I have no excuse for not blogging the last couple of days, other than that I have been taking long walks over the beach and cliffs with my family. I feel wonderful for it.
There has been much well deserved publicity for the report of the Low Pay Commission, which stated that we are fast returning to Victorian levels of inequality as the gap between rich and poor grows wider at an extraordinary pace. The reaction of talking heads all over the broadcast media has been that it must be for shareholders to set executive remuneration.
Plainly this does not work. Thomas Cook is going under, and it paid its chief executive, who resigned last year, £7 million in four years.
JJB Sports is also going under. It has huge debts, but these are less than its founder, the appalling Dave Whelan, took out of the company himself. Whelan characterised a brief strike against terrible labour conditions at the company’s depot as “communism”. He is a big donor to the Tory party. He is chairman of Wigan Athletic, and his view on racial abuse on the pitch is that “black players have just got to get on with it”.
I am not a fan of Polly Toynbee. She supported Blair tirelessly, appearing not to notice that it was in fact the Blair years, not the Thatcher years, that saw the huge acceleration in the gap between rich and poor. She continued to support New Labour war criminals on the grounds that a tiny improvement in the conditions of poor children in the UK was more important than the lives of hundreds of thousands of children killed or mutilated abroad in Blair’s Wars – a view tantamount, in my view, to racism.
But the blinkered old bat got something right when she scathingly dismissed the notion that it was shareholders who should control excessive wages. The shareholders of major corporations, she said, are often many thousands of miles away, and are fund managers who hold and dump shares fleetingly as short term speculation. They have no more say in running the company than a punter who bets on a racehorse has in running the stable. An excellent analogy.
Governmental regulation is needed to stop ridiculous inequality. Transparency is important, as the government seems prepared to admit, but will not solve the problem. Nor will employee representation on remuneration committees. These employees will be senior “trusties”, and if not, will be subject to all the threat implicit in the government drive – the most energetically pursued of all government policies – to end employees’ rights and protection from unfair dismissal. That loss of employee rights will undoubtedly increase the wealth gap. If you make it easier to sack people, it is a lie that companies will hire more people. They will sack more people.
I maintain that the law should state that net total reward for the highest earner in a company or organisation should not be more than four times the rate of reward per hour for the lowest paid employee. So if a cleaner gets £320 per week for a 40 hour week, the boss should be able to get up to £2240 per week if he works a 70 hour week.
This would have one very good effect – you would in short time find the cleaners getting paid a lot more so the boss can get more. It would need to be plain that agency or sub-contractors working within the company count – so Goldman Sachs can’t just get someone else to clean their toilets. The idea would work particularly well in the public sector, where a whole new raft of super-rich public employees were deliberately created by New Labour.
More barbarity in Afghanistan.
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Afghan children in Kandahar ‘killed by Nato’
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Seven civilians, including six children, have been killed in a Nato air strike in southern Afghanistan, local officials say.
District Governor Niaz Mohammad Sarhadi told the BBC the civilians died late on Wednesday in the Zheray district of Kandahar province.
He said the strike had been launched in a remote area after Taliban insurgents were seen planting roadside bombs.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai strongly condemned the bombing.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15877558
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This report coincides with another reporting the repatriation of four British servicemen to the UK today.
@DonnyDarko….. Spot on with your assesment. I think if youve been there and run your own business then you understand if you havent then you cant understand.
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That said I also understand why people think the boss must be taking raking it in, even when they possibly ( or in our current climate probably) arnt. Having worked for other people in the past I too have sat there and felt that someone else profits off my efforts without making any themselves. Wether I was right or wrong in that belief I dont know. When we have profit we invest back in our capital equipment first ( we are a manufacturing comapny) then we pay the staff bonus, whats left is for me and finally the shareholders, always leaving enough cash in the business to ensure sufficient working capital.
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SME’s dont have the luxury of tax evasion, or the luxury of being able to treat staff badly ( as a rule, some do.. i dont deny that) SME’s employ more people than any other business group. We are the backbone of this country and without us our economy would be in a really big mess. Finding ways to limit the number of people willing to take risks with their own, usually megre, wealth would not be good for this country.
