Meritocracy
by Gadgie, 5 August 2008
The top 10% of income earners get 27.3% of the cake, while the bottom 10% get just 2.6%. Twenty years ago the average chief executive of a FTSE 100 company earned 17 times the average employee’s pay; now it is more than 75 times. Since Labour came to power in 1997 the proportion of personal wealth held by the top 10% has swelled from 47% to 54%.
And
Tax consultants Grant Thornton estimated that in 2006 at least 32 of the UK’s 54 billionaires paid no income tax at all.
And
…as a group - with one or two exceptions - they were less intelligent, less intellectually inquisitive, less knowledgeable and, despite their good schools, less broadly educated than high-flyers in other professions. Their high salaries were not a sign of any obvious superiority.
All from here.
Peter Mandelson in 1998:
We are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich
Draw your own conclusions.
Tuesday 5 August 2008 at 21:16
Smug, sanctimonius, self-serving gits.
The argument goes “I am a banker. I am righteous and I deserve my wealth. I work harder than anyone else. I work harder than teachers. I work harder than someone manually shovelling shit 18 hours a day with a Stakhanovitic efficiency. Fuck the little people. If they wanted to be an out of touch smug, sanctimonious shit then they would do my job.”
So it goes. So it goes. Where do these people go to school? Must have aced those arsehole exams.
Wednesday 6 August 2008 at 9:31
The incentives (sic) for hedge fund managers are for creating swings in value, not increases in value. If they lose a few hundred million they can always walk into another job based on their experience.
This is of course a good thing because society will benefit from this wealth destr-hang on…
Wednesday 6 August 2008 at 11:29
The under-privileged don’t generally go round calling themselves the under-privileged, though they are.
The over-privileged, on the other hand, tend to regard themselves as under-privileged, as compared to someone even more over-privileged.
Life is sooo unfair.
Friday 8 August 2008 at 1:42
I like Polly Toynbee (a lot).
Especially so that it would piss off the bloggertarians and the pseudo-left scumfucks.
http://shirazsocialist.wordpress.com/2008/08/06/just-in-case-you-missed-it-in-the-comments/#comment-17827
Friday 8 August 2008 at 11:12
Filed under “Wall, First Against”.