Inequality

[Arniepie]

15 minutes ago, Strontium said:

 

Not a clue. It wasn't really relevant to my point.

 

Worth noting though that some of those employees will be overseas, which more than likely includes a hefty chunk of the 2,000 lowest paid.

surely if the ceo of a company is getting paid something like 100 times the salary of your average joe punch clock,that was the entire point of the argument?

[Strontium]

I thought the point was that docking the CEO £2.4m and dividing it between 49,000 people wouldn't make an iota of difference to those people.

 

But you'd have to ask someone who thinks it's wrong that someone gets paid the same for running a multi-billion pound company as Konstantinos Tsimikas does for kicking a ball around.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

20 minutes ago, Strontium said:

I thought the point was that docking the CEO £2.4m and dividing it between 49,000 people wouldn't make an iota of difference to those people.

 

But you'd have to ask someone who thinks it's wrong that someone gets paid the same for running a multi-billion pound company as Konstantinos Tsimikas does for kicking a ball around.

You thought wrong.

 

The fact that footballers are also overpaid is beyond doubt and completely irrelevant.  Tsimikas doesn't (directly, at least) get paid off the back of other people's labour the way a CEO does. 

[Strontium]

Just now, AngryOfTuebrook said:

You thought wrong.

 

The fact that footballers are also overpaid is beyond doubt and completely irrelevant.  Tsimikas doesn't (directly, at least) get paid off the back of other people's labour the way a CEO does. 

 

I think the issue here is you don't see what CEOs bring to the table that would make them worth as much as an average top flight sportsman. You don't think they're worth it, but the people who write their cheques do. In situations like this I would tend to defer to the people in possession of better information.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

1 hour ago, Strontium said:

 

I think the issue here is you don't see what CEOs bring to the table that would make them worth as much as an average top flight sportsman. You don't think they're worth it, but the people who write their cheques do. In situations like this I would tend to defer to the people in possession of better information.

Cobblers.  I'm happy not to dumbly "defer" to whatever rich and powerful people claim about situations of obvious injustice.  I'd rather ask questions and find facts 

 

As I understand, CEO pay is often determined by remuneration committees which largely consist of other senior executives; rich cunts scratch each others' backs and line each others' pockets.

 

Or maybe I'm wrong and the quality of CEOs, relative to their workforce, has just improved massively in the last few years. If you've got any evidence of that, I'd love to hear it.

[Arniepie]

2 minutes ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

Cobblers.  I'm happy not to dumbly "defer" to whatever rich and powerful people claim about situations of obvious injustice.  I'd rather ask questions and find facts 

 

As I understand, CEO pay is often determined by remuneration committees which largely consist of other senior executives; rich cunts scratch each others' backs and line each others' pockets.

 

Or maybe I'm wrong and the quality of CEOs, relative to their workforce, has just improved massively in the last few years. If you've got any evidence of that, I'd love to hear it.

Who is Tony Danker? CBI boss sacked over misconduct claims | The Independent

[Strontium]

45 minutes ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

I'd rather ask questions and find facts 

 

45 minutes ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

As I understand, CEO pay is often determined by remuneration committees which largely consist of other senior executives; rich cunts scratch each others' backs and line each others' pockets.

 

Welcome to AOT's TED talk.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

5 minutes ago, Strontium said:

 

 

Welcome to AOT's TED talk.

If that's meant to be some sort of snark, it's misfired: I don't even know what a TED talk is.  (I thought it was something to do with foul-mouthed teddy bears.)

[VladimirIlyich]

3 hours ago, Strontium said:

I thought the point was that docking the CEO £2.4m and dividing it between 49,000 people wouldn't make an iota of difference to those people.

 

But you'd have to ask someone who thinks it's wrong that someone gets paid the same for running a multi-billion pound company as Konstantinos Tsimikas does for kicking a ball around.

I would benefit enormously from an extra 100 quid a week into my household,even between three of us. 

[Bobby Hundreds]

British gas profits gone from 72 million to 750 million. Is that true? People are scared to turn their heating on and this is the level of profiteering. If it is true its got to be near the time we start building guillotines.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

14 minutes ago, Bobby Hundreds said:

British gas profits gone from 72 million to 750 million. Is that true? People are scared to turn their heating on and this is the level of profiteering. If it is true its got to be near the time we start building guillotines.

