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?

When the living wage comes in, the first reaction will be for btl landlords to put rents up because the market will have moved.

Then house prices will rise.

Back to square one.

It needs more housing!!

Iam
So to summerise, because you don't want to send your kids to private schools, no one should have the means to send their kids to private schools?
And because you think houses in London are too expensive, no one should earn enough to live in London?

I worked in care. It's a low wage industry where they will literally take on any staff. so obviously abuse occured. I spent a lot of time complaining to my line managers about awful things that happened for nothing to be done as they needed the staff.

There would be a lot less abuse of the elderly if care work was higher paid and considered a more highly skilled position. Doing care work properly is highly skilled but that's not the people it can sometimes attest sadly.

sparechange

No. But while we have people that can't afford to feed their families, your argument for "needing" private school, 2 holidays and a £1.8m house looks pretty hollow.

And since when do you need that much money to go to a private school, most people I know who go to them are well off but not ridiculously so...

No. But while we have people that can't afford to feed their families, your argument for "needing" private school, 2 holidays and a £1.8m house looks pretty hollow.

So this is about Soviet-style redistribution of wealth then?
Not about allowing someone to take a share of any profit they create for a company
Good luck persuading people to be entrepreneurial or work more than 35 hours a week.

Just out of interest, when you have an organisation where middle managers are already earning £100k a year, what incentives are you going to give them to work a bit harder and get promoted to the jobs that would have earned them more than that before your salary cap?
Do they get a 'I worked hard in the office today' badge instead of payrise?

Hear hear dejard and Bugger

There are some on this thread who have quite an ignorant and blinkered view of life outside their 'high achieving' lifestyle bubbles.

spare change I was not specifically referring to companies with execs earning over 500k. I was answering your point about capped salaries meaning more profit for shareholders.

I was saying that in general, if low paid workers were paid more and top dogs slightly less, then this would not necessarily mean increased profits that would go to the undeserving shareholders, but less overall profit. In fact the company may then pay less tax on this reduced profit, so win win surely!

If a company is so rich that it can pay 2m to just one person,then why the fuck shouldn't the cleaner get 70k! But cleaning's just Wifework though, isn't it, basically value less, just keeping the environment nice and clean, pleasant and healthy for all those big brain boffins to sit around thinking in.

No one would expect the NHS to pay it's staff the same as Google. They don't pay on the same salary structure as Google now, do they? Besides, how many Googles, Microsofts etc are there world wide. This is just whataboutery.

By the way, I think most NHS cleaning services have been privatised,with the majority of the cleaners on NMW so our NHS is forking out so that some exec and shareholders can do very nicely with profits, thank you very much, with no noticeable improvement (in fact often a decline) in service.

spare change I was not specifically referring to companies with execs earning over 500k. I was answering your point about capped salaries meaning more profit for shareholders.

I was saying that in general, if low paid workers were paid more and top dogs slightly less, then this would not necessarily mean increased profits that would go to the undeserving shareholders, but less overall profit. In fact the company may then pay less tax on this reduced profit, so win win surely!

If a company is so rich that it can pay 2m to just one person,then why the fuck shouldn't the cleaner get 70k! But cleaning's just Wifework though, isn't it, basically value less, just keeping the environment nice and clean, pleasant and healthy for all those big brain boffins to sit around thinking in.

No one would expect the NHS to pay it's staff the same as Google. They don't pay on the same salary structure as Google now, do they? Besides, how many Googles, Microsofts etc are there world wide. This is just whataboutery.

By the way, I think most NHS cleaning services have been privatised,with the majority of the cleaners on NMW so our NHS is forking out so that some exec and shareholders can do very nicely with profits, thank you very much, with no noticeable improvement (in fact often a decline) in service.

spare change I was not specifically referring to companies with execs earning over 500k. I was answering your point about capped salaries meaning more profit for shareholders.

I was saying that in general, if low paid workers were paid more and top dogs slightly less, then this would not necessarily mean increased profits that would go to the undeserving shareholders, but less overall profit. In fact the company may then pay less tax on this reduced profit, so win win surely!

