However if the pay of directors has increased by 300-400% over the past 20 years has the company done the same, given that a lot of directors sit on the renumeration boards of other companies voting on pay increases of their mates who also vote on theirs its easy to see where the contempt comes from. Even when the renumeration package is accessed by independent advisers whose pay/reward is dependent on the amount they suggest its not a very good system. Heres a fact I read somewhere 60% of the UKs GDP comes from consumers, if people ain't buying, even the "feckless unemployed", then the recovery is going to take some time. Mark
HFCE is just a number amongst many others. Are you suggesting we spend our way out of recession thereby increasing our debt? Finer economists than the ones on the Ducati forum are pondering just that very issue. Eurostat - Data Explorer
And even if you do perform as an employee you can find yourself out of a job as the firm goes through one of its regular reorganisations to take account of some new pseudo business mantra. Does this mean that employees should also earn squillions? At the top, you are paid massively to come and work for the firm, paid massively while you are there, and if they don't like you, you are paid massively again when they ask you to leave. The supposed owners, the only ones who could influence anything, are the huge pension funds. However, they are on board the same gravy train as the fat cats, so don't expect much change there. In the scheme of things, for a top FTSE 100 company to be paying its top exec (for execs) a few million, when it makes a few billion in revenue every year, isn't going to change the company balance sheet massively. But it's the principle. The same wealth would be generated by these people at a fraction of the cost, because ultimately it's not money that drives them, it's power. Are you telling me that the guy who earns £4m a year is hugely more motivated (or talented) than the guy who earns £2m a year? There just isn't a correlation between performance and pay. I'd sooner pay the genuinely funny comic a ludicrous wage than some boardroom schemer. The latter aren't all Richard Bransons. Alan Sugar and the Amstrad? Don't make me laugh. As for footballers, i think we all agree that their salaries are indefensible. I'm always wary of rising to take bait like this. So what you are saying (unless it's for a laugh) is that Tebbit was right - "On yer bike - you'll find work". Thus there is no such thing as unemployment, only the work shy. Cue a US scenario of crack dens and inner city dilapidation. How amusing that this argument is always put forward by those who are (a) well off and (b) see no incidence of chance in their own lives, but see the world as a perfect meritocracy. If you're poor, you deserve it. I honestly don't mind people having right-wing views, but at least they could argue them intelligently. These comments really do make you think of moustachioed toffs in top hats chatting to each other over cigars at White's. It's pure caricature. I am happy to say that at the beginning of March, here in Switzerland we are having a popular vote on the capping of executive pay and it is looking fairly certain that some capping will come into effect. I am looking forward to voting.
How about this one? Anjem Choudary: Hate preacher pocketing £25,000 a year in benefits calls on fanatics to live off the state | Mail Online And for those that go "the Daily Mail Brigade etc etc" watch the video at the bottom of the page
What I'm saying is I sympathise with someone who won't go to work for minimum wage if it makes him worse off. He gets his benefits cut until he has to go to work to subsist on minimum wage, hoorah we say. This encourages more downward pressure on wages, so what! we say. You loose your job and the best you get for your skills is only slightly more than minimum wage, crap! The CEOs get bigger pay checks for cutting costs. Only my opinion, just finished reading Aftershock by Robert Reich.
Two separate issues, executive pay and people taking the piss at the other end of the spectrum. SOUP rightly points out the relationship between, exec, non exec and remuneration committees scratching each others back and Glidd the cozy relationship between pension funds and financial institutions. The welfare state was not intended as, and never should become, a lifestyle choice for anybody. I see no reason why someone on benefit should be better off than someone in work. It should be a safety net for those who cannot, for whatever reason, look after themselves. In the past one Gordon Brown did his best to link as many people as possible to the state for 'credits' of one sort or another. It was pure politics designed to expand the power base of the Labour party. It is now coming back to haunt us, like so many of Gordon Brown's policies. Like it or not we are competing in a global market place and the uneducated Brit (or European or American) with no skills and a bad attitude will find life pretty tough pretty soon.
Yes I agree with compete in a global market but why restrict it to the shop floor? The average Ceo in Poland earns about as much as a supervisor does in the UK ! Outsource their jobs and see how policies would change, rant over. My point is that the economy has expanded in the last 30 years and the only people to benefit have been the top 10% every one else has either stagnated or declined. It will only go so far, if nothing is done to redress the balance. People complain about the demise of UK PLC lets see where it ends up.
Oh the poor left wingers, the ills of the world are due to capitalist right wingers, what a load of shite!
If only it were that simple, the capitalists are merely working the system, the system needs to be rebalanced and only the government, whichever persuasion, will do that, and only if they are forced into action.
One day it would be good to have some political debate that wasn't couched in football match terms with two teams trying to score in opposite nets.
What would you rather do, or change then Royum? You're obviously a man of means and wealth, and many of your peers on here are probably by comparison quite mediocre. I follow your argument, but surely the get on your bike approach works only when there are enough jobs to allow all of those on benefit to get up and work. I'm no lefty liberal by any stretch but I do question the worth or perceived worth of some 'fat cats', and yes I do wonder how a business which can tell it's foot sloggers that there's not enough for even 2% payrise in the pot can elevate the director's salary by an exponential amount in some cases. Or am I missing something? perhaps in these strained times a director actually shows his mettle and worth by keeping his organisation from going under, thereby justifying his salary? I often look at 'marketing' people in such companies, and think to myself, now is the time the floppy haired , pointy shoed, jetwashed teeth felt tip fairies should be justifying their salaries - when nobody wants to spend their money, surely these 'masters' of sell and spin should be measured on the success of getting people to part with their hard earned. Lets face it, when times are good, any old shit will sell itself. As I say, I'm obviously missing something. I abhor the subjects of the original post as they believed it was their right to live off the backs of others, despite it being their parents who had paid into the system not them, for the same reason I despise those who have made it a career choice to live on the social, but yet I also see the other extreme of great wealth, which in the eyes of many is questionably assigned and yet seems the hardest thing in the world to address or even question as to the morality. For all that was written in Fred Goodwin's contract, I still don't feel it right he got off with the pension and payoff that he did. Yet despite bringing down a bank, he still felt indignant that he had to take a pension the likes of which I and many of my peers will be lucky to see in their lifetime. When I'm sacked, I don't get a payoff. When I'm made redundant I don't get the sort of severance package that a director might get. So what makes him more important?, why was fred goodwin not jailed for his actions and negligence as Nick leeson and other banker minions have been? Ultimately I suppose if I could answer these questions perhaps I'd be the Goodwin, not one of the braying herd outside the gate. Or in the eyes of such exalted individuals they realise it's the prerogative of children and idiots to tell the emperor he has no clothes, but all said and done, the emperor remains an emperor and the idiot remains an idiot.
I think you mistake me for someone else, there are many on here of far greater means than my humble existence. The use of extreme examples to make a point at either end of the income scale is ridiculous. The two idiots on £17K benefits are as bad as Fred Goodwin, but there are thousands of company directors trying their hardest and the rewards are as agreed by their business owners (large and small) it's no one else's business but the employer and the director, to think otherwise is just jealousy. That includes their severance package. Those on here who complain about people earning 6 figure salaries have it within their power to do the same if they make those choices, they make different life choices and so do not earn at those levels. Equally there are many deserving cases who should get benefits and indeed some who deserve more, the war veterans and disabled will I think get universal support for their needs beyond what is currently paid to them.
