To think we can feel for poor people without bashing on those who have more ?

[bereal7]

I've just been reading a thread where the OP is going through a very hard time and everyone, ofcourse, sympathises. Then , like is usual, someone brings up the fact that CEOs are earning millions plus and we should be angry about this. This isn't a TAAT; it happens too many times where people divert the thread to attacking people who are earning more than average (I.e lawyers, bankers, CEOs etc). I just think this doesn't help the OP , or anyone for that matter, and just contributes to a divide amongst the well - paid and average/below - average earners. So AIBU to think we can all (or most) feel sympathy for poor people whilst celebrating other people's success?

What you don't seem to grasp, Batman, is that it is considerably more ill-willed to tell people to abort their babies.

It betrays such an incredible misunderstanding of human nature that it leads people to conclude you cannot consider them human. That is why your position is engendering these responses.

So the conclusive answer is: no you bloody cannot feel sorry for the poor without CEO bashing (on MN anyway).

For the bashers, I'm not really sure where that leaves someone like me who came from a low earning, single-parent household, went to the local comp, worked bloody hard, went to uni and now am a very high earner. Am I in or out? Do I get bashed or not? Because I thought it was all about ensuring kids had opportunities to be able to build themselves a better life?!

ERM, no one is suggesting communism or that high earners are bad people or that they don't deserve to be paid well.
The point is, high earners don't need (or in fact, deserve) to be paid as well as they are at the expense of other workers who are also important to the company who can barely even afford food. they could be paid a bit less and still be being paid very very well, and lower earners could be paid a bit more, so they can afford to live comfortably which should be the standard.

I would love to see what would happen if all the low paid workers who couldn't afford to live in and around London without any subsidies decided "fuck this for a game of soldiers, I'm off up north to see what my skills and money will get me in Newcastle" (or wherever), and just left.

How long would it take the uber rich to realise that all the hairdressers, cleaners, street sweepers, bus drivers, teachers and nurses etc. do deserve to earn a much higher wage, and that to keep them in the areas where services are needed, they need to be able to afford to live a reasonable quality of life?

If the government subsidies were scrapped, very few low wage, workers would be able to afford to live in the more desirable areas. Those with huge amounts of cash would have to stump up to pay private contractors a decent wage and perks to entice them back, thus reducing their own wealth. So I don't think anyone on a huge salary who uses any public services should be bemoaning the fact that those with low wages are helped to survive.

I've found the majority of high earners I dealt with in my last job did get their position through privilege. The few working class people who managed to get there are the exception.

There is a massive difference between "high earners' and CEO's who directly benefit from perpetuating the poor distribution of wages

MrsNucky it depends - did you vote labour, feel inwardly nauseous everyday about the salary you don't need to earn, and have you publicly declared that you would pay more tax if you could? If so, you should be ok. If not, you're fucked. Get out whilst you can.

How many insanely wealthy CEOs are there in the UK? What proportion of the working population are they?

By all means point out the silliness of telephone number salaries but most professional working people do not earn CEO money.

Thanks for the tip batman.

By all means point out the silliness of telephone number salaries but most professional working people do not earn CEO money.

Well this is often the crux of the issue Morris. Whenever these discussions come up very few people are prepared to actually state what they consider 'High Earner'. It just remains an ill defined nebulas concept that everyone can point at and say its not fair.

I don't think anyone is annoyed about high earners.

It's the attitude that they automatically think they are more deserving than everyone else. My father grew up incredibly poor and worked very hard to become a high earner. He never begrudged paying higher tax and is all to aware of how it could of all gone the other way. I could never imagine him saying that people who may need tax credits at the moment should never have children.

We had DS in our early twenties. Wasn't plannning on it and I was on the pill. we both worked full time and relied on tax credits for a couple of years until DH worked his way up a bit.

What I'm saying is, on either side you can't make general sweeping (crass) statements, such as "all high earners are bellends who don't deserve it" and "you under no circumstances should have a child if you might rely a bit on tax credits"

If my DH goes contracting instead of salaried, he will earn six figures. Suddenly his work is almost twice as valuable, even though it's exactly the same job.

People don't magically get paid what they "deserve". There's no logical formula that calculates your contribution to society and pays you accordingly. People who earn millions are not that much more talented/hard working.

The thing is, as IAmACat rightly said earlier, it's about equality of opportunity, and that is not only being eroded, but accelerated in its erosion.

