Inequality meeting plus…

Written By: - Date published: 7:42 pm, November 13th, 2013 - 11 comments
Categories: equality - Tags: , ,

From our friends at Closing the Gap (a lobby group against income inequality – join if you haven’t!):

– Max Rashbrooke talking about his book Inequality: a New Zealand Crisis and more on Monday 18 November, 5.30pm @ Auckland Trades Hall, 147 Great North Rd, Grey Lynn

how_old_living_wage

– The Bruce Jesson Lecture from Rt Hon Sir Edmund Thomas is well worth reading. He pushes the Living Wage as a substantive right quoting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

– And the Swiss are going to vote on a 1:12 rule for executive pay. No CEO will be allowed to earn more in a year than their poorest employee earns in a month.  They’re unlikely to pay Roche’s secretaries 1 million francs/year – so large CEO pay cuts are likely… although big business is fighting it tooth and claw.

And not from Closing The Gap, but for a bit of fun – a great UK game: Super Tory Boy. Taste my austerity!

11 comments on “Inequality meeting plus… ”

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  1. Draco T Bastard 1
    13 November 2013 at 9:55 pm

    And the Swiss are going to vote on a 1:12 rule for executive pay.

    We really, really do need something like that. No society can afford the rich as they tie up the wealth and resources of a nation so that they can only be used to make them richer.

  2. red rattler 2
    13 November 2013 at 10:50 pm

    Some reading for inequality nerds who may also be Anglo-Saxons and suspicious of the eclectic prattle about bankers ruining the world on their weekends. Has nice drawings.

    http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2013/11/12/the-informal-empire-finance-and-the-mono-cause-of-the-anglo-saxons/

  3. Richard McGrath 3
    17 November 2013 at 2:00 pm

    Do readers perhaps think everyone should be paid the same wage? If not, how can any inequality in income be justified? I’m wanting to understand the widespread intolerance for any differences in income and support for ‘progressive’ taxation.

    And what happens when one person postpones consumption and accumulates assets, and thus ends up with a later-model and safer vehicle, a house in a safer suburb, and more savings in the bank than someone on the same income who chooses to spend all their money on, for instance, entertainment, alcohol, tobacco or other consumables? Isn’t this an unacceptable level of inequality that needs to be evened up by taking assets from the first person and redistributing them to the second person?

    • Colonial Viper 3.2
      17 November 2013 at 2:35 pm

      Do readers perhaps think everyone should be paid the same wage? If not, how can any inequality in income be justified? I’m wanting to understand the widespread intolerance for any differences in income and support for ‘progressive’ taxation.

      A system where CEOs are limited to 8x to 10x the wage of their median worker would be fair, and it would allow recognition of performance and responsibility. This kind of ratio is common in countries like Japan and Germany, as well as some more socialist nations of South America.

      And what happens when one person postpones consumption and accumulates assets, and thus ends up with a later-model and safer vehicle, a house in a safer suburb, and more savings in the bank than someone on the same income who chooses to spend all their money on, for instance, entertainment, alcohol, tobacco or other consumables?

      I’m glad you raised this. Leaving aside that your textbook example very rarely applies, median incomes in this country need to be significantly raised to give people discretionary money to spend, week to week.

      Money has to be spent into the economy to keep it going. If everyone saved – the economy would stop and fail. You should realise this.

      Isn’t this an unacceptable level of inequality that needs to be evened up by taking assets from the first person and redistributing them to the second person?

      The recognition is that wealth and money is like cream. It naturally floats upwards to more wealth and money, in a capitalist system. It is the nature of a capitalist system for capital to attract more capital.

      Therefore, systems like progressive taxes and estate taxes are required to “stir” the system up to ensure that wealth continues to flow throughout, and not just in one direction.

      • aerobubble 3.2.1
        17 November 2013 at 2:46 pm

        Worse. Placing the vast bulk of wealth in the hands of a few, whose decisions limit the potential of a society to adapt. And this doesn’t even take into account the burden of delivering the future value that money represents (as we have seen resources are finite, adaption only goes so far, sustainability cannot be patchwork). So necessarily government print money when too much wealth is owed. Now of course you’ll never hear Key say as much since he knows that his private and public career depended and depends on the amazing dull view of free markets being magical in their delivery, when in fact this was just cover to shift huge wealth into the hands of a few (and make money on the fees, which was the whole thatcherite endeavor, to gain power by distorting capitalism and create a majority of people consuming the planet tenfold, the illusion that covered up the growing wage gap…).

        • Colonial Viper 3.2.1.1
          17 November 2013 at 2:56 pm

          We’re living out a straitjacket of an economic system where destroying jobs, eliminating real capabilities and degrading the morale of our people is the acceptable price (acceptable method) for balancing electronic ledger entries.

          The MSM harps on about ensuring “confidence” in the economy, but what they mean is the confidence of the 5%.

          If you are a precarious worker or unemployed, they don’t care about your confidence.

          • aerobubble 3.2.1.1.1
            19 November 2013 at 11:32 am

            I think thats bullshit, you only become a slave by believing in your enslavement.

            Everything has good and bad attached. The Labour movement, when its more extreme left used to rant and rave, did more to entrench the right and push people to the right. Nothing got my goat up more than some communist wanting me to be his means to power.

            This is not to say that many media shrills do use “confidence” in that way, just that I don’t switch onto it, and maybe should thank you for bringing it up so that we can all ignore that version of the media. Or berate you for suggesting that meme….

            The media is biased, it will always will be, its stacked with university graduates, has a history of serving necessity, and its methods are now old and tired out. Its your duty to impose narratives that enrich your power, status and position. How does seeing yourself as one of the 95%? Not saying that the 95% doesn’t exist but use it in the correct way as the threat it always was, the ever present masses that are ready to unseat unethical elites.

            So to re-narrate, when the media say confidence they mean that for now we aren’t yet ready to march to the barricades, but if that confidence disappears watch out. 😉

    • binders full of women 3.3
      17 November 2013 at 8:49 pm

      Richard.. no I don’t think everyone should be paid the same.. and I don’t think people should be jumping in boots n all into this ‘inequality crisis’ hoax. It’s pseudo-stats peddled by a crew who believe ‘The Spirit Level’. Latest OECD (Nov 2013) report has income inequality in New Zealand REDUCING since the mid 90s.