Train leasing companies profits trebled, too.  Those CEOs are really earning their crust.

 

(Actually, in fairness to those CEOs, their only job is to generate profit; providing a decent public service is neither here nor there.)

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/18/profits-of-uks-private-train-leasing-firms-treble-in-a-year

 

[Arniepie]

28 minutes ago, Bobby Hundreds said:

British gas profits gone from 72 million to 750 million. Is that true? People are scared to turn their heating on and this is the level of profiteering. If it is true its got to be near the time we start building guillotines.

https://twitter.com/JonathanPieNews/status/1758878687162769840?s=20

[Section_31]

People living in Notting Hill, west London, received more in capital gains from 2015 to 2019 than the combined population of Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle according to an analysis of capital gains tax

[Section_31]

Interesting listen this.

 

 

[Kepler-186]

1 hour ago, Section_31 said:

Interesting listen this.

 

 

This is the book he’s written that’s discussed in the interview. 
 

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/451795/technofeudalism-by-varoufakis-yanis/9781847927279

 

 

[Bobby Hundreds]

Just read that Tom Felton who played Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films made about 20 million quid yet his screen time across the entirety of the whole series of films is only 32 minutes. I mean I've no issue with it, people earning big money without doing anyone else bad is fair enough but jeez the notion that wealth is born of hard work when just as often it's luck, right time, right place with a slice of the right attitude. 

 

20 million for playing pretend when you were a kid.

[Strontium]

There would have been a lot more than 32 minutes of rehearsal of course, though it still represents a massive return for limited investment of time and energy.

 

But then the reason the actors earned so much money on those movies is not because of an overwhelming input of effort on their part, but because the work they did made an enormous amount of money for their employer.

 

I think there is definitely a tendency to get stuck in old labour theories of value, the idea that the value of work is somehow proportional to the amount of work put in by the individual. The reality is more prosaic, work is simply worth whatever someone will pay you for it.

[Kepler-186]

Exclusive:

Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal…..

 

 

https://www.bigissue.com/news/social-justice/dwp-disability-benefits-claimants-fail-whistleblowers/

 

 

[VladimirIlyich]

15 minutes ago, Kepler-186 said:

Exclusive:

Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal…..

 

 

https://www.bigissue.com/news/social-justice/dwp-disability-benefits-claimants-fail-whistleblowers/

 

 

Not really a surprise,is it?

[Kepler-186]

25 minutes ago, VladimirIlyich said:

Not really a surprise,is it?

Unfortunately not mate. No sign of any change in approach either. 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

The CEO of Kellogg's gets paid over $4 million a year; and as long as poor people have to eat cereal for dinner, business is booming.

 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

On 25/02/2024 at 00:16, Strontium said:

I think there is definitely a tendency to get stuck in old labour theories of value, the idea that the value of work is somehow proportional to the amount of work put in by the individual. The reality is more prosaic, work is simply worth whatever someone will pay you for it.

I think that's sort of Bobby's point about luck.  

 

I've got no problem with film makers, musicians, sportspeople, etc, getting a fair slice of the fortunes they sometimes generate.  There is a strong element of luck, though: one actor might put in a towering performance in a great film that's ignored by the distributors and dies on its arse; someone else might phone in a shit performance in a shit film that makes gazillions at the box office.  Or you might be the best volleyball player in the country, blessed with incredible natural talent and with a tireless approach to training, but you'll never get the pay that a mediocre Premier League footballer gets, for the simple reason that football generates so much more money.

[VladimirIlyich]

7 hours ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

The CEO of Kellogg's gets paid over $4 million a year; and as long as poor people have to eat cereal for dinner, business is booming.

 

At their prices? You must be joking!

[VladimirIlyich]

7 hours ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

I think that's sort of Bobby's point about luck.  

 

I've got no problem with film makers, musicians, sportspeople, etc, getting a fair slice of the fortunes they sometimes generate.  There is a strong element of luck, though: one actor might put in a towering performance in a great film that's ignored by the distributors and dies on its arse; someone else might phone in a shit performance in a shit film that makes gazillions at the box office.  

Hello.

