Inflated Salaries...

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

... of £millions/year don't raise an eyebrow when paid to premiership footballers, actors, authors or the stars of TV shows, but are not acceptable for the directors of a successful company. Why?

Poor old cogito. Lost the argument on the original thread, so had to start another one to try again, huh?

Corporate performance has clearly not increased by 50% over the past year - companies have gone down in value, not up. So clearly 50% pay rises for the bosses are not justified. Especially not when the people who actually do the work are being sacked or facing pay cuts or no increases at a time of rising inflation.

Executive pay is set in a corrupt 'you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours' by non-execs who, surprise surprise, are in turn directors of other companies and stand to benefit from massive wage & bonus & 'incentive' inflation at the top. It's shit and it's bad for society.

Ultimately the shareholders in these company are ordinary people who pay into pension schemes. And are getting fuck-all out of them. The whole corrupt, stinking system that skims off the cream for those who are neither use nor ornament, leaving fuck-all for everyone else, including the ultimate owners of the company, is desperately in need of reform. Hopefully some of the brighter financiers will work that one out before there's a bloody revolution and they end up swinging from lampposts like Mussolini. May not happen in the UK, of course, but looking at the devastation of economies around the world, I'd suggest it is likely to happen somewhere pretty darn soon.

If I was a Greek diabetic who can no longer afford insulin, and so is likely to die anyway, I'd think I had nothing to lose by taking a few of the bastards with me, tbh.

If I was a Greek diabetic I would accord most of the blame to my compatriots in the public sector who retired at 50 on pension schemes that could not be afforded by their country, also on the non-tax payers in society: many of them 'respectable' professionals such as doctors and lawyers.

if I were a not-well-paid German worker I would be wondering why I was subsidising said Greek doctors and lawyers and paying for Greeks to retire at 50 while I struggled on at least another 10 years.

The German - because their politicians stupidly encouraged them to yoke their currency to Greece's, even though the economies of each country were very different.

The Greek - ditto but also the banks that made loans they knew full well Greece couldn't pay back, and when it couldn't, insisted on Greek public services being savaged, so the people can't get medical care. People will die. But as long as the bankers are happy...

I entirely agree that the Euro has not worked to either Greece's or Germany's advantage here.

It's interesting though, that one of the reasons for developing the Common Market (EEC, EC) was to prevent German dominance. All it's done is confirm it.

It is an historical irony. But isn't that mainly because the Germans are just so hardworking and darn sensible? Other countries just don't make those sacrifices: i.e. work hard now and perhaps don't spend as much on 'stuff', but put money in the bank or for a rainy day? Invest in sound apprenticeships for youngsters.

If the rest of us followed suit we'd perhaps be equally prosperous. And it is one of the most democratic countries in the world. They also don't seem to have the same 'sleb'/stinking rich worship we do, either. It all seems more grounded over there.

Why on earth is claig of all people arguing that CEOs of FTSE 100 companies should get more than people like Bono because that's "fair"?!!!!!!!! I thought claig didn't give a toss about fairness.

I haven't spent enough time in Germany to know whether that's true or not. Wouldn't want to, tbh, the brief time I have been there everyone's been very nice but the weak sense of humour would wear me down very quickly. Nice people, IME (although Iranian friends of mine say they aren't very nice to immigrants of a non-European persuasion) but don't really do taking the piss like the British or Irish.

Can we compile a list of people who should have pay cuts, according to this thread? Would anyone object to:

• Chief executives of large companies
• Footballers
• Bono

all taking a 50% pay cut?

Bono doesn't get paid, does he? I thought he just lived on his personal profits.

He has income on which, allegedly, he doesn't pay much tax.

I'm afraid I don't see how it works, that directors of companies can legitimately be awarded huge pay rises when the company's employees are getting pay cuts or are being made redundant (so hugely increasing the workload of the people left behind). Any change a director makes has to be effected by the company's employed staff, so expectations on the employees change as a result. The changes, if a company becomes more successful, are normally to have to work harder and more efficiently - so why don't you deserve more pay for that? To not get more pay is a slap in the face, basically saying that you were absolute rubbish before and didn't deserve your old salary and are lucky still to have a job, anyway - nothing, to do, of course, with the previous director, who also got colossal bonuses, being pretty crap, or the existing one having been a bit rubbish but now pulling his finger out a bit. Or it's saying that the company just can't afford to pay you more, even though it might like to, because of economic circumstances - but it can afford to give whopping great increases to the directors, because they are a bunch of mercenaries who don't believe in business morality and justify everything on the basis of comparing themselves to the world's most greedy and selfish people, who get what they want more as a result of their excessive power than their absolute brilliance. And if you do work really hard to effect the changes your directors want, you are basically working hard at increasing their bonuses colossally and your own pay minimally if at all, which isn't a huge incentive for an employee to work hard - the only real incentive is that they might move your job to India where they can get away with more personal profit for themselves and even less money for their employees. At the moment, of course, I presume directors are being paid huge increases to encourage them to keep a firm line on the redundancies and cost cutting measures. It must be so stressful for them to get rid of people... so much more stressful than it is for the employees who have to reapply for their job/a new job every 6 months...

