for doubt- methodology is important in these studies, which is why the huge gender-wage-gap figures can be considered nonsense- but in this case, I'm inclined to believe it. How can I not when these 'top bosses' clearly pay themselves so much?

I've been following the happenings of Gamergate over the last few months, and as a result, I've seen a lot of discussion about inequality and discrimination, and honestly it's just reinforced my belief that the main source of inequality - at least in the developed world - is socio-economic class. We have laws protecting minorities from discrimination, even if there are some indiviuals who seek to flout them, but nothing that adequately keeps the money men in check. They, more often than not, make the rules.

You make some good points, Shogun. Taking your point about wages further, in the UK, I've come across the concept of a 'living wage' - I don't know if this idea has been touched in the US, but essentially, it is theorised by some that the amount of money a person needs to earn in order to live within their means, assuming they work full-time, is £7.69 per hour (not sure on exchange rates, but this is around $11-12, assuming $1.5:£1). The current minimum wage is, I believe, £6.50 per hour ($9-10), so most people don't earn enough to live on. Add to that the fact that so many jobs offer only part-time work, or even zero-hour contracts, and things look bleak. Of course, this can be mitigated by sharing living expenses with others, and housing benefits are provided, but there will always be people who live alone, and the benefits system in the UK is such that they can be arbitrarily slashed, or stripped away at a moment's notice. It's a big problem, and people are starving in huge numbers.

Tax dodgers, as you say, are a problem. Unfortunately, the people responsible for investigating such cases in the UK, quite often, spend more time focussing on benefit fraudsters - small fry with big stigma attached to their faces - than tax dodgers. Not very effecient. The only way I could imagine solving the issue of tax havens, is if the world came together in a united front. You can't physically stop wealthy people/companies from taking their money elsewhere, and while you can try kicking them out and replacing their services/money with more trustworthy competitors, there's no guarantee of success (rather, I think the odds are against you when competing with established, global businesses for market share/supplies, etc.), nor any guarantee that the replacement won't opt for the same antics.

Regarding the point you make about machines replacing people, it somewhat relates to a policy of the UK's Green Party, whereby they propose to grant all adult residents of the UK a set allowance, to cover their basic living expenses. They suggest that this is feasible, in part due to the increased reliance on technology to perform traditionally human labour, and the remaining potential to move further in this direction- the need for human workers to perform basic tasks is becoming increasingly small, therefore, there's less and less justification to force people to work for a pittance. They claim that providing such an income would increase spending among the less wealthy, stimulating the economy, and would also force businesses to offer more favourable condiitons to potential workers, as they no longer 'need' to work. An interesting concept that I'm not an expert on, but at this point, nothing else seems to be working well, so I'll give anyone new a try. Unless it's UKIP, I guess...

 

15.1% of people were below the poverty line (received less than a living wage) in 2010 according to the census. So not that different.
In the US, benefit fraudsters are called welfare queens, and they are also hounded more often than the wealthy. And yeah, there's no way to fix the idea of tax havens unless all nations agree to stop shenanigans like it.
I didn't mean for the rise of machines as workforce replacers to be so strong a point, more of a point that raising the minimum wage could backfire in unforeseen ways, but I could see such a system being proposed. Barring a massive unemployment spike though, I can't see the government of the US ever adopting such a policy, and even then it would come only after a giant fight.

 

Does that 15.1% just refer to workers, or are unemployed/homeless people also included? I'm glad to see that this idea isn't new to you. Despite similarities between the UK and US, this is the sort of info that, as an outsider, you have to actively seek, I think.

Welfare queens, huh? At least there's some humour in it. Given the influence that the wealthy can potentially exert on media, I do often wonder if there is some effort going into villifying certain groups (eg. welfare queens) through these channels, to divert attention from their own undeserved riches... damn, and I was trying so hard not to fall prey to paranoia here!

As to the point aobut machines, I think maybe we differ only in how we're approaching it - while you're framing it as a potential 'backfire' of raising the minimum wage, I'm imagining it to be an inevitable result of progress. But then, if there is any legislation/policy in place regarding this, I'm completely ignorant of it. You're right about the difficulty of seeing a universal allowance-type policy being implemented- seems like it would be too detrimental to too many wealthy people. The Green Party are relatively mysterious to the majority in the UK, and are looked at largely as eco-nuts due to their name. But actually, from the little I've seen/heard about them, I have to approve. Unfortunately, they never get any mainstream exposure. and they currently only have one MP in office, as far as I know - a million miles from running the country. One can hope though. At the very least, it would be an interesting experiment, as oppossed to more pointless tinkering with the same tired, broken bits.