[Kevin D]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/21/poorest-uk-families-hardest-hit-cost-living-crisis-official-figures
 

About 300,000 more children were plunged into absolute poverty in a single year at the height of the cost of living crisis amid soaring levels of hunger and food bank use, official figures show, prompting calls for an overhaul of the UK’s creaking welfare safety net.

 

Campaigners accused the government of failing to protect the UK’s poorest families as the latest poverty statistics showed 600,000 more people fell into absolute poverty – ministers’ preferred poverty measure – in 2022-23 when inflation was at its 10% peak.

Overall, during the year 12 million people were in absolute poverty – equivalent to 18% of the population, including 3.6 million children – levels of hardship last seen in 2011-12 after the financial crash.

 

Ministers and opposition politicians faced calls to get a grip on rising poverty levels, with charities urging an increase to benefit rates to reflect the real cost of basics, such as food and energy, and the scrapping of policies such as the two-child benefit limit which is seen as a driver of family hardship.

Campaigners said the meagreness of welfare benefits was highlighted by sharp rises in food insecurity and food bank use. One in 10 people in poverty relied on food banks during the year, while 41% of universal credit claimants were food insecure, meaning they could not afford to buy sufficient food.

 

The figures show the reality of increasing concerns over rising poverty, and the prevalence of more extreme forms of hardship such as destitution, where individuals are unable to afford basic living essentials such as food, energy, bedding and clothing. Nearly 4 million people experienced destitution in 2022.

The latest households below average income statistics, published by the Department for Work and Pensions, also showed that in 2022-23:

• More than two-thirds (69%) of UK children in poverty lived in families where at least one parent works, while 44% of children in lone-parent families were in poverty.

• An estimated 2.9 million children were in deep poverty, meaning their income was at least 50% below the poverty line. Nearly half (46%) of all families with three or more children were in poverty.

• Nearly one in 10 (8%) of pensioners struggled to eat regularly, pay essential bills or keep their home warm, up 2 percentage points year on year, and the first increase in material hardship measures among the over-65s since 2014.

Child poverty also increased on the relative poverty measure that is preferred by campaigners, with 100,000 more young people pulled beneath the poverty line, meaning that a third of UK children (4.3 million) were in poverty in 2022-23 on this calculation.

Alison Garnham, the chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group, said: “In a general election year, nothing should be more important to our political leaders than making things better for the country’s poorest kids. But child poverty has reached a record high, with 4.3 million kids now facing cold homes and empty tummies.”

The government said its cost of living support package, which included one-off cash payments and support with energy bills for low-income households, had helped alleviate pressure on poorer families and prevented more than 1 million people falling into poverty.

 

The work and pensions secretary, Mel Stride, acknowledged the “last few years have been tough” but claimed falling inflation coupled with a range of tax and benefit measures would provide support to people on low incomes. “The plan is working, and we need to stick to it to deliver a brighter future and economic security for everyone,” he said.

 

Charities said the second successive annual rise in absolute poverty figures showed it had failed to do enough. “The government’s short-term interventions to date haven’t stopped the incomes of poorer households from being swallowed up by the soaring cost of essentials,” said Peter Matejic, the chief analyst at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

 

Labour called the figures “horrifying” and promised to tackle the problem if it won power at the next election. Alison McGovern, the shadow welfare secretary, said: “We’ll fix this Tory failure yet again with a new cross-government child poverty strategy.”

 

But the party faced renewed calls to promise to scrap the Tories’ two-child benefit limit, after the New Economics Foundation (NEF) thinktank highlighted that local authority areas in England with the biggest increases in child poverty in recent years also had high proportions of families affected by the two-child limit.

 

The three council areas of England with the largest rises in child poverty over the past decade (2014-15 to 2022-23), according to the NEF, were Nottingham (up 16 percentage points, with 40% of children in poverty), Birmingham (up 14 points, 41%) and Leicester (up 13 points, 41%).

 

Sam Tims, a senior economist at the NEF, said: “What we are seeing is a deepening of poverty in the very places that the government was supposed to lift up. The government could take millions of children out of poverty and help those in the most-deprived places by scrapping the two-child limit and increasing universal credit.”

 

Shona Goudie, a policy manager at the Food Foundation thinktank, said: “Current benefit levels are clearly insufficient and hugely elevate risks of food insecurity and the health consequences of eating a poor diet.”