...is more or less the lines I suspect most people think along.

'Why on earth is claig of all people arguing that CEOs of FTSE 100 companies should get more than people like Bono because that's "fair"?!!!!!!!! I thought claig didn't give a toss about fairness.'

I said CEOs deserved to have higher salaries than Bono. That is because they run enterprises that provide employment for thousands of people. I don't think it has anything to do with "fairness", just about who makes teh most useful contribution to society.

I obviously don't give as much of a toss about fairness as a good person such as yourself, but you are being very unfair to suggest that I don't give a toss about it.

Basically, there is no way any politician could ever really sell the idea that we are all in this together. The argument for directors and bankers to get the rates of pay and bonuses that they do is based around them having no sense of loyalty to any country and no sense of community - ie they would live and work wherever they get paid the most and have no interest in the effect this may or may not have on anyone else.

Now that would be interesting, if people got paid on the basis of what contribution they were actually perceived to be making to society... Would the CEO of Warner Bros get less than the CEO of Tesco, because people have to eat but don't have to watch films? Or would he get paid more, because people enjoy films and don't have the expertise to make them by themselves, but can grow their own food if they have to? Are dustmen more useful to society than solicitors? Surely childcare workers would be paid an awful lot more than they currently are? And hospital cleaners? Claig - you are actually quite a radical.

'Claig - you are actually quite a radical'

Exactly. That's why I choose to read the Daily Mail.

I don't set people's salaries and don't presume to. I don't think that would be fair. I don't knock other people for earning much more than me. I don't think it is wrong that Tevez earns £200,000 a week and I don't. Tevez has a marketable talent that I don't possess. That's life, I don't think it is unfair.

I believe in freedom and am against people on high, who think themselves very good and fair, deciding how much Tevez or anyone else should earn.

People are paid for how much worth they can contibute to businesses. I think that is fair. If you have rare skills that contribute to an enterprise, then you get more than someone who doesn't possess those skills.

It's not about how hard you work or about someone on high deciding what is fair. I bet a coal miner works harder and takes greater risks than Cherie Blair, but she earns more because her skills are in rarer supply.

I remember seeing a TV programme many years ago. They were talking about a young Japanese man who I think invented the Sega games, He didn't become super rich, because his salary was limited to 20 times the earnings of the lowest paid employee. If he had been in America, he would have been a multi-millionaire, but in Japan his salary was limited.

I prefer America and the American dream. I don't believe in limited rewards. I believe in the lottery, which was not allowed to people in this country for many, many years, but was allowed to people in other countries. I don't believe that the high and mighty and progressive should stop ordinary people - be it the Sega inventor or Carlos Tevez - earning a small amount of what the mega rich earn.

But that's why I am a radical and why I read the Daily Mail, rather than the Guiardian.

I think it is great that people working in what were once small startups like Microsoft, Google or Facebook earned millions of dollars when the shares in thos companies rocketed. They were ordinary people who worked hard and were in the right place at the right time. And they were in the right country, the country that allows ordinary people to experience the American dream. A country where there is real social mobility and where rewards are not limited by elites and their progressives.

Claig - I think you're in a small minority of lickspittles and wannabees in thinking this is OK.

Take a look at the comments on this thread in the Daily Telegraph (the Daily Telegraph!).

The people commenting aren't lentil-weaving Mumsnetters. They're small business owners, pensioners and free marketeers. And they're mad as hell!

I find it odd that people who call themselves progressive and went to Fettes, St. Paul's, Westmister and Eton and are millionaires and earn hundreds of thousands and have generous pensions, tell directors and bank employees, who have worked their way up from comprehensive and grammar schools, how much they should earn.

I think those good and fair progressives should take a trip down to St Paul's and spend some time in a tent and ponder on the message

?Before you cast the moat out of you neighbor's eye, take time to cast the beam out of your own.?

'They're small business owners, pensioners and free marketeers. And they're mad as hell!'

Of course they are mad as hell. They have been deliberately misled and played like a kipper by elites who went to Fettes, Westminster and Eton and who are creating a scapegoat of directors and bank employees, to fool the public and get them looking in the wrong direction. It's the oldest progressive trick in the book.

These Fettes, Westminster and Eton elites and their progressive Oxbridge-educated journalists are busy cutting the public's benefits and standard of living to levels of the 1930s, and they treat the public like seals to whom they throw the fish of fat cat business directors' salaries - the people who are working hard to create employment and rectify the mistakes of the elite regulators who were asleep at the wheel and who now lecture and point the finger at the supposed "fat cat" business directors.

You've seen that classic political comedy with Terry-Thomas, called 'School For Progressives'. All the tricks and spin are in that film and Terry-Thomas learns from the Fettes' masters.

Oooh, claig. So you were lying about footballer's salaries, then - you're quite happy about them. I thought so. I can always smell out a load of old bllcks when I read it.

It would appear to be a rare talent to clean a hospital properly.

Claig, is it actually education you don't like winning out over innate intelligence/cunning? I guess all forms of education are attempts to control the way the masses think as much as they are pathways to more advanced thinking.