Are we rapidly heading towards Winston Smith's future world of getting up, doing our exercises in front of a big flat screen on the wall, trudging to work for little or no pay that is dictated to by someone else with little or no chance of doing anything different, all the time watched by CCTV cameras and being pacified by cheap alcohol and films about a war somewhere else where some unknown figure is trying to harm us all?
ah..
but today's BBC carries the news that more "public figures" have added their name to a list of campaigners for a cap on relative wage levels and rewards for people who earn more than the average.. I quote, "The government must now take decisive action on excessive pay at the top when it has had such a damaging and corrosive effect on the real economy and wider society."
In the same way the Low Pay Commission was set up in 1997 to advise on the minimum wage, a High Pay Commission was needed to introduce "a wide-ranging review" of pay at the top and bring in new measures to curb excessive remuneration, it said."
Excessive pay? What does that phrase mean exactly? One person's excess is another's normal isn't it?
Don't get me wrong, rewards going to those who mess up I'm certainly against. I have one or two old friends - shall we call them acquaintances? yes, that's better - who earn 6 figure salaries with final salary pension schemes that will be larger than any of my other friends standard salaries and they certainly don't deserve them just for echoiing what others have said to them and generally licking butt for a few years before moving on ahead of the shite hitting the air con unit. But, let's just break this beying for high paid blood down a little shall we?
The Low Pay Commission and thereafter the Equal Pay Commission was based on a sound psychological and equitable basis that a minimum level of pay for anybody is a just and grown up thing to strive for. The psychology is simple, pay that is too low creates a vacuum among people that are not working who basically think, "I can't be arsed working, after all what additional benefit is there in it for me?" To a point I would agree and thus a minimum wage is something that makes sound economic, ethical and psychological sense.
Now maximum wage levels? What piece of psychology or market efficiency is that based on? Tell you what, why doesn't everybody get up today and work as hard as possible for their employer in the knowledge that you'll only ever be able to earn a fixed amount. It won't put you off working harder tomorrow or the next day 'cos you love your job and the company.. I think not.
Maximum pay has of course already been experimented with in a different economic system, in the former Soviet Union. Factory Managers and the equivalent of our Fat Cats were paid bonuses according to quantitative targets (in a similar vein to the financial scene of the City of London). However, targets were set with the bosses around the table and whilst discussing the resources needed to achieve them (ring any bells?) and so targets were not particularly demanding. The other aspect of the system (and the one we should take heed of now) was that it didn't matter whether a factory hit 101% or 1001% of its target, the bonus was the same amount. Fixed maximum pay, fixed bonus structures. There are many documented examples of factories working until target +1% then all the workers downing tools and drinking cheap alcohol (or more often making something else that wasn't in the plan for the factory boss to sell out the back door).
Maximum pay? Kiss goodbye to the work ethic then. Kiss goodbye to building a better Britain. I run my own business. What point is there in doing any more for it than reaching the maximum return point for my own salary? No more employment for others, no re-investment into the economy. Sod England, I'm off elsewhere Jack. Nice society. Not. I think Compass (the pressure group behind the calls) have got their needle bent, else they are being pulled by a different magnetic field to everyone else. Which might well be the case.
So, what should you make of maximum pay schemes?
You make of it what you will. Me, I feel like Winston pushing his chin further into his jacket as the chill winds of 1984 come in faster than anybody expected at the turn of the 21st Century... Please strike out at any hint of a totalitarian society coming to a pavement near you today.
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