This will, I'm afraid be a generalisation, and of course there will be exceptions to this, but...Those who are the children of bankers/CEO's/fund managers/lawyers get a better education, with a stronger focus on pastoral care, which makes them more polished at university and job interviews. Such children generally don't need to get Saturday jobs for spends, so are more able to do the extra curricular DofE awards, youth parliament, debating society, charity missions etc., which help with university/job applications. Then if they want to get into the plum professions (banking/law and so on) Mum and Dad have connections, and get them work experience (or unpaid internships, see above re Saturday jobs), and they are therefore more likely to get into what are very competitive industries if you try to do it on talent alone. I have seen this, professionally, for years!

Now, that might seem like I'm bashing these kids, which I'm not, I would, after all, get or use any advantage for my own children (without treading on someone else to get it I hope), but when the parents of these kids suck as much money as possible out of the system, whilst depressing wages for those under them (and don't kid yourselves that investment bankers and fund managers don't do this by putting pressure on CEOs to reduce costs) then it's hard not to feel some anger.

Philip Green may be a very nice person, but he sends all his money offshore, pays non Dom tax, and a generous corporation tax rate in the UK, and I suspect there are a fair few BHS workers who receive tax credits to top up to a living wage (no disrespect intended to any retail workers, BHS or otherwise). That is what makes, imo, people cross about high earners. There is nothing wrong with earning a high wage, there is something morally a little whiffy about earning a high wage, then complaining about paying your due tax, and thinking those who have so much less should put up with an ever decreasing share. And I say that as a higher rate tax payer!

Its not about just working hard, its about working smart, most of the high earning folk I know worked their socks off academically, went to a top uni with a certain professional career path in mind, got a good degree, joined a reputable firm and put the further long hours in to get various charterships and in some cases went on to get post graduate qualifications. They did not trample on anyone on their way to success, they are not horrible people, more oftenthan not they sacrificed other life opportunities to get to where they are now, and you know what, fair play to them, they deserve the trappings of their success.

Yes, but this again brings me to my point about other essential jobs where graduates also work hard academically, get a degree and put in long hours to get additionally trained and skilled on top of their initial qualification, in quite a lot of cases also getting post graduate qualifications.

Such jobs as a qualified nurse or paramedic.

See the problem with these jobs is you might work hard but you haven't worked smart and so do not deserve the trappings of success . Heck, you don't even deserve to earn enough to comfortably support a family or buy a modest house [in London].

So London hospitals and ambulance service are having to recruit from overseas. Not a great long term solution. And we are starting to see the effects of this -

www.theguardian.com/society/2015/mar/12/australian-paramedics-wanted-to-meet-london-ambulance-service-shortage

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/nhs/11366141/NHS-turns-to-Poland-and-Australia-for-paramedics-in-desperate-staff-shortage.html

www.standard.co.uk/news/health/nhs-needs-thousands-of-nurses-as-london-wards-are-shut-in-perfect-storm-10426714.html

More than 50% of households take more out of the state (NHS, education, benefits etc) than they pay in taxes (direct and indirect).

But worth is very rarely determined in relation to salary in this country. If you're the only doctor who can cure my child, or a fireman about to cut my child out of a wrecked car, you can name your price.

But the CEO of tesco? Sure, it's probably pretty stressful, but so stressful that you should be paid over 50 times what a store manager is paid? really?

As a pp said, society has evolved all these low paid jobs because we need them, I like having my bins emptied thank you, and my streets swept, kind people caring for elderly relatives etc. these jobs do not have less intrinsic worth than a banker. They may not require a similar level of academic success, but they have worth in their own right, and should be paid a living wage.

But no, we have private equity managers, buying out the social care firms, and squeezing wages, ripping off the councils who are having to use care homes for young people for example (and any research into this shows how disgustingly cynical it is), and demanding big fat returns, because big fat returns guarantee their big fat pay packets.

bit ranty today.

Oh that's a lot of replies !

I do believe everyone should earn at least the living wage and think the government should make that law , but I can understand why they wouldn't rush to doing it as it may have negative effects (e.g. job losses, higher living costs). BUT I don't think that means we have to drag the high earning down ; just that we need to get others earning a living wage.

I don't believe that every high earner went to private school and got there because of "daddy's friends". Some worked very hard and made the right decisions. It's also true that some low earners messed around at school and are where they are because of their own choices. Ofcourse this is not true for everyone but I think people sometimes forget.