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Personally I cant see how earning 7 million can be justified, unless you are creating wealth many many multiples of that, and certainly in failing business’s its simply insane.
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Can you force responsibility onto Directors and the like ? Not without effectively punishing the many SME owner managers that are simply doing the best they can. And as we know no matter what legislation is put in place the big boys with their big legal and tax advising teams will find ways round it, whilst the oridinary SME gets shafted…. again.
@passerby.. I manufacture none of the items you state. I have built, from scratch, a profitable business. I know plenty of business owners who make my profits look like petty cash. If my staff average wage is £20 grand basic, your saying I cant earn £100K. Your wrong. In a good year I can and have. In a bad year I cant. Howvever no matter how bad the year is my staff can still get their bonuses and as much overtime as they want.
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Oh and I pay all my taxes in full, I recieve nothing from the government and never have. I contribute a hell of a lot more to this country than I take out.
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Can you say the same ?
The main reason this could never fly is that ’employees’ would also include the sweat-shop labour abroad. If the chief executive couldn’t earn more than 4x that of the lowest paid worker, they’d find it pretty tough getting by on £4.00/day.
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Still no sign of my earlier post – it had no links. Tried resubmitting and it told me off for making a duplicate post!
Brian’s point about sub contractors is spot-on,and a big flaw in Craig’s argument. Goldman Sachs doesn’t ’employ’ its own cleaners, it contracts the work out to a ‘facilities manager’ who in turn will sub contract work out under various headings- ‘security’ ‘office cleaning’ ‘boiler maintenance’ ‘window cleaning’ etc.
‘“Enoch Powell”; death seems to have weakened your previously forensic logic. Actually, shareholders do not determine executive pay. There is an increasing awareness of this, and even shareholders are pissed off that their dividends are being sapped by exorbitant pay awards to management. Decided by management, who else?’
Very good point Komodo. WJ Baumol pointed this out half a century ago, well before high frequency trading made ‘shareholders’ even more irrelevant to corporate decision making. (Craig’s analogy with punters thereby having ‘input’ into the decisions of the trainers & owners of racehorses is excellent). But quite how do you prevent the capture of high value companies by their most senior executives ? The following proposals wouldn’t prevent such capture, but would be pesky obstacles to senior managers who set out to loot the companies they ostensibly ‘work for’-
# publication, either under the Companies Act, or in response to FOI requests from the general public, of all contracts, minutes & correspondence relating to the 5 top remunereted employees, or all employees on 6 figure packages, whichever is the greater. (To apply to all private organisations not currently covered by the FOI Act 2000, and employing over 200 people).
# the impositition of an unearned income surcharge (say 15%) on all emoluments not directly related to work, and worth more than £5000 a month (to cover- pension payouts, ‘golden handcuffs’ ‘golden parachutes’, end of year bonuses, ‘non compete’ payments etc).
David,
this is where I have the advantage over most political bloggers of having a life. I have founded a number of successful companies, and then given away the bulk of shares to the employees. On Atholl Energy in particular I have indeed been in the position of having my property mortgaged to its success.
The truth is this. Mo matter your opinion of yourself (which is obviously high) you couldn’t make it without your staff. And if you are paying them 20 grand, and taking much over 100 grand yourself – remember my proposal would let you take over 100 grand presuming you are working more hours than them – but if you want still more than that, then you are a narcissistic and unpleasant deluded fellow.
@ Enoch Powell
“You also seem to forget that you yourself are one of the privileged few whose earnings over the years bore no relation to the “work” that you did.
What did you ever make (other than a huge mess)? You led a *very* comfortable, taxpayer-funded life for your entire career, and never did a real job. You never made anything.”
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Well i would argue,very strongly,Craig’s brave and principled efforts over the years,in speaking out against horrific tortures and disappearances has “made” it all safer for millions of all of us.He has “made” it that much more difficult for tyrants,despots and genuinely evil people to commit horrific crimes without scrutiny.
