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Boss of British Gas owner says it is ‘impossible to justify’ his £4.5m pay
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2024
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I'll be the first to admit that I (and most of my field) is grossly overpaid when you compare what we do to more valuable work like nursing and teaching, but I'm not going to demand a 50% pay cut to stand in solidarity with the nation's nurses, especially when I know that everyone else in my field wouldn't be doing the same.
This dude with the super villain moustache straight-up said that his salary was exorbitant and unreasonable, and he did it on national television. I think that's pretty great. We should be having an open conversation in this country about compensation and working toward something like a wealth cap.
My only criticism is that this guy didn't use this opportunity to go that bit further. I mean, he's half way there already being critical of his own income, why not go all the way and say something baller like "No one should be allowed to make more than £100k/year"?
It's probably because he doesn't actually see a problem with his compensation, but either way, I think conversations like this should be encouraged and journalists need to pursue the topic of a wealth cap when situations like this present.
I don't think a wealth cap is necessary. Rather, we should look to US pre-Reagon - there was a 95% tax for earnings over $1 million, and Reagan said "If I get taxed 95% on my earnings for my next movie, I'm not going to make that movie. Then everyone else making that movie will be out of a job!" Nevermind the fact that, if they didn't have to pay him, the movie would have had far more money and been free to make something else. The workers would have had a job, the marketing may have been less effective but the overall commercial enterprise would be by and large unaffected.
Instead, we've got backhand deals. A common scandal story in the UK is an MP being paid a few £10,000s or maybe £100,000 - small fry compared to the US and their Super PAC's. However, the way the Tories have things set up is that there are 60 or so MP's who are on the party's payroll. All you have to do to write law in your favour is engage with one of them and donate to the party. The party will write a law, the whips will follow suit (just like they collectively voted against feeding children over Christmas during a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic) and then the party will pay the MP that negotiated it a healthy bonus. Money is literally laundered through the party.
And the worst part is the Labour party have no plans on changing this. They just want their bite at the pie. The Tories stretch the standard for what MP's can get away with, Labour comes in and draws a line, then the Tories come back in and stretch it again.
Sack the fucking lot of them. We don't need "representatives" to go to Westminster and facetiously "vote on our behalf" anymore. A direct democracy, certainly once it's established, would be better than this.
Diminishing returns. You can earn that billion but man are you really gonna fuckin earn it. And we will all be better for it. Isn't that how it should work?