If a company is so rich that it can pay 2m to just one person,then why the fuck shouldn't the cleaner get 70k! But cleaning's just Wifework though, isn't it, basically value less, just keeping the environment nice and clean, pleasant and healthy for all those big brain boffins to sit around thinking in.

No one would expect the NHS to pay it's staff the same as Google. They don't pay on the same salary structure as Google now, do they? Besides, how many Googles, Microsofts etc are there world wide. This is just whataboutery.

By the way, I think most NHS cleaning services have been privatised,with the majority of the cleaners on NMW so our NHS is forking out so that some exec and shareholders can do very nicely with profits, thank you very much, with no noticeable improvement (in fact often a decline) in service.

sorry about triple post. Problems with either my computer or site, not sure which.

I think, if I was to answer the ops original question, it would be by saying;

Yes, it is obviously possible to feel sorry for those who are poor without begrudging those who 'have more'. No one is annoyed about the high earner whose just scrapped into the large tax bracket or works in some middle management role.

People, I think, do get a little peeved when witnessing people stand in line at food banks, and then switching on the news to witness the policy makers whom themselves, or some of their wealthy friends, have been responsible for some of these hardships dare to claim "we're all in this together". When services for the poor and disadvantaged have been cut, along with corporation tax. When people don't realise that the white middle class privalage that a lot of people enjoy is there but for the grace of God. When people are so entitled as to believe that the "poor man is in the gutter because that is where he wants to be".

I'm am not angry that some have a little bit more than others. I am fucking furious that there are decent, hard working people who struggle to feed the family they adore and those born into privalage think they deserve it and don't give a flying duck about their fellow man.

sparechange I agree with most of your posts. You cannot cap people's salaries because that removes the incentive for people to work hard and make the sacrifices required to be earning those £500k salaries.

Unfortunately there will always be low earners - that's just how it is. The main focus should be on ensuring those low earners are paid a living wage.
And no I'm not justifying myself. I'm a student working part - time as a sales assistant. But that doesn't mean I envy or begrudge the money that others earn. Can only wish that my colleagues (some of whom have postgraduates) could earn a living wage to support their families.

beautiful batman don't really understand why you have to have a personal go at my 'kind of quality monitoring',as if that has got anything at all to do with the argument. I note the complete lack of rational countering to any one of my substantive points.

You deny the link between low pay and poor care. So low pay does not contribute in any way to abuse, according to you. But at the same time you say you are glad you will be able to afford to pay for presumbly 'quality' care for your parents. Oh, and you still haven't answered my question re your credentials, experience in this line of work. I've given you mine.

It makes you look so ignorant that it is hard to believe you are in fact an educated 'high achiever' rather than just someone rather ordinary who just got lucky in life's lottery and also landed a well paid husband. You certainly have no empathy for others at all, so I would not advise you attemping to care for your parents yourself, (in between pedicures, that is)

When and if they do need care, I assume you will look for whoever will accept the lowest possible wage/nursing home fee to care for them, as long as they have a heart of gold of course.

Empathetic people tolerate snoring.

Few points, sorry to the pp who commented on how there is a big focus on bankers/CEOs, well that may have been me helping, but as it's what I know, I'm better qualified to debate on that, rather than local authority chief execs, and I mentioned I am also a high(est) rate tax payer, so not the politics of envy from me, promise!

In terms of shareholders, well, as a pp mentioned, a huge number of them represent pension funds. Who do we think gets the say over how pension fund managers perform? Who appoints them? It's fairly cosy. And who benefits most from their performance? Some little bugger getting 2% paid in by their employer, or (in the example of tesco since they've been picked on), the CEO who gets a 25% of salary contribution towards his pension? Anyone else want to stick their hand up who gets anything close to 25% non-contributory paid to their pension fund? As someone with a lot of advantages and benefits I've never received that much from an employer. And before anyone mentions that pension funds have employee representatives, yes they do, but I've sat on those boards, and anyone "shop floor" is very quickly chastened by a smarty pants from higher up! I agree that there is less security of tenure these days, but most chief execs who've had to fall on their swords end up with another plum job, or a clutch of lucrative non executive roles, so it's not exactly riches to rags overnight.

