Category Archives: Marxism

Increasing income inequality in the UK

I thought this infographic showing income inequality was worth sharing (From the Equality Trust) –

income-inequality-uk-2

Unfortunately (if you think income inequality is bad!) things have got even worse since 2012!

Britain’s top executives are now paid around 130 times their average employee, according to analysis released today by the High Pay Centre think-tank. 

Income inequality has got a LOT WORSE in recent decades. In 1