And ofcourse we should question things in society but questioning doesn't have to equal bashing people. Not everyone can earn high wages ; it's not the fault of those who can.

I read somewhere that if Tesco capped salaries at £100k and spread the savings across all their employees the pay rise would be less than £1 a week.

grovel so what is your point ? Not meant to be a snippy comment but trying to see whether your saying they should do that or ..?

We should be angry at the levels of inequality and we should not be ignorant of the inbuilt advantages that coming from a mc and above background gives. We are a more unequal society now than we have been in almost any period since WWII. The last Labour govt did not reverse the reserve the trend for greater disparity in income and wealth distribution that grew insignificantly under Thatcher and Major, although they did slow it down. The gap has widened again since the crash. Wages and salaries are part of the story, as is the skewed housing market.

As well as paying low earners more (and not subsiding employers through tax credits, and landlords through housing benefits) I think we also have to 'drag the high earners down' in so much as we have to tackle tax evasion and tax avoidance (which costs The Treasury more than benefit fraud).

I hate the 'because I deserve it' defence some people use for earning a high wage: it smacks of an 'I'm all right Jack' attitude. Lots of us work long hours, get degrees and post-grad qualifications but not all jobs pay salaries that are actually commensurate with the effort that goes into to doing them when compared to 'executive' pay: I would be earning about at least £20K per year more if my salary had kept level with comparable professions but being public sector my pay has been eroded over the past three decades. Someone at the start was aghast that jobs should be paid on what will give the employee enough to live on, but how else are salaries set? They have always been based on how much it actually costs the employee to live.

An unequal society is a poorer society overall. Inequality depresses economic growth as only part of the population has any real disposable income, and economists now generally accept that there is no such thing as the trickle down effect. If we want to be a richer nation overall, we have to become more equal and that means having less disparity between low and high earners.

If my DH goes contracting instead of salaried, he will earn six figures. Suddenly his work is almost twice as valuable, even though it's exactly the same job.

People don't magically get paid what they "deserve". There's no logical formula that calculates your contribution to society and pays you accordingly. People who earn millions are not that much more talented/hard working.

In this case, your husband assumes the risk of being self-employed, rather than his employer assuming the risk of taking on an employee. Contractors are far more attractive for this reason. This is a bad example of the "same job" fetching different sums.

MN is quiet unimaginative about how people earn high salaries. Everyone is a banker or a CEO .

Leaving to one side that most pension pots, including all those deserving public sector workers, are dependent upon CEOs keeping share prices high...

Lots of us are making a high income by providing something (a skill, a product, some information) that not many people can provide and that a lot of people want (or enough anyhow).

We have trampled over anyone. We don't do anything immoral. We pay our taxes.

shegot Sorry, I used CEO as that was the example used on the other thread. But yes, there are plenty of high earning jobs and I do believe that most of these people deserve their money.

Issy but should we not be angry that people are earning less than living wage instead of the fact that people are earning good salaries? The whole tube drivers argument is a good example of this

bereal7, didn't think you were being snippy. I wasn't even making a point really - just chucking in a fact. I suppose I was was surprised when I read it because I had lazily assumed that if senior management were paid substantially less, and the savings spread across their organisations, employees would be noticeably better off.

grovel I can well believe it

Take a FTSE 250 company. CEO is probably paid circa £500m in base pay and benefits, with more in bonus and LTIPs. It's a lot of money.

But to be a FTSE 250 company you have to be a certain size and that usually correlates to a number of employees. Say 40000 on average. If you halved the CEO's salary and distributed that to the employees, it's about £60/year.

Workers' wages aren't low because executive salaries are high.

While CEO wages have been going up, there is also a lot more personal risk involved in being at the top. Average tenure of a CEO in the 1980s was 25 years, now it's 2-3. You can go to prison for H&S violations. You can lose your house if you're fined by the FCA. You can be barred from being a director and ever working in that capacity again. Your bonuses may be deferred and clawed back years into the future. Your reputation may be destroyed over things that were nothing to do with you. I know people this has happened to - it's not hypothetical. And we operate in a global marketplace - companies are willing to outbid each other for the most talented as getting performance out of organisations and maintaining it becomes more and more difficult.

I agree that everyone in full time work should earn enough to live on and shouldn't need to be topped up - but that's not about redistributing executive pay. It's something like the government have done by reducing corporation tax, but increasing minimum wage, miss always seemed madness to me to take money off companies and then redistribute it to their workers via tax credits.