I know I bang on a bit about the linguistic incompetence of the English, but toady I read something on the train to London that pushed all my prejudice buttons.
In today’s Guardian Jonathan Freedland has a good go at the (usually untested) arguments for the massive pay differentials in some of our businesses. The usual rationale has something to do with the assumption that our ‘best’ talent would go abroad if we brought what the boss of Barclays called the ‘compensation’ levels down to something that resembled ‘earnings’. In other words, we would be left with second-division executives who lack the ambition or the hunger to up sticks and emigrate.
He responds to this by recognising that rare skills can legitimately demand rare salaries – but also that the skills of those who earn huge amounts are not exactly rare.
?… Our objection to telephone-number salaries goes deeper. What it comes down to is desert – a notion so deeply ingrained that, yes, even a seven-year-old can grasp it: the belief that people should deserve the rewards they get.… Most people have long accepted that there will be a differential in pay that, in the hoary example, the brain surgeon will earn more than the dustman. People understand that some skills are rare and therefore command a greater premium. They even accept that this can result in extreme outcomes, with the likes of Wayne Rooney trousering £250,000 a week. But none of that logic applies to the current state of corporate pay.
Rooney is truly a one in a hundred million talent; there might be just two dozen people in the world who could match his skills. But with all due respect to Bob Stack, that is not true of him. Nor can it possibly be true of the 2,800 staff in 27 UK-based banks who, according to the Financial Services Authority, received more than £1m each in 2009. Whatever these people are able to do, it’s clearly not rare.
Ah, comes the reply, but these are the cream of the international crop, among the very best bankers in the world. The commission report blows a hole in that tired argument, revealing there’s hardly any cross-border poaching of corporate talent. Not many of our monolingual high earners could work abroad and even fewer would want to. They like it here and do not have to be paid lottery jackpot money to stay.
Notice the (almost) aside? ‘Monolingual’ high earners? We consistently underestimate the economic cost of our linguistic incompetence – to say nothing of the cultural and experiential deficit.
So, those are the buttons Freedland pressed for me: critique of the absurd and unjustifiable differentials, a sideswipe at our linguistic incompetence, and some myth-busting about the ‘market’.
And beneath all the fun a serious question about how we value people, what they do, why it matters, and how we need to recover some connection between work and reward.
November 24, 2011 at 7:50 pm
“And beneath all the fun a serious question about how we value people, what they do, why it matters, and how we need to recover some connection between work and reward.”
It’s an interesting philosophical point that equality isn’t necessarily the same thing as fairness or justice. In other words, for the sake of fair dealing we might have to accept some differential treatment. The obvious example is handicapping in sport. Our notions of justice demand that some deserve a greater degree of consideration than others on the grounds of some perceived disadvantage, some inherent inequality. Ian Hislop’s excellent investigation [BBC2 "When Bankers Were Good" – still available on iPlayer I think] points to a time when those with excessive amounts of wealth would unburden their coffers and their consciences by giving vast sums away to charitable concerns. What really has changed? Taxation, the welfare state, haven’t prevented e.g. footballers and bankers from becoming fabulously wealthy and haven’t changed a situation in which those who choose to care for dependents for instance [children, the sick, the elderly] don’t receive a wage for that, don’t pay National Insurance contributions and therefore don’t receive a pension either! What an insult and what a denigration of the skills of caring which are made to appear less worthwhile than the skills of phootball [sic] and philandering. Wayne who? Has anyone ever heard of my Mum?
Andrew Marszal, writing in The Telegraph, suggests that “a bit of embarrassed soul-searching within the Square Mile probably wouldn’t go amiss.”
November 24, 2011 at 9:55 pm
Why are you so worried about what rich people earn here? If they surrender enough of their earnings in the form of taxes or charitable giving they will be spending eternity in heaven with the poor, volunteers for Oxfam and Medecins sans Frontieres etc. If they don’t, they will be banished with the mass-murderers to the wastes of hell, punished for ever after for their greed. Isn’t that the deal?
