For me, the question is not how rich people but how they got there. If someone becomes filthy rich by delivering cheaper food to the less advantaged, making cars affordable to more people or delivers some other good or service that people want in a competitive way, then I would say congratulations. Oddly, though, when it comes to sectors that are too close to politics and government, like banking, I am in agreement that it is disgusting (though not for exactly the same reasons that you suggest). Sean Gabb of the Libertarian Alliance made a rather good argument on this: http://libertarianalliance.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/is-the-city-of-london-good-for-england/

Ossler

What exactly are you complaining about?

Hutton doesn’t demand that top execs be paid more. And if HSBC decides an exec is worth £10mil a year then, like ManU deciding Ronaldo is worth £100k a week, that’s up to them.

Hutton just says that in a world where some people earn millions – the aim should be to empower people of all brackgrounds to rise so high – rather than leave such wealth to people born into it.

So whats the problem?

There’s also a difference between someone like Brecht, who earns his money paid as cash paid in the UK and therefore contributes £10m for the Treasury to spend on good stuff and improving other people’s life chances just out of his income (even assuming no knock-on or trickle-down), and someone who earns the same amount of money but avoids tax on it.

Bit confused by the Griffin chap in the linked article (who earns £3m despite running a plc worth £2m) though – if I were a shareholder in his company, I’d be seriously grumpy about that one…

“some bosses earn more than their companies are worth”

Get =/= earn

The issue isn’t if people should be allowed to become super-rich. This issue is if it is something we should celebrate. Essentially, do we accept that becoming incredibly rich is a moral goal or virtue? That government should specifically demand that people are enabled to become so?

I don’t see an individuals wealth as a measure of their value, so I don’t think there is any reason to hail the super-rich. People become super-rich, not a problem for me (ignoring issues of corporate accountability ect), but its not some wonderous and virtuous state of itself worthy of a speech hailing it.

Wealth in excess is not excessively good, nothing in excess is so. Forgive my Greek upbringing in virtue-ethics, but someone becomes ‘x’ in excess is ‘x’ is his overbearing goal in life, trampling all other values, and a government celebrating these overly private good values cannot be a government, or an ideology for that matter that is in honest pursuance of the common good. We are today witnessing the grotesque side-effects of the ‘richness in excess’ social predilection. But then, these are ancient ideas, long put out of place.

I wish they’d celebrate wealth by giving me some…now that would be a vote winner.

“Hutton just says that in a world where some people earn millions – the aim should be to empower people of all brackgrounds to rise so high – rather than leave such wealth to people born into it.”

Then he is talking out of his arse because a) it is not lack of aspiration for wealth that is keeping people poor and b) because it would be the suicide of the nation if many more people were able to become “rich” than currently are. Funnily enough the aspiration to be rich (and in doing so work very little but with high responsibility) is exactly what is bringing about the issues those same people wanting to be wealthy have about immigrants.

This nation’s politics is a jumble of contradictory sound bites wheeled out repetitively until the end of time.

Well the Trotskyte school system that makes citizens economical ignorant and that make David Osler do not grasp that shareholders dont want to pay billions to CEOs. But they have to! because the school system dont put enough good CEO’s in the Market , That simple word Market. Maybe he should ask why Cristiano Ronaldo, David Beckham, Hamilton get Millions too.

LL – well Hamilton is *objectively* the best driver.
CEO’s are chosen from a number of equally capable candidates – there is no shortage of clever ambitious people at that level.
And large complex comapnies – especially service companies – are not “driven” by the CEO in the way that Hamilton drives his car.
CEO pay is driven by compensation committees made up of, erm, other CEO’s.
And if no company wishes to pay “below average” then you can see how pay leapfrogging occurs and we have reached the stage we have.
I resist government intervention, but we do have a problem here.

Trying to calm this debate down a bit. Shouldn’t there be a higher rate of taxation on the very rich?

I certainly don’t mind the idea of higher taxation rates on the rich, however effective use of such taxation relies on an independently gather figure of how much money is “more than enough” to live with, which is probably too hard to actually define. Saying that I’d arbitrarily say those that “earn” over £1million getting taxed at a higher rate above that amount, along side a shift to land taxation makes sense, but again falls down in the sense that the rich are those that find it easiest to take their money out of the system in terms of counting towards taxation.

It’d be much more effective and simple in the short term to raise the threshold at which you start to pay tax, and increase the higher band of taxation while redressing the levels at which benefits are given to people.

So, Lee, I think we agree?

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