| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| Chez |
... if the rich don't give a damn about the rest of us? ...Article in the Guardian here. Polly Toynbee warning, for those of an irascible disposition (not looking at anyone in particular, oh no Brownbear, not at all ).
The fact that the writers are probably pretty well off too, doesn't, IMHO, detract from the shockingness of the attitudes of some of the people she's writing about. |
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| Shane |
Ooh - Hard Working Executive in Top London Firm Gets Paid a Lot shocker!
It's hard to tell what this silly woman's main gripe is in this rambling diatribe - is she against capitalism as a global entity, the application of capitalism in London, the attitude of people that earn a lot of money? She doesn't seem to respond to the answers that the people she interviews give her - she merely sneers at them. They are quite right to say that if salaries in London weren't high enough, the top earners would work elsewhere. That's what happens in a global economy. And if you tax high earners or companies too highly they will move out of the country - especially when they see Gordon Brown p*** it all up against the wall. |
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| JB |
And the article didn't really seem to imply that they "don't give a damn about the rest of us" but are just truly ignorant of where the rest of us are. If they genuinely beleive that an unemployed family with four kids gets free housing and 3000 a month then it's not unreasonable that they think we don't need a more equitable society because they already think that society is equitable. | ||||||
| Maxwell Smart |
I have no problem with people making a lot of money but I do have a problem when they do it at the expense of others such as British Gas chiefs getting a huge bonus after raising energy rates 35%....
I support the idea of some firms introducing a cap on wages so that top level execs never earn more than X times over the lowest wages. |
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| Chez |
I thought it was more 'Hard working executive isn't that hard working at all compared to other people and doesn't know how lucky they are shocker'. And given that they seem to contribute very little to society - who cares whether they leave or not? It was their attitude that shocked me, tbh. And ... it's not just written by Toynbee, there's a male co-writer there, too. So 'silly woman' isn't appropriate  .
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| Chez |
I think that's a very good idea - some kind of company pay-structure based on multiples. |
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| Shane |
See my previous point about those affected relocating. |
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| Chez |
But does that matter? What do they *do*, exactly? What do they contribute? They pay as little tax as possible - some none at all. They don't know or care about anyone outside their own small elite group. Don't they just have an inflated sense of their own place in the economy? |
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| Shane |
If they didn't get huge bonuses at BG, they'd move to somewhere else that would give them a huge bonus. BG would end up being run by the second, third or fourth choice for the job. I realise that companies making huge profits seems obscene, but those profits are either reinvested, used to pay off debt, or given to shareholders. A good proportion of those shareholders are you and me, via our pension funds. And let's not forget that those that tend to be the most vocal about energy companies making huge profits are the very same people that make a lot of noise about them not spending enough money on alternative fuels and / or increasing their global reserves. They need cash to do that, and cash comes from profits. |
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| Shane |
 ) to run your companies, you have to pay them the going rate.
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| Behemoth |
I agree...to a point. The article contained reference to lots of very rich lawyers. They're productive in what way? | ||||||
| Chez |
I think part of my point is why is the going rate so high? There's a bit in the piece about how x number of years ago these 'top' people were paid 17x the average for their industries. Now it's 75x. That's obscene to me. I think it divorces people from the real world - which I guess is partly what the article is saying. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating everyone getting paid the same whatever job they do . But (to paraphrase Superman's Uncle) with great wealth, surely, comes great responsibility? Not just to the company itself - which I suppose one could argue is what those disproportionate salaries are buying - but to the society that the company is ensconced in?
Gah. I don't know. Perhaps I'm just jealous that such clearly unworthy people have so much filthy lucre and I am *clearly* more intelligent and capable than they are ... and yet here I am, about to lose our house .
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| Shane |
But they do work hard - really, really hard. They don't get to the top, or anywhere near it, without seriously hard graft. That's not to deny that other people that earn less work hard too, of course. The whole article looks to be written by someone who has made up their mind about what high-earners are like, and has then ignored or twisted the responses to their questions to justify their standpoint, without actually listening to what the interviewees are saying. |
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| Shane |
Supply and demand. There are only so many people capable of performing well at the top of an organisation, and they have a lot more choice nowadays about where they want to work. With shareholders demanding results, companies have to appoint good people to deliver those results. Good point about the lawyers, though, Behemoth.
