What do they spend it on?

A £300,000 salary equals ten normal jobs, never mind the bonus. That's how that sort of money should be shared out, not just giving to charity.

It does raise an interesting question about whether salaries should have an upper limit.
I am never quite sure about that.

I think partly I am not sure, because once salaries get very high, it is difficult to imagine what people do to justify them.
And job descriptions get so vague, so again, how can ordinary people decide whether what people do, justifies their wages.

I heard on the radio yesterday that globally just 85 people hold half the world's wealth. Just how that was worked out I don't know but if true it does seem just a tad unequal.

My Sil earns an awful lot of money but goes to work at 6 am and often is not home till 10 pm.

I would agree that most people with high wages, are making sacrifices in other areas of their lives. Sacrifices that I would not want to make.

I agree soontobe. It hasn't brought my sister in law a lot of happiness and she is permanently stressed.

If you get on the tube or bus very early in the morning you will find lots of people making their way to work. They are often doing jobs like office cleaning for which they earn a pittance, which means they have to do more than one job to make ends meet.

Those that earn vast amounts of money and work long hours can, if they wish, put aside money to pay off a mortgage early and can eventually apply for a less demanding job. Those on low wages don't have such choices.

I am with you gracesgran but I do wonder how some people live with themselves who have more money than they can spend in a lifetime. It seems to be almost an illness when they accumulate so much money and such a sterile thing to do.

kitty I thought you meant your Son in Law and wasn't going to say that that was one of the reasons my DD's marriage was in trouble.She started referring to herself as a single mother and also a single married woman.

I sometimes wonder if some top earners regret their life choices.
One of the troubles with life is, that we dont get to repeat it. We only get the one chance at making best choices for ourselves and those around us.
I think most of us would like at least a second chance.

"A £300,000 salary equals ten normal jobs, never mind the bonus. That's how that sort of money should be shared out, not just giving to charity."

Not sure what you have in mind, Durhamjen. Do you mean that one job earning 300k should be split between ten people earning 30k each? So instead of having too many Chiefs for the Indians we'd have armies of Indians and no Chiefs?

maybe grump the chiefs should earn no more than a given % of those they manage. Say 50% or even 100% Not sure anyone is worth more than that as a manager - it isn't exactly rocket science managing people is it?

In some organisations there is, at the moment, a shortage of 'indians' - blamed on the difficult financial climate, yet they still have plenty of chiefs.
In many cases a reduction in chiefs and an increase in indians would be a great help.

Managing people isn't rocket science, but some people are much better than others, with dramatic effects on productivity in both directions.

Yes, there are too many chiefs in many organisations (it has been said that there are more admirals than ships in the Royal Navy), but promotions and pay differentials are popular and efficient incentives.

A maximum 100% differential between the top and the bottom seems reasonable as a guide, but I'm not sure I'd like to see it in legislation: once you start where do you stop, and an industry would grow based on advising the unscrupulous how to get round it. And nowadays Chiefs often work longer hours than Indians.

So they should they get paid enough to work 24/7 in some instances.

I would be quite happy to receive £300,000 pa pension as long as the rest of you were just behind me - how does £295,000 sound?

I will forgo my £10 Christmas bonus.

Yes, grumppa DH is often saying that there are more admirals than ships in the RN.

There is a big problem at the moment in collecting tax, Grumppa. That is because many of the indians have been made redundant. If someone at the top only earned £150, 000 there would be another five indians to be employed in working out people's tax in order to bring in more tax. If the chief only earned £100,000 there could be nearly two more tax collectors. Just using tax as an example. I have no idea how much they earn.
The same goes for banks. It's usually the indians and not the chiefs who are told to look elsewhere for a job.
Hope I am not stating the bleeding obvious here.

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2015/01/02/cuts-are-crippling-hmrc-and-thats-deliberate/

More about the bankers.

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2015/01/02/how-can-i-put-this-subtly/

The government has said that it wants more companies to be run like John Lewis.Pay differentials would be the perfect start, except of course, John Lewis is not perfect. There is going to be a demo this weekend to get them to ensure their cleaners are on a parity with the rest of their workers.

I don't like the idea of an upper salary limit soontobe as I would like us to be a high earning country, but I am quite attracted to upper multiples, i.e., the top earner in the company not earning more than x times the lowest earner. I have never heard of anywhere that it works though.

Just a point in question and out of interest.

If you hold a strong belief that somebody earning £300.000 should not receive such a figure but it should be divided between 10 people and each receive £30,000 because you are committed to the equal distribution of wealth, irrespective of what/how difficult those jobs may be. Do you put that belief into practice on a personal level.

For example, if you received a pension of £30,000 plus the state pension do you say that is unjust because you believe wealth should be qually distributed and therefore your £30.000 should be distributed to yourself and 9 others who should take a share of your £30.000 because they only get state pension?

After all it's not the sum of money, nor the process of how one person gains more than another that is in question but the belief that we should have equal pay. That means there there must be people who only take what is perceived to be the 'average' wage/pension and any money they receive over and above they give away because of their belief.

I agree there are wage packets that are offensive to me, footballers, celebrities, film stars,NH S and Council executives to name a few.

That is different from saying there should not be a variation in wages for the job you do. I was a telephonist I would not expect to receive the same wage as a telephone engineer. I have never re mortgaged my home or taken out a bank loan to start up a company that could have failed and bankrupted me. I could however have been employed as a cleaner for that person so why should I receive the same wage.

There are what we call obscene wages such as a football club paying a player £50.000 a week. Is it up to anybody to 'tell' the club you can only pay him the average wage. How would you get to an 'average wage' anyway if everybody received the same wage?

I think there is certainly a case for nobody in the public sector being paid more than the governing Prime Minister. I don't understand how councils pay their executive 2/3 times more pay than the Prime Minister.

Money makes the world go around is certainly true. If some couldn't afford to holiday in some countries what jobs would there be for the poor in those counry. Wealth distribution will never be equal because jobs are not equal. The pay gap could be legislated for but that would only make sense if the entire world used the same scale … It's a pipe dream to think otherwise but yes it is an obscene practice .

If you think £50,000 a week obscene POGS what do you think about Wayne Rooney who is on £300,000 aweek, over £million a month? How can a sportsman ever justify that sort of salary? It is said they bring the fans in, the ordinary supporter can,t afford to go to big matches now and children are held to ransom for the latest kit which is changed perhaps every season.

You may be interested in reading Robert Frank. Frank is Professor of Economics at Cornell, and his argument is for a steeply progressive expenditure tax instead of an income tax.

Expenditure rather than income so that it provides an incentive for saving, thereby releasing funds for investment in public infrastructure, and steeply progressive to reduce the wealth gap without eliminating the social hierarchy between different occupations. The principle is that essentials should be less heavily taxed than luxuries, and this is achieved by a progressive tax because people buy essentials with the lightly tax first part of their income, and then the higher taxed tiers are spent on progressively more luxurious items.

Expenditure taxes have fallen by the wayside before because they were levied on the purchase price of the goods, (eg: fags & alcohol), which meant that it was the treasury and not the consumer that decides what is and isn't a luxury. (eg: I don't regard fags as a luxury, because I don't smoke.) In Frank's progressive system it is the consumers themselves who are effectively deciding what are the luxuries, by which items they choose to buy first.

A couple of Frank's other books are worth a read, too:

The Darwin Economy
The Economic Naturalist