Do you think you can be a socialist and

[Swedes]

1. Pay for your child to be independently educated?
2. Buy a house in right catchment for the right school?
3. Feign religion to get your child into a faith school?
4. Object to a lottery system for school places with urban areas (ignoring all convenient environmental issues)?
5. Vote Tory? (because some people seem particularly confused)

Pull up a chair, IB!

Rebelmum, I haven't read his political writings but I've listened to his political commentary, most recently on the US election.

Bad management, top down management, these are the destroyers of educational and health services

But Cam, when you don't have top down management you end up with shop floor unions abusing their power and stifling progress. Look at British Leyland!

When unions came into being they were desperately needed to ensure that exploitation was eradicated and that fair and safe working practices were adhered to.

It is not their job to encourage a workforce to hold the country to ransom because they feel they are entitled to inflation busting pay-rises.

What I'd really like to see is a law that no-one, but NO-ONE, including CEOs in any organisation, be allowed to earn more than, say, 15 times the salary of the lowest paid person in their organisation, including domestic and maintenance staff and including non-salary benefits. In parallel, I'd really toughen employment laws so all the lower paid staff were not all contracted from temp agencies instead. That should sort the good people out from the greedy self-interested bastards...

Also I'd like to see a lot more good people accept salaries lower than the industry standard, so that bit by bit salaries at the top end would be forced downwards. That's where the champagne socialism comes up against human nature though- so many people evaluate their self-worth through their pay slip that to take a lesser salary would equate with being a lesser person.

Thank goodness you're not in charge. if you capped things like that people would just leave. I was talking to someone last night and two of his UK collegues have just moved to Switzerland because of UK tax issues.

Some people are worth 1000 times someone else and I don't see why they can't be rewarded accordingly. My cleaner is very good and she gets more than most cleaners. I get paid £X an hour because I'm better than some other people at what I do and worse than some others. It's just pure market forces.

Oh don't be silly

I am sure that I must earn more than 15x what the lowest paid person earns in my firm.

This is because I worked like buggery through O levels. A levels, degree, conversion, professional qualifications, and then put in 60 hour weeks every week for the past 15 years.

If you really expect me to be paid no more than 15x what someone totally unskilled earns - say one of our contract cleaners - having just effectively walked in off the street - then it's a total mockery

my chargeout rate per hour is around 120x the minimum wage

This is not what I earn you understand, but it reflects years upon years of training and experience. It doesn't come cheap.

Quattro- QED.

I have an Oxbridge degree, post graduate qualification, two MAs, speak three languages fluently and can write in joined up sentences, and yet I do not feel in any way entitled to earn more than 15 times what my cleaner earns (which is pretty near min wage.) I mean, for god's sake, she earns £6.00 an hour. What in god's universe justifies me earning (quick count on fingers- arithmetic not a strong point) £90 an hour? What could I possibly do that would be worth £90 or more an hour*? And that is my point.

I once worked out that for the hours I put in teaching, I was earning about £2.50 an hour, or a third of what my 14 yr old pupils were raking in stacking shelves at Sainsbury's. That hurt, until I reminded myself that there is more to life and self-worth than bloody money.*Maybe something really dangerous might be worth an hourly rate of that order, or something that required the use of some very expensive material that I had to pay for.

And Xenia- bolleaux. Sorry. Don't often have to resort to that. There is no such in the UK as "pure market forces".

Well here is the thing that Xenia and I are trying to tell you about.

What would a company pay for a cleaner? Well it's a minimum wage job requiring no skills at all. No more than £7 per hour.

What would a company pay for some heavy duty legal advice? Well it's around 900-1000 per hour.

Them's the facts, Duchesse.

You choose.

ps: my cleaner has spent the last 35 years doing 50 hour weeks working whilst bringing up 5 children alone. Surely she must qualify some kind of merit pay? Or is it her moderate illiteracy, preventing her from completing A levels, that buggered up her chances of rightly being paid 1000X times what she is paid now? Cos, yeah, £6000 an hour is such a sensible and measured wage...

