General Chat

How did we end up with a situation in this country, where at one end of the wage ladder, the bosses of many organisations are being paid millions of pounds a year in wages and bonuses, while at the other end of the wage ladder, many of their employees wages are being subsidised by the taxpayer, because these employees are paid little more than the minimum wage. Several million low paid workers get their wages topped up with tax credits and help with housing costs - just to enable them to make ends meet :-S

Maybe we should go backwards, at least employers, to name a few, such as George Cadbury; Joseph Storrs Fry; and Josiah Wedgwood, allowed their employees to benefit from the wealth - they helped create.

These bosses are not the majority - there are numerous small and medium-sized businesses whose executives don't earn millions. My OH and his colleagues took a substantial pay cut a few years back, for a period of about a year, in order not to make any redundancies or reduce employees wages (they got a pay freeze).

SheilaWestWilts - I accept that the bosses I make reference to may not be the majority, that said there are a lot of them - and well done to your OH and his colleagues, some of those who receive the large salaries and bonuses should take a lesson from them.

Supporting every society in all generations are the peasants - they being generally the poorest & the most necessary of citizens - while the rich have to be ready to defend themselves against the slur of richness as if it were the worst of crimes.

Really annoys me that, among the perpetrators are:
Banks
Utility Companies
Councils - both local and County
Oh - and Government.

.....and its the taxpayer who's paying for these companies etc, whose hierarchy are overpaid/subsidised, to underpay their staff :-| :-|

By taxpayer, I also include the very badly paid who are paying tax - then getting it back in tax credits!!

Is that really the case, that a person can pay tax as well as receiving tax credits.? Incredible.

The question in my mind is how did this situation evolve, as someone who is interested in economics, I think it is firmly rooted in something that is called "The Free Market."

The Free Market was an ideology pursued by Margaret Thatcher - in the mid 1980's with the aid of her ally Ronald Reagan. They were the ones who fired the starting pistol on the race to create the Free Market, something that would affect the lives of everyone in this country and which still affects the lives of people today.

Margaret Thatcher and her government completed the initial laps of the race to create the Free Market, then John Major's government took over the baton and completed a few more laps, after Major's government lost the 1997 election, Labour's Tony Blair picked up the baton and raced towards the finishing line, and that goal is still being pursued today. .

The aim of the free market was to release organisations from regulatory controls and allow them to operate their businesses without interference from governments and regulatory bodies, in short a free for all - especially in regards to what financial institutions could get involved in.

From the 1980's, governments of all political persuasions, through the concepts of the Free Market, have tried to create a "Trickle Down Economy." They believed, that by allowing corporate organisations, especially those in the financial sector, free reign to create profits from unregulated activities, the profits would trickle down into other areas of the economy - including the pockets of employees.

Unfortunately, the financial crisis that started in 2007, with problems in subprime lending emerging in the USA, problems that would lead to several financial institutions going bust and others facing collapse, the worldwide "Credit Crunch" that resulted, put an end, to what had been a period of prosperity, it also dashed the goal of any profits trickling down into other areas of the economy and workers pockets.

Since the financial crisis, many corporate organisations have made substantial profits, however they have not re-invested their profits nor have they allowed those at the lower end of the wage ladder to benefit from any wealth they helped create. What many of these corporate organisations did, and are still doing, is they have hoarded their profits and only shared them with, apart from their shareholders, those at the top of the wage ladder to encourage them to make even more profits - profits many are making by using zero hour contracts and paying nothing more than the minimum wage.

That is what I think happened and that's why the taxpayer is subsidising the wages of the lower paid through tax credits and help with housing costs.