And I am someone from a poor background who worked hard and did well, it's not impossible, but it's getting harder, and will continue to do so, as those already advantaged start inheriting million pound (plus) homes, but paying no tax on that first million.

The trouble is, with the really rich (and I'm talking those worth tens of millions) they start to think of money differently, and (to generalise a lot again, but I've seen this so often that there I know there is a lot of truth in it unfortunately) to resent anything they have to pay, like the world is trying to rob them. They look at their £1million earnings and then look at someone earning £100k and then at someone earning £10k and all they see is their horrifying tax contribution of £450k compared to a paltry £40k or nothing, rather than looking at the fact they're left with £550k to spend, the £100k earner being left with £60k and the poor soul on £10k having to try and fund their life on that. And yes, it is a lot of tax, but believe me, half the people I've met in a city career spanning twenty odd years are really not earning the big money on merit, the old boys network is very much alive, and thriving! I don't resent it per se (because tbh I benefit from the same system) but I can see very clearly that it isn't merit that got them there, it's their name/family connections.

deja
I just wrote a long post in reply to you and I think the site crashed. Grrr.

I think there will always be a philosophical debate to be had over the value of your labour vs the value of a company, and which should have the bigger baring on pay.
For me, I think there is a moral obligation on companies to pay a living wage to all employees, but beyond that, there should be a direct link between the value of your own labour to the company and your renumeration. By that, I mean that if your boss's boss's boss is travelling lots, working weekends to win a new contract and missing out on time with the family to do so, they should be financially rewarded for it by receiving a share of the money that brings in for the company. Some companies have a commission structure, others a bonus scheme, others you thrash it out with the boss come review day.

I don't see a direct correlation with that, and the person who does their 9-5 job with no risk or responsibility. Even companies with profit sharing structures, like John Lewis, don't raise the salaries of the very lowest paid in line with the top executives.

Obviously there are issues with having salaries in the private sector which are hugely out of step with the public sector, and while the public sector is the biggest employer, that should not and will not happen.

Another factor, which is again down to philosophical debate, is who the company should be 'working' for. For public companies (PLCs), they are legally bound to serve the interests of their shareholders. That means that if a PLC was found to be paying £70k for a cleaner, which is probably treble the market average, they would be in breach of that duty to their shareholders, as it is technically the shareholders money. This is why big companies have 'Renumeration Committees' which benchmark the pay of senior people against other national and international companies (i.e. how much would it cost of replace them with someone of the same standard), and the directors salaries are put to the vote at the AGM every year.

Fundamentally, there will always be people who are happy living in a modest house, going camping and drinking Aldi wine who just cannot comprehend the concept of working a 70 hour week just to get material trappings. And because they can't comprehend it, they struggle to see why anyone would and therefore should. There is no house so big or car so fast that they would give up their free time to work more to earn more.

Then you have people who aspire to a house with a bigger kitchen, and go weak at the knees at the thought of driving an Aston Martin, and love the idea of going on holidays to the Maldives, and like to have a personal trainer to work off all the expensive champagne they drink. They are happy to work extra hours, and put their weekends into projects in the hope they get financially rewarded for it. They derive more pleasure from chasing the win than they get from a lazy Sunday at home.

The world needs both of these people. Without the latter, most of the companies we know wouldn't exist today. Without the former, low paid jobs probably wouldn't get done.
It has been the case forever, and in societies where they have tried to stop one of the mindsets, it always failed - there was a thriving black market in every communist country ever, and in countries with free university education where people turn it down in favour of taking low or unskilled jobs for life.

But it is beyond ridiculous to say we can artificially fix salaries with an arbitrary cap in order to fix society. To say 'no one can have it unless everything can have it' doesn't help those at the bottom of the ladder. It just means those at the top pay less tax, and that makes everyone worse off

deja

beautiful batman don't really understand why you have to have a personal go at my 'kind of quality monitoring',as if that has got anything at all to do with the argument. I note the complete lack of rational countering to any one of my substantive points. You deny the link between low pay and poor care. So low pay does not contribute in any way to abuse, according to you. But at the same time you say you are glad you will be able to afford to pay for presumbly 'quality' care for your parents. Oh, and you still haven't answered my question re your credentials, experience in this line of work. I've given you mine.