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| Behemoth |
I do agree with the article's thrust that such people are out of touch but also hold enourmous influence. I recently spent a weekend in Berkshire and was jawdroppingly shocked by the behaviours and opinions being expressed by very very very wealthy people. I was going to post it here about UK society breaking into different tribes, close to the point one of the subjects of the article mentions i.e. their position means they are a society within a society and don't have to worry too much about anyone outside their bubble. | ||||||
| Maxwell Smart |
A number of companies including publicly traded companies are beginning to introduce salary multiplier caps. The advantages are an overall happier and more productive workforce.
It doesn't deny high wages to those in position but it does ensure open communication which does wonders for a company moral... I have even seen companies where wages are set by other employees.... |
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| Shane |
That's not a modern phenomenon - people have always been closer to those in their own peer group, in general. |
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| hamster |
Yes, of course, but I think the way we organise ourselves geographically nowadays makes it more acute in certain parts of the country (i.e. London and the south-east). I grew up in a tiny village in Northumberland and there were some very wealthy landowner-type people, lots of tenant farmers, farm labourers, a (growing) bunch of middle-class professionals who commuted into Newcastle, etc etc, but because everyone lived in the same rather small physical space and saw each other out and about, it was never possible to be unaware of 'how the other half live', so to speak, even if you don't invite them to your dinner parties. My experience of Newcastle (and my impressions of other cities that aren't London) is that a) because there aren't so many super-wealthy people and b) because they are physically smaller, the same thing applies albeit to a lesser extent. But since I moved to the south-east, I'm constantly shocked at how easy it would be to grow up never meeting anyone whose family didn't make an awful lot of money in finance or law, let alone anyone on the minimum wage, simply because everyone in your town/'village' and at your school would come from an almost identical background to you and you would just not meet anyone else in the course of your everyday life, and then you go off to a top university, meet more people like you, and get a graduate job at Deloitte or wherever with more people like you... I agree that the root cause (people generally want to socialise and live amongst people like them) is not a modern phenomenon at all, but I think the degree of (sub)urbanisation in recent decades in the south-east has, as a side-effect, produced areas inhabited solely by very rich people and a generation who think that that way of life is the norm rather than the exception. |
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| tahir |
We live in such a place, I do worry about our kids |
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| Treacodactyl |
Having seen how beneficial it is to have a good manager running a project and sadly knowing how rare they are, I can see why a good MD can be paid huge amounts. Whether all high earners are any good is another question of course.
Also, having lived in the South East all my life I've certainly seen all walks of life. There may be some very rich parts but I don't think you're ever that far away from all walks of life if you want to see it. |
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| jema |
If being the operative word, plenty of people will avoid seeing outside of their own little world if they can manage it. |
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| Frewen |
I'll bring my kids over - that'll sort it out
But seriously - my family is divided into very wealthy and very not, with us being the odd ones out in the middle. The very wealthy ones just don't get it and some of their assumptions and attitudes are incredible, and they try their damnest not to mix outside of their "set" 
What was it Pound wrote "the rich have butlers and no friends, And we have friends and no butlers" ... |
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| tahir |
But their everyday experience is of kids that feel hard done by even though they have everything they could ever want. |
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| Frewen |
That's my experience too Tahir. | ||||||
| Treacodactyl |
What are you doing to counter that? |
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| Frewen |
Tahir and his family are some of the most down to earth I've met. For myself I try and lead the wayward rellies by example 
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| tahir |
Plenty, we hope, but it's not like we can take them to the ghetto to hang around with the poor kids. When I went to school we had a broad cross section of society represented there, it's just not the same nowadays. |
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| jema |
School was key for our kids, not that we qualified as rich, but the local school certainly kept our rids in touch with the fact they were pretty lucky at home. | ||||||
| wellington womble |
until something forces them all in together - the NHS is very good for this. I've had several lawyers and the like who've had the paying field well and truly levelled by a spinal cord injury. |
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| twoscoops |
All these top execs need to start using internet forums, that'll soon put a brake on performance. |