Look what became of Etemenanki (the Tower of Babel):
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&om=1&z=18&ll=32.536163,44.420514&spn=0.002573,0.004334&t=k
Proof positive that God is a linguist, although He seems to have been even more spectacularly successful when he let people off all the slog of tenses, moods, conjugations and declensions at Pentecost!
November 25, 2011 at 9:42 am
Thanks for this, Nick.
November 25, 2011 at 11:10 am
Your linguistic anxiety is understandable, yet I am not sure that it is entirely about our laziness. International businesses need a lingua franca and English is not only the most convenient cross border medium but, let’s not be shy to say it is fantastically varied and an “open architecture” means of communication that is demonstrably adaptable and accessible and has been tried and tested. My son has joined an account for a Far East firm that used to be conducted in French but is now inevitably migrating to English. It is not irrational. I heard that Board room discussions in a major German Company are now required to be in English . Maybe business language like water finds its own level.
On the question of the rich. I am beginning to muse about whether our current obsession with the rich, politically socially economically, is not a function of the break down of local community. Once we knew they existed but had scant occasion to know think or care much about them. Local communities provided the context for a full life – religion/family/ local employment/ food, gossip etc. With the TV age I am inducted into a life that has nothing to do with me; gossip about people I will never meet, reviews of cars or homes I could never afford, news about a minority that may make me envious and feel excluded whereas if my focus were on my neighbour who I can know and with whom I can interact and have a fulfilled life I would be happier. There are poor in the third world living in happier communities than those on many a housing estate in the UK. Some have never heard of Simon Cowell.
Its not the rich that impoverish my life but my blindness in appreciating my neighbour. If I worry so much about the former that I don’t have time and space to appreciate the values readily at hand, I am as far from the Kingdom of Heaven as the rich young man who also found a focus on wealth a hinderance. Might it not be as bad to obsess on other’s wealth as our own?
November 25, 2011 at 12:47 pm
Good post, Nick.
Please would someone get a top banker to sit in front of a TV camera and ask them: “You were being paid three million pounds every year. Your company has given you a rise to four million. Does that make you happier? Does it make you feel good… or bad? Did it stop you looking for a job overseas. And… given that you can’t take it with you, is there a danger you’ve lost your soul?”
November 25, 2011 at 2:06 pm
Martin, you offer an interesting perspective to which I will give some thought.
November 26, 2011 at 12:14 am
Martin: Please ….if you are going to wax nostalgic about an almost certainly mythical age of local community and deal in unsupported generalisations about the relative happiness of the “poor in the third world” perhaps you could also mention an old fashioned virtue called ‘noblesse oblige’? In the kind of idealised community you allude to nobody would need to remind the privileged of their responsibilities towards the disadvantaged and this is where we might agree …. You are right. It shouldn’t be left to the have-nots to give a nudge to the haves about their obligations.
Of course we have expectations of those with excessive amounts of wealth and prestige. That’s nothing to do with greed or envy. It’s to do with understanding the extremely chancy nature of life; that it’s just a matter of luck, and nothing necessarily to do with merit, that Lord and Lady Somesuch were born with silver spoons in their mouths and Joe Bloggs wasn’t.
November 26, 2011 at 10:15 am
Dearsoeur
I really am not being romantically nostalgic, I am just taking the idea of community seriously, and suggesting that we would be better off building them than falling into the “Eat the Rich” mentality of the Saul Alinsky school of revolution.
I don’t fully agree with Hilary Clinton’s “It takes a village to raise a child”
( I prefer Rick Santorum”s prioritisation” It takes a family”) but she and others rightly highlight that where a genuine community of interests exists social harmony follows.
I do not know if you watched the “Living with the Amish” documentary which partly makes my point. In that community they still have disparity of wealth based upon difference of work ethic, hereditary, good fortune etc, yet they disapprove of the trappings that create jealousy and undermine community. The young people who went there from our Society were certainly challenged by it, and returned enriched by that experience. Many others have visited Third world ( genuine) communities and return struck by the better ethos even where material challenge remains.
In this country we used to have the legacy of the Co-operative movement with not for profit Building Societies ( remember them?) Friendly Societies, Mutual Societies and many other locally based initiatives. They could be re-built.