Hahahahaha

You are kidding yourselves, deluded about your own self-importance. Sorry, but there it is.

D'ya know what, Quattro- It's because of other lawyers that I chose NOT to become a lawyer. I had a lucky escape there... I still however have the law degree, so I know it doesn't take £1000 an hour's worth to impart it...

Its not fair but its not about worth its about rarity. if plumbers are rare you WILL pay £50/HOUR - However I do have a problem wiwith the fat cats at the top of the tree getting £££££ for f* all !

dropscone- the rarity thing may work with plumbers, but with lawyers? Not so much...

"You are kidding yourselves, deluded about your own self-importance. Sorry, but there it is."

I am not kidding myself and I don't understand why you are talking nonsense. This is an entirely logical decision.

You can have loads of educational chances, take them and work hard and you can get paid £1000 an hour

Or you can not have the breaks or not work or whatever and get paid the minimum wage.

These are simple facts of life. Why are you upset about them?

No-one has argued that one is more meritorious or deserving than the other. That would be arrogant

meritorious.

Now there is a lawyer's word...

"Or you can not have the breaks or not work or whatever"

Well, that's about 95% of the population dealt with. Next!

I like the vagueness creeping in as well. "whatever". Do you have teenagers?

I don't believe that many lawyers earn more than seven figures a year (a year has roughly 2000 chargeable hours in it)

So the most that people earn is around 500 an hour. Their charge out rates will be around three times that to cover rent rates and overheads etc

But for every lawyer earning around a million a year, there must be hundreds of cleaners

literally hundreds

Just trying to put it in proportion for you

Are you tipsy by the way

I dont know why simple market economics would get you so het up otherwise

I love that you find market economics "simple". Lucky you. Maybe Gordon Brown could recruit you to run the Bank of England.

I genuinely think that Mr King is good at his job

Rather better than Gordon was at running the exchequer

But it is simple really - it is just the way that the world works

I really really don't understand how people think some people aren't worth what others are prepared to pay for them. I sell my services on a free market. I am very good. Not many people in the UK can do what I do so I charge more than say my cleaner. What is wrong with that? It's how markets operate. If I can advise on something that saves someone say £200m how do you value that advice?

Move on to football and pop bands if professionals make people feel uncomfortable. Beckham or whoever is in vogue earns a lot more than most accountants even the partners on over £1m a year at Ernst and Young. Is that wrong? No, he's good and that's what the market is prepared to pay for him. Most actors are out of work. 75% of published authors earn £10,000 a year or less. Only a very few earn a fortune but those that do are in demand like J K Rowling.

what's wrong with sheer market forces?
well, the inherent bias?
do you honestly think that the market is the simple answer to everything?
the conseuquences of that kind of simplistic approach are very far reaching
no subsidies
no arts unless they pay for themselves
no opera
no classical music
no theatre outside the West End.
market forces lose their relevance when people are not solely motivated by how much money they can make but are motivated by other things
some people do the things they do because they have sense of social responsbility
there is no market in love
I appreciate this is a bit of a leap for you Xenia

There is an unspoken market for love as every survey ever done has shown. Women prefer the man who earns more. It's one of the most brutal markets there is. They want their meal ticket for life here, abroad, now and in the past. Not all but most whether they consciously realise it or not.

Why would we want subsidies? Governments waste money. The private sector spends it wisely. If there is no market for opera then why should tax payers pay for it? If people prefer TV to theatre again why subsidise it?

I wasn't talking about romantic love. I was talking about love for other people, love for a subject or a profession, a vocation.
I was talking about service to the community.
I really wouldn't want to live in your utopia, where money is everything.
I can't even be arsed to make the case for subsidies.
let's close the public libraries.
let's close the public art galleries.
and the museums.
and the theatres.
and the concert halls.
what difference would it make?

well most of the people who originally pioneered socialism were privately educated and very well off; William Morris etc...

they were able to afford to sit around planning how to level society (in the lap of luxury of course) being a socialist unfortunately very seldom means walking it like you talk it...