That’s what he has “made”
There are some things you don’t measure in coin Mr.Enoch Powell.
@ David
“Can you say the same ?”
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Nah of course not!!!!!!!!! coz you are the only only who is working evidently and paying taxes too (slap my thigh, one of those).
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Prey tell what do you manufacture? Other than the copious amounts of hot air so far?
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PS I am your worst nightmare; been there, bought the shirt, worn it out, and no longer buy into the “dream” shit!
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PPS for anyone who is sane, and still thinking for themselves; in the current climate of cleptocratic culture, there is no reward for hard work, originality, and relentless effort. The only industry to make unusual returns, other than belonging to the service class of the Oligarchs (ie Fred the Shred of Nat West, whom flew his fruit fresh from Paris everyday and made no less than five million pounds a year, whilst running the joint into the wall), remain in buying a lottery ticket, and or any of the above listed “professions”.
Craig,
“The truth is this. Mo matter your opinion of yourself (which is obviously high) you couldn’t make it without your staff. And if you are paying them 20 grand, and taking much over 100 grand yourself – remember my proposal would let you take over 100 grand presuming you are working more hours than them – but if you want still more than that, then you are a narcissistic and unpleasant deluded fellow.”
I’m interested in how your views apply to,say,intellectual copyright?If an individual invented,for example,a cure for cancer but needed large gearing cosrs and staff to realise the product then how do you feel about that individual amassing a huge fortune for,essentially,a brilliant idea?
More entrants from the British business world into Libya to snap up its assets.
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Reuters: Vitol, whose managing director is the Tory donor Ian Taylor, wins Libya oil tender.
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‘Trading giants Vitol and Glencore have won tenders to supply oil products to Libya’s government until the end of the year in a move that rivals said was increasing their chances of snapping up lucrative deals to export Libyan oil next year.
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Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) was seeking to buy up to 450,000 tonnes of gasoline, 360,000 tonnes of gasoil and 180,000 tonnes of fuel oil in November-December and five trading sources told Reuters on Thursday Glencore and Vitol have won the tenders.
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The exact breakdown was not immediately clear. Glencore and Vitol declined to comment.
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Sources close to Glencore and Vitol confirmed the companies had won some Libyan tenders’.
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http://af.reuters.com/article/libyaNews/idAFL5E7MO3H320111124
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Ian Taylor also just so happens to be a close personal friend of International Development Minister Alan Duncan. And indeed, Duncan himself once worked as a consultant to Vitol. During the bombing of Libya, Duncan and a secretive Foreign Office ‘oil cell’ had worked with Vitol to make sure that the rebels were well supplied with oil, while trying to make sure Gadaffi’s forces were starved of it. So I guess this is payback time.
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The other British oil company to have won oil tenders in Libya since the fall of Gadaffi is Heritage Oil – whose CEO is Tony Buckingham, another Tory donor, and an ex-mercenary who was ‘at the heart of the trade in arms and troops shipped into Africa in the 90s’ in pursuit of securing natural resources. He was once a business partner of Simon Mann, infamous for his foiled coup attempt in oil rich Equatorial Guinea in 2004.
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Same old Same old. For Iraq read Libya.
Passerby is correct in pointing out that executive pay in the corporate sector has little if anything to do with running a business, and that most small businesses are more or less a dead loss and end in failure.
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David is correct in pointing out that small businesses, if tended with diligence, competence and aided with a large measure of good luck can pay decent returns. He is also correct in pointing out that no one would start a small business without the prospect of a handsome reward, so any measure to limit the earnings of entrepreneurs would be highly damaging to the small business sector, which is the biggest job creator.
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Large corporations all strive to eliminate jobs by substituting capital for labor (i.e., automation) or by off-shoring the work to low-wage jurisdictions. Success in these endeavors is what justifies and makes possible the high salaries, bonuses and stock options paid by the large corporations. The other function of the corporate exec. is to influence legislation in ways that stifle competition, allow price fixing, and avoid payment for external costs of production.
