A Maximum Wage?

[Urbanblues]

Couldn’t some form of relative earnings limit be introduced? Whereby, the highest paid person in the company could only ‘earn’, say, 5 times that of the lowest paid employee.

The man at the top rates himself worth £97,500 per annum; then the cleaner would be paid £19,500 per annum. We all need nice clean environment in which to earn a living.

 

[lobster]

I know you're joking, but even the spanish anarchists didn't quite manage the same wages for everyone. They started off with that position but it broke down in a lot of places quite quickly I think, and they ended up accepting some differences.

I am guessing this happened because people have difference size families?
No point a couple getting the same money as a family with three children.
Give the latter the most resources as they have three children.

 

[DexterTCN]

Couldn’t some form of relative earnings limit be introduced? Whereby, the highest paid person in the company could only ‘earn’, say, 5 times that of the lowest paid employee.

The man at the top rates himself worth £97,500 per annum; then the cleaner would be paid £19,500 per annum. We all need nice clean environment in which to earn a living.

Yes, you're missing a few stages there.

 

[Giles]

It's rubbish and would never work.

If one person is happy to pay another person x amount for doing something, why is it anyone else's business to tell them that they can't?

Is what it comes down to.

A minimum wage makes sense (and IMO should be higher, and set differently in parts of the UK to reflect massively different housing costs) due to protecting the poorest from the worst exploitation.

But a maximum is unnecessary.

If you even tried, people would find ways round it. Set up fairly artificial subsidiary companies that your best "employees" would have shares in, and would then get very high dividends, or pay people in things, and perks, like they did in the 70s when there were "pay restraint" agreements.

Wouldn't work due the EU anyway. Unless they all signed up for it.

Giles..

 

[cesare]

yebbut

I don't think Balders inhabits the world of what would work or not

 

[kyser_soze]

You'd still stand no chance of earning it Balders, so I shouldn't worry yourself about these things...

 

[Urbanblues]

Yes, you're missing a few stages there.

Could you fill them in please?

 

[belboid]

for the public and voluntary sector only? excellent way to promote more privatisation!

you selling your ideas to cameron baldy? you should

 

[ymu]

How you gonna manage this then Balders?

You'd have to implement it through a highly progressive tax system (and obv apply it to all sectors that way).

That's a pretty low maximum.

No, it's not. The median income is ~£23k, the mean is ~£33k. Only 10% of people currently earn >£50k, in a society which already has a very unequal income distribution. How much money do you think there is to go around?

Couldn’t some form of relative earnings limit be introduced? Whereby, the highest paid person in the company could only ‘earn’, say, 5 times that of the lowest paid employee.

The man at the top rates himself worth £97,500 per annum; then the cleaner would be paid £19,500 per annum. We all need nice clean environment in which to earn a living.

It all has to average out at £33k each. Every "man at the top" who rates himself worth 3 times the average available income, requires 3 people to rate themselves at 1/3 of the average income. So if he wants £97,500/annum, there needs to be 3 cleaners on £11k to balance him out.

I'd set the maximum differential at 3x the minimum (earned full-time income), which would work out at around a 50k max, 17k min given that the average can't magically be raised above £33k.

 

[Wolveryeti]

Crap idea. Would give rise to a large untaxable black economy and fuck public sector budgets for no discernible benefit.

 

[ymu]

Crap idea. Would give rise to a large untaxable black economy and fuck public sector budgets for no discernible benefit.

It probably wouldn't work in a vacuum, no. But a maximum wage differential would be a part of what I'd consider a civilised society.

I don't think you can argue that the risk of tax-dodging is a valid reason not to consider it. The worst tax-dodgers currently are those on enormous incomes, because they're the ones with the power to influence policy in their favour, and the richer they get the more powerful they become, so it just keeps getting worse. Income differentials between top 10% and median/bottom 10% have risen enormously in recent years, but there's barely been any shift in the relative difference between the bottom 10% and the median.

 

[Wolveryeti]

I don't know how on earth you would police a limit on wages. People would just pay cash in hand, or in other difficult to trace assets. Because this is 'illegal' money people would have to be idiots to declare it and therefore pay tax on it (and presumably the fine/punishment this would attract).

I do agree income inequality is a problem but I think that a wage cap is amongst the worst methods I've ever heard of addressing it. Tinkering with tax or even immigration policy is vastly preferable IMO.

 

[ymu]

I don't know how on earth you would police a limit on wages. People would just pay cash in hand, or in other difficult to trace assets. Because this is 'illegal' money people would have to be idiots to declare it and therefore pay tax on it (and presumably the fine/punishment this would attract).

I do agree income inequality is a problem but I think that a wage cap is amongst the worst methods I've ever heard of addressing it. Tinkering with tax or even immigration policy is vastly preferable IMO.

Well yes, that's why I proposed doing it through the tax system.

You'd have to implement it through a highly progressive tax system (and obv apply it to all sectors that way).

 

[samk]

For public sector, why not have the public vote on what they deserve to be paid?

 

[ymu]

For public sector, why not have the public vote on what they deserve to be paid?

Nurses and firemen would do well, cops badly. Teachers? Train drivers? Bit arbitrary, and public sector wages as a whole are already capped by the voters' willingness to pay tax.

The private sector is the far bigger problem. At the top end, the biggest salaries are in the private sector, but the median income is less than that in the public sector - ie they pay worse at the bottom end. This is where the money gets siphoned off and is ultimately the source of massive income inequality, widespread poverty, and the social problems (and substantial financial costs to society) that come with it.