I know my idea challenges the zeitgeist but that is what we are called to do. “What would Jesus do?” is often asked. Amongst the known answers is
“Not follow the zealots”.
November 26, 2011 at 12:17 pm
Whilst we considering this problem, Dan Hannan has written an interesting summary of core ideas to engage with some of the “Occupy Movements” concerns. I don’t want to debate them but just feed them into the discussion.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100119741/memo-to-the-occupy-protesters-here-are-ten-thing
November 26, 2011 at 8:24 pm
Martin: Thank you for your response. I take the issue of community seriously too; communities in which the hugely rich and privileged [like bankers, like footballers], understanding the largely unmerited nature of their extreme wealth, do something about offloading some of it to benefit those ‘less fortunate’. I’d never considered before how apt that phrase is.
What would Jesus do? Well, the records tell us that he gave the rich a hard time. I don’t recall him saying, anywhere, that things might improve if only Lazarus and co. would stop obsessing about crumbs and pay their wealthy neighbours a bit of attention.
November 26, 2011 at 8:32 pm
When are you going to say something about the salaries of BBC functionaries (£150k for newsreaders, who knows how much for Yentob?) or chief executives of country councils and mayors?
These public employees are paid directly from taxpayers or from licence fees, not shareholders.
Are they worth your money, Nick?
November 27, 2011 at 12:23 am
Keiran, what is your problem? We could single out all sorts of people, couldn’t we? And didn’t I suggest that the link between ‘earnings’ and ‘work’ be reconnected – which wasn’t limited to bankers.
November 27, 2011 at 8:26 am
“My” problem is our problem. Private companies can pay their staff what they like, even though they probably don’t deserve it in terms of productivity – and they should not be bailed out when they screw up, any more than a failing restaurant has a claim on the public purse. Instead they should be made accountable for failing in their fiduciary responsibilities and for dishonesty. Read former Wall Street investment banker “Spengler” of First Things on this.
My point was that very highly paid BBC and local authority executives (like Mark Thomson, Yentob and £150k newreaders [what skill does that need, for heaven's sake?], and many mayors) are now highly paid – at public expense – for doing what was once called “public service” – yet such people regularly avoid The Guardian’s criticism of fat cattery. Not surprising when you think how much of the BBC’s recruitment advertising (c. 80%) goes to The Guardian.
You spend a lot of time in BBC circles, Nick. Do you ever tell them they are overpaid compared to the general public?
November 30, 2011 at 11:14 am
Bradford Diocesan website – what happened to the old one?
December 1, 2011 at 9:10 am
Dearsoeur
I know its a bit late to respond but I must say that when people ask, “What would Jesus do” it is worth remembering that whilst he urged generosity on the rich, he surely did so in the theological context of generosity and not one of human rights.
We should be generous to others because our heavenly father is generous to us ; it is a matter of grace not entitlement. He offered the rich the example, he did not imbue the poor with an ethos of resentment.
The one certain thing we do know about, is that to the question ” What would Jesus do?” Jesus rejected the answer “Follow the Zealots”.
Also if you re-read my earlier post I was actually saying that we are perhaps not helping ourselves precisely because we are paying the far rich too much attention in every sense.
December 2, 2011 at 5:04 pm
Martin: You say that when Jesus urged generosity “he surely did so in the theological context of generosity and not one of human rights” – but apparently [have just discovered this] ‘in Jewish tradition, the poor are entitled to charity (represented by tzedakah) and justice as a matter of right rather than benevolence’ {http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare#History} and ‘in Judaism, tzedakah refers to the religious obligation to perform charity, and philanthropic acts, which Judaism emphasises are important parts of living a spiritual life’ {http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzedakah}. Even the poor were supposed to get involved cf. the widow’s mite.
So, grace on the one hand but entitlement on the other and though I agree with you that Jesus nowhere encourages resentment, he did air his opinions about possessions loudly and in public, where the poorest could hear presumably. They would have to have been fools, indeed, not to get the drift.
But pax! I count myself, and I’m sure you do to, amongst the world’s more fortunate. My initial point was really intended to address the issues of fairness and deserving and was not to do with wealth per se.