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So if you want more jobs and higher wages the best bet is to criminalize most of what the corporate lobbyists do, and create a competitive free market, in place of a market dominated by cartels and monopolies.
Not much point in continuing with this “discussion” At what point did I start insulting anyone ?
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It has become a habit on this blog now that anyone whos opinion differs from the authors simply gets shouted down.
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How many people get paid 30 grand a year for an unskilled job ? Not many. I do what I do, I do it well, and yes I have a high opinion of myself because Im honest hard working and dont fall for the socialist view of life. Sorry everyone is not created equal, some people are very fortunate in life and get lucky breaks, others dont. Thats life. If you try any other system it will fail because of one simple fact. Human nature.
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You cant change the world, it changes itself. All you can do is the best you can for your self and your family.
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I like my life, my staff are also mostly my friends, once people come to work here they never leave. Im doing something right despite your obvious low view on anyone who earns more money than you. How very british.
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For the record, I support greenpeace, the dogs trust, amnesty international and those crazy people chucking stuff at the japanese wailers. Ive also written every letter you ever asked people to write on this blog to help your causes.
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I supported you as well craig when you had no money, by buying both of your books, one of which you signed. Think Ill chuck em both on the coal fire tonight because you have changed from some one I trusted and respected to someone who isnt worth the time.
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Its been good reading this blog up until recently where you seem to have lost it, you dont invite discussion anymore craig. Its your way or get slated. Thats a real shame. Nothing left to learn from here, guess I wonder off and find some where more intelligent that actually encourages open and honest debate about issues, and where different peoples views and opinions can be heard without the fear of people just name calling.
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You learn nothing by shouting people down, you learn from listening. Thanks to the interesting posters on here, there have been some.
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Enjoy the little world you have created for yourself craig, long may it continue.
Some Israel propaganda here from Gould himself.
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The science of diplomacy
Op-ed: British ambassador says Israel, UK have much to gain by working together
Matthew Gould Published: 11.22.11, 00:05 / Israel Opinion
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Ben Gurion University Beersheba will this week host one of the most important events that I have been involved in since coming to Israel last year as Britain’s ambassador. It is a huge scientific conference between the UK and Israel in regenerative medicine. Sixty leading British academics will visit Israel for the conference, joining 200 academics from across Israel. And the conference will launch a major, five-year program of UK-Israel collaboration
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/..http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4151013,00.html
David (above) has some interesting views on ‘numpties’ who don’t run a business. As is typical of such people, he brags about how hard he works, wails and moans about the sacrifices involved, bleats that it affects his social life, as if such things were unknown to the rest of us! Then boasts about the rewards he gets for his choices too. Finally, things have to go his own way – he stamps his foot saying he’s going home and taking his ball with him otherwise. Would you like a knighthood in recognition of your efforts too, guv?
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Let’s be frank – anyone employing someone does so because they make more money for the business than the salary they receive. David doesn’t “give 12 people a good job”, he uses the services of those people to make himself vastly more money than he pays them. Much more than 4 times more by the seem of his shrill protestations! Greedy cry-baby.
Very fair points in this article. Perhaps another point to consider is tax – when it drops to anywhere near 50% at the top rate, you find executive pay starts to skyrocket. Back in the days when we had 90%+ at the very top (more than a million a year), it was so tax inefficient to pay massive executive salaries, that the money was left in the business.
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About your restriction that the lowest paid employee should not get less than 1/4 of the hourly wage of the highest paid – this socialist horror is implemented in the US armed forces. A private first class (the lowest rank) cannot receive less than one fifth of any general. Other socialist measures include free lifetime health coverage, education and so on. Shocking!
“and that most small businesses are more or less a dead loss and end in failure.”
