What In Buggery Has It To Do With You, Matey?

Capitalists rule, see?

A coterie of Hampstead dimtellectuals is insistent that other people are just earning far too much money. To give an example of their political leanings - if Hampstead and dim isn’t enough - they seem to be mostly retired Guardianistas looking for something to do in their cardigan years.

Imagine the character defects that would lead you to spending your golden years shouting at those getting above themselves, eh? For that is what they’re doing.

The groupuscule of the Cardiganistas is the “High Pay Centre”. Which occupies itself by insisting that people who get paid a lot should not get paid a lot. Because, well, they shouldn’t. The latest manifestation is:

Chief executives should have their pay capped to maintain a fair balance between workers and bosses, according to a survey that found a majority of respondents in favour of restricting top salaries.

A poll by the High Pay Centre thinktank of more than 2,000 people found that 55% agreed that chief executive pay should be set as a multiple of workers’ low or average earnings “so that pay differences between the high and low or middle earners don’t grow too wide”. Only 15% objected.

Against a backdrop of rows over bosses’ pay and bonuses in the water industry and calls by the head of the London Stock Exchange for chief executives to be paid more to retain “top talent”, the thinktank said the survey showed that there was a growing appetite for a rethink about the relationship between the boardroom and workers on the shop floor.

The workers surveyed may well think that such a rethink is justified. The CEOs might even think one way or t’other on the issue. The High Pay Centre definitely thinks it is. The problem here being that the views of the trio mean bugger all.

Because the money being paid doesn’t belong to any of the trio. It belongs to the capitalists. And the capitalists get to dispose of their money in whatever manner they choose. That’s what owning something means - that you can do as you wish with it.

So, bugger off.

This all before we get to what the usual claim is - that CEOs should get no more than 20 times the median wage of the workers in their company. Quite how this is calculated is never said but it’s possible to work it out.

Think about your being some sort of middling haute bourgeois - this is The Guardian so of course that’s the source class of these people. £30 to £50k is readily achievable in teaching, journalism, artsy stuff - you know, if you did words at university, not numbers. It’s possible to dream a bit and think of your sort of people making £500k a year - Viner does for editing the house rag after all. Or a significant professor with a couple of best selling books - a Dawkins, that sort of thing. Maybe as much as £1 million a year.

Which is great. But the living standard achieved isn’t all that hugely different. A different or better house in Hampstead perhaps, but Islington - without those pesky really higher earners - could still be done by those toiling on the presses. There would still be positional goods like that - a villa in Tuscany or a tres bijou cottage in the Pyrenees sort of difference - but it’s not a wild difference in lifestyle at the end.

But then we’ve got these abominations who actually do something for a living. And who earn 300 times the average wage. Or those bastards in The City who might gain a bonus - just the one annual bonus! - of an entire lifetime’s worth of Guardian editor salary. And yes, City bonuses really can be up there at 20 to 30 times Viner’s 1/2mill.

This is what the real complaint is. That those who did numbers - the grubby little oiks with pocket protectors and calculators - earn multiples of what those who did words do. Which is why that maximum which is to be allowable is set at how much a wordy might make.

It’s all the green eyed God, d’ye see?

And, you know, sorry and all that, but how the capitalists spend their money is nowt to do with anyone else.