A report from the High Pay Centre this morning told us that the bosses of Britain’s biggest companies take home an average of £5.5 million, having seen their incomes rise by 10% during 2015.
This is a travesty that should have us all shouting for justice every bit as much as the travesty of people sleeping on our streets, queuing at food banks or struggling to live on a minimum wage that doesn’t even cover the basics of life.
The median pay of the chief executives of London’s FTSE index 100 firms rose to £4 million, 144 times the median wage of the average British worker (£27,600).
It is obscene, and as George Monbiot put it, ‘high pay is both counterproductive and unnecessary.’[1] To be earning 7 figure salaries cannot count as anything other than greed.
‘The successful bank robber no longer covers his face and leaps over the counter with a sawn-off shotgun. He arrives in a chauffeur-driven car, glides into the lift then saunters into an office at the top of the building. No one stops him.’ – George Monbiot, Guardian 23.1.12
But does it really matter?
The answer to this has to be a resounding yes.
Last week I reviewed a paper for a journal which, once again, pointed out the links between income inequality and child mortality. This is not just an issue for developing countries – it is a reality in our own, Western bloc.
The impact of income inequality (as measured by the GINI coefficient) on infant mortality in high income countries, has been highlighted in many scientific papers, and is neatly summarised in this figure from The spirit level[2]: those Western countries with the highest income inequality (USA, Portugal, UK, New Zealand) have the highest infant mortality rates, while the Nordic countries and Japan, with far more egalitarian societies have the lowest infant mortality rates. The only exception to this rule seems to be Singapore.
‘a 43 per cent increase in income inequality, which was observed in the UK over the period 1975–2006, would correspond to a 10.6 per cent increase in child mortality for boys and a 12.6 per cent increase for girls.’[3]
And the effects are not just in life expectancy. Income inequalities have been shown to be correlated with measures of child wellbeing, mental illness, drug use, obesity, teenage pregnancy, and much more.
So perhaps the time has come to speak out and make it clear that we don’t want to live in this kind of society. The idea of a maximum wage is not new, but perhaps it is starting to gain momentum and to be seen as a credible policy that could, perhaps, do as much for restoring justice as the minimum and living wages.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jan/23/george-monbiot-executive-pay-robbery
[2] Wilkinson R, Pickett K. The spirit level. London: Allen Lane; 2009.
[3] Roberta Torre & Mikko Myrskylä (2014) Income inequality and population health: An analysis of panel data for 21 developed countries, 1975–2006, Population Studies,68:1, 1-13, DOI: 10.1080/00324728.2013.856457
[4] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/11/bernie-sanders-used-to-think-there-should-be-a-maximum-wage/416790/
I quite agree, no one needs such high salaries. There needs to be a cap, or at least a tax rate on them which is so high like 95%, that modt of the money id then funneled back into helping those who really need it. Let justice roll!