I fail to see what my credentials (or lack of - apart from helping out my disabled grandmother, I've no experience in the care industry) have to do with this? Low pay should not be used as an excuse for abuse or neglect, ever. I've not denied that low pay contributes to abuse either - please point out where I have and I'll gladly take my words back. I wouldn't know enough to know if it's true or not. My point is, I don't think low pay should be used as an excuse or reason for it. It's almost like its justifiable - you think it's justifiable??

It makes you look so ignorant that it is hard to believe you are in fact an educated 'high achiever' rather than just someone rather ordinary who just got lucky in life's lottery and also landed a well paid husband. You certainly have no empathy for others at all, so I would not advise you attemping to care for your parents yourself, (in between pedicures, that is) grin

I'm a medium achiever. Did ok educationally. Got a decent job, worked hard, moved up. Retrained and changed career when I needed to. You however are clearly wasted in whatever you're doing now as this gift you have for being able to sum up a stranger from some posts on a parenting site is astounding. I'll ignore your 'got lucky' comments as they're beneath contempt and not worthy of reply. Although it does indicate if you have to stoop that low, you've not got much faith in your own argument.

When and if they do need care, I assume you will look for whoever will accept the lowest possible wage/nursing home fee to care for them, as long as they have a heart of gold of course.

They'll be with me when they need care. No way on earth I put them at the mercy of someone who could abuse or neglect them and get excused for it because their employers don't pay them enough.

"Dejard, are you fucking kidding me??? You're blaming abuse on elderly care patients on low wages??'

That sounds like a pretty blatant denial of the effect low wages have on poor care standards.

Nobodies saying it's ok for people to use their low pay as an excuse for committing abuse. what they are saying is it is of course a major contributing factor. If the industry and staff was better funded, with people who actually wanted to be there and had to work hard and train to get the job, then of course care standards would improve when being looked after by qualified people.

Or in other words Bugger.... Pay peanuts, get monkeys.

You know, I've thought of writing a piece of dystopian fiction with the premise of what would happen if people were only "allowed" to have children if they were proved to be net contributors to the state - as some of the more loony uncharitable voices on the right say ought to happen.

Apart from the birthrate plummeting overnight, forced abortions skyrocketing and the economy slowly tanking year after year, I think you'd see woman-on-woman violence. Most mothers being in the 40+ bracket as a matter of course. Babies ripped apart by feral mobs of jealous, 'undeserving' women. The logical conclusion to "don't have them if you can't afford them".

As many others have said OP, it's not so much people being massively bothered about high earners. It's inequality of opportunity and particularly, in UK at the moment, the insane cost of land/housing coupled with weak labour laws, which means people cannot live comfortably and in security. Globally, wages in the UK are very high; they just don't go very far here.

Good point - I take it back then, apologies to deja for that. And I stand by my original claim. You don't abuse or neglect because you're low paid. You do it because you're an arsehole.

That is completely true about arseholes abusing. However, sadly the care industry opens its doors to arseholes.

^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?^

Tesco PLC's current CEO is paid £1.25 million a year (plus shares and benefits) for running a grocery sourcing and distribution service in twelve territories, employing over half a million people, with 3500 stores in the UK alone and 30 percent of the British grocery market share.

It is a huge business that millions of people rely on for one of their most basic needs: food.

I could say to you that if ever you found yourself in a situation where the shelves were empty, unlikely to be restocked in the near future and your child needed milk or food, you would also be prepared to pay anything you could. You would also then say name your price.

The only reason why this never happens, so you never consider it, is because these grocery businesses are good at what they do: providing food at reasonable cost to people like us in a place where we can buy it.

You may think £1.25 million a year is a lot of money. And it is.

But let me just say this .... last year, Lionel Messi made £47.8million.

Yes, last year, a footballer was paid more over 38 times more than the CEO of a global business that deals with 80 million grocery shopping trips a week.

TheSnufflet you should write that.

But insist on a cap on your royalties, of course. Say nothing after the sale of your 100,000 book? And no money for foreign sales or film options, obviously. It would be immoral to take money you didn't need or deserve.

I'm not sure who would get your royalties. But I'm sure that could be worked out.