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The little publicised fact is; 96 percent of the businesses in UK are Small business, and the high rates of failure in this sector is a clear case of market failure, and never debated. Further 84 percent of the workforce in UK are in employment of the said Small businesses, whom invariably are on some governmental subsidy scheme to help make ends meet, and often existing at the edge, and only one week ahead of going broke. This makes a mockery of the notion of SME which for ever is a vehicle for corporate friendly policies.
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In a plutarchy, it matters very little for the fact that less than one half of one percent of businesses are large sized and less than three and one half of one percent are medium sized business together employing less than 16 percent of the workforce.
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David is a wannabe, and talks out of his elbow, paying a minimum of 30000, and then reduced at 20000 in the next post, this guy has no idea about the going prices for workforce.
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@ Glenn
I’m unemployed but i think you’re rant at David is naive,simplistic and,frankly,rude.
I know many people who run their own businesses and for many of them it is a struggle.They dont take out of the business much more than their staff,work much longer hours,and it’s all re-invested in the hope of future growth.
“anyone employing someone does so because they make more money for the business than the salary they receive”
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No, that is merely the hope. That hope is what energizes Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”:
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“As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.”
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And in another use of the “invisible hand” metaphor, Smith makes the point that although wealth is unevenly distributed, consumption is much more similar among all ranks of mankind. Bill Gates has a much more extravagant life style that I do, but not in proportion to our relative wealth. Mostly his wealth consists in an accumulating pile of share certificates and in many ways that is appropriate. Better that Bill Gates run Microsoft etc. than some bunch of bureaucrats.
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But here it is:
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[The rich] consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species.
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What Smith would object to in the present state of capitalism is monopolism and the corporate influence over legislation that serves to protect monopolies and oligopolies.
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As usual you and CM are hammering at the wrong point. It is not exorbitant executive pay that is the current great evil. It is the destruction of jobs in Europe and North America through wage arbitrage by a few dozen oligopolistic multi-nationals which is the real evil in our present economic system.
That link should have been:
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the destruction of jobs in Europe and North America through wage arbitrage by a few dozen oligopolistic multi-nationals,/a>
Which takes you to my own brilliant analysis, of course.
why the hell are we still arguing about what Adam Smith did or didn’t say? The “invisible hand”, give me a break… let’s call it what it is: God. Gore Vidal put it most succinctly saying that capitalism is just a Christian heresy, whilst communism is a capitalist heresy. Can’t we move forward finally?
Give you a break? Why? Who the hell cares what Gore Vidal has to say about economics. Smith was a giant. Vidal was a CIA asset.
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And how do you you move forward, finally or anytime, if you abandon reality? Novelty is no proof of validity.
The report in question wasn’t talking about the average small businessman trying to squeeze a decent return out of his investment. It was talking about greedy fat cats at the top of industry and finance who wouldn’t know a decent day’s work if it stood up and bit them, but earn salaries beyond credence. People who, if they were asking one millionth of their salaries in benefit, the Daily Fail would be denouncing as scroungers. Managers who can’t and don’t (manage that is – at all), ‘consultants’ who rake in millions from sinecures, CEOs who fail – and somehow manage to move up regardless.
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It’s a constant wail from the rich that you must – of course – pay for talent and success. WHAT talent? WHAT success? I see no sign of it in this country. Ask in any large business. The CEO can be missing for a month. Who misses him? Nobody. You have a cleaner or van driver off work for a few days and everything goes to pot.
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Essentially, as long as the law allows turkeys to vote for Xmas, we’re going to have excesses, whether it’s business, politics or local government. They all have their noses in the trough and leaving it to those same people to sort out the mess is crazy. That’s not left-wing politics or right-wing politics – it’s common sense.
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That said, I suspect this report is just another way of allowing the British public to tut-tut for a while until they forget that nothing effective is going to be done – the fix is in far too deeply.
CanSpeccy : Good to talk to you again. Unfortunately, I fear you’ve missed the point – the destruction of jobs by outsourcing to Asian sweat-shops would not take place, if the minimum wage of all employees was 1/4 that of the CEO. I had no idea you’d bought into the religion of Adam Smith – at least, the right-wing version of what he’s supposed to be about? This “invisible hand” just doesn’t work with executives who are only interested in a short term gain, they’ll effectively asset-strip a company if it gets them their bonus by giving a boost to the share price.