 

[tbaldwin]

I don't know how on earth you would police a limit on wages. People would just pay cash in hand, or in other difficult to trace assets. Because this is 'illegal' money people would have to be idiots to declare it and therefore pay tax on it (and presumably the fine/punishment this would attract).

I do agree income inequality is a problem but I think that a wage cap is amongst the worst methods I've ever heard of addressing it. Tinkering with tax or even immigration policy is vastly preferable IMO.

It would be relatively easy to police a limit on wages in the public and voluntary sector....I agree more difficult in the private sector but bringing it in first in the public and voluntary sector would have a knock on effect.

Raising taxes is not wrong but is not an easy catch all answer to inequality. Its much easier to dodge taxes than break a maximum wage limit.

 

[tbaldwin]

for the public and voluntary sector only? excellent way to promote more privatisation!

you selling your ideas to cameron baldy? you should

er 2 and 2 make 47 again.....

 

[belboid]

you disagree that it would lead to more privatisation? you're a bigger fool than i ever took you for then! Even in your own terms - if it only applies to the public & vol/com sectors, then there will obviously be a demand from the bosses for their jobs to be moved to the private sector where they could be paid whatever they wanted.

 

[RedRumsBum]

The idea of them is that the outcomes of workers' struggles and their forms of organisation lay the seeds for a society based on workers control instead of the bosses' rule and profit.

Simple eg - in this society pay is held down as low as possible by the bosses.
A transitional response to a pay issue, for eg, would be for pay to match inflation as determined not by the bossses but by democratically elected workplace committees (which ideally will have emerged from rank & file strike organisations).

The idea is not to be simply unachievable in capitalism but to give a concrete response that begins to undermine the law of value and puts economic and social issues into workers' hands

Great! So once all the business proprietors and the mult-nationals pack up, I'll have to get my passport and move overseas then.

Aren't there enough Britons leaving the country already?

 

[tbaldwin]

you disagree that it would lead to more privatisation? you're a bigger fool than i ever took you for then! Even in your own terms - if it only applies to the public & vol/com sectors, then there will obviously be a demand from the bosses for their jobs to be moved to the private sector where they could be paid whatever they wanted.

No. I dont think it follows at all...Fool that i am....I think a lot of the really greedy twats who earn buckets on the gravy train would join the private sector and the public sector would be much better off without them.

 

[belboid]

yes they would - by promoting the privatisation of their services! Why on earth would people who promote privatisation now suddenly turn against it once there wages were being cutback??

Utterly idiotic idea

 

[teuchter]

No. I dont think it follows at all...Fool that i am....I think a lot of the really greedy twats who earn buckets on the gravy train would join the private sector and the public sector would be much better off without them.

If it's all about removing the highest-paid public sector employees why not just fire them? Wouldn't that be easier than a maximum wage system?

 

[becky p]

If it's all about removing the highest-paid public sector employees why not just fire them? Wouldn't that be easier than a maximum wage system?

Its an interesting idea. But I think the maximum is set far too low at £50,000.
And you can not just change peoples employment terms and conditions without notice and negotiation.

 

[gentlegreen]

Its an interesting idea. But I think the maximum is set far too low at £50,000.

That's plenty.

Twice what I earn - I could buy another house every 10 years.

 

[ymu]

Its an interesting idea. But I think the maximum is set far too low at £50,000.
And you can not just change peoples employment terms and conditions without notice and negotiation.

How is it far too low when 50% of wage-earners in the UK earn less than £23k and 75% earn less than £33k? Only 10% currently earn more than £50k. It's a fuck of a lot.

Terms & conditions are one thing, but you can change the tax code real easy.

 

[becky p]

How is it far too low when 50% of wage-earners in the UK earn less than £23k and 75% earn less than £33k? Only 10% currently earn more than £50k. It's a fuck of a lot.

Terms & conditions are one thing, but you can change the tax code real easy.

If you set it at £50k people would leave public services and or the country.
But if you set it at £100k fewer people would leave and the consequences for the rest of us would be relatively small.
Its the same with tax if raised too much it would lead to better off people leaving the country and companies investing abroad.
Redistribution of wealth is all very well in principle but harder to achieve in practice.

 

[Dravinian]

Or do they think its OK for some people to be earning tens or hundreds as much as others?

It is not such a black and white issue.

What benefit was their to Bill Gates et al to ship Microsoft around the globe if they couldn't earn more then 100k a year? They could have made that selling Microsoft in just California.

You can now moan about how linux is much better, but Microsoft was a part of the PC revolution, without it we may not be where we are today, it might be better, but it might be worse. You can say this of any number of new inventions that swept around the globe purely on the basis that the person pushing it was earning large amounts of money for pushing it.

On the other hand, does the CEO of Thames Water really deserve the millions he earns for basically managing a company that was set up and working fine before he ever took the job on? Well no, because as far as I am concerned he hasn't earnt that wealth.

 

[tbaldwin]

yes they would - by promoting the privatisation of their services! Why on earth would people who promote privatisation now suddenly turn against it once there wages were being cutback??

Utterly idiotic idea

I think the most likely effect on the snouts in the trough would be that they would leave.
Which would make it likely that there would be less privatisation and consultancy work for their friends.
Why would you oppose that. I thought you always said you were on the political left?
What kind of Socialist is it that defends huge wages for the bosses?

 

[belboid]

What utter nonsense, with no logic behind it whatsoever. Do you actually believe that drivel, or are you just bored at work?

What kind of 'socialist' is as anti-public sector as you?

 

[kyser_soze]

Baldwin world - socialism MY way, and that's the only way.