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Jives : You don’t think it’s rude to call anyone not owning their business a ‘numptie’, as David did? You must have missed his original post, because I was replying about people with that attitude, not having a knock at all business owners. You say “It’s all reinvested in the hope of future growth”, but this David is throwing a fit at the idea he can only take out four times that of his well-paid employees. So obviously, he’s much more concerned with what he can take out, not leave in. So upset by the idea of limiting it, in fact, he threatens “I’ll take my business and leave.” Just like they always say but never do.
“the destruction of jobs by outsourcing to Asian sweat-shops would not take place, if the minimum wage of all employees was 1/4 that of the CEO.”
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If the minimum wage of all employees was 1/4 that of the CEO, there’d either be no jobs or no CEO’s. You cannot pay more than a job is worth, and if you try to, you’ll go broke. The minimum wage in the West is about ten times the average industrial wage in China. That’s why unemployment is running at a real rate of 20%, and that’s why there will be no jobs recovery in the West. And if you slash CEO’s pay to four times minimum wage, they’ll emigrate to Dubai or some such place and probably take their business with them, as Halliburton did.
I can go a long way down your road to economic recovery, Craig. If we are fast returning to Victorian values perhaps it needs something similar to Robert Owen’s New Lanark models, but the most recent success is an experiment which was already well-established in the eighties, the Mondragon cooperative in the Basque region of Spain, This is the seventh largest company in Spain and the largest in the Basque region. That it was started by a well-meaning priest should in no way belittle its success. It seems necessary the such cooperatives start with an almost autocratic visionary. Autocratic visionaries have a purpose not found in the corporate board-room, where the only motivation is profit. Who would not be happy for the visionary to receive four times the salary of the lowest-paid worker?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NORmQ8zaL1c
“I suspect this report is just another way of allowing the British public to tut-tut for a while until they forget that nothing effective is going to be done”
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Certainly talking near Commie bollocks about relating executive pay to minimum wages won’t achieve anything effective.
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If you want to create jobs in competition with China you’ve got to make it possible for companies to hire at competitive rates, i.e., at wages that, because of the high cost of living in the West, will be below the starvation level.
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How can you do that?
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A negative income tax is one possibility. Or a better solution is a wage subsidy program, subsidies purchased by corporation in a competitive auction.
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The Occupy movements need to get more focused and make specific, practical demands, not holler Commie slogans or indulge in pointless hatred for rich people. The rich, as Jesus said, are always with us. Or he should have said.
Re: Autocratic visionary.
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Yeah, sure. The Commie revolution didn’t work too well the first time. And it’s not working too well the second time in it’s kid-glove Euro disguise. So now we’re to try the Soviet model again? But watch out. The autocrat may look more like Adolf than good ol’ Vladimir. LOL.
http://dissidentvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/corporate_copy-791×1024.jpg
Canspeccy, I can see a big difference between Lenin, Hitler, and Robert Owen, and a big difference between communism and the cooperative movement. I take it you did not watch the Mondragon video?
@ Glenn
I did read David’s original post but missed the “numptie” phrase-which i disagree with of course.So i do now understand the anger in your post.Apologies for my mis-read.
Nevertheless there must surely be a point of consideration for the small businessperson doing their best,particularly in relation to the cost of the financial risk they take bearing in mind the failure rate of such businesses.Some small businesses risk their mortgages,cars etc.Shouldn’t this risk-which may exist for years-be offset,if only to incentivise good business practice,against a reasonable level of profit motive over the course of many years of perhaps non-profitability?
And please beleive me i’m no insanely greedy apologist for insane capitalism.Quite the epposite in fact.
My worry is we’re in danger of jeopardising and stigmatising many genuinely hard-working and worthy small businesses when we all know the real problem is the obscene practices of the oligarch class.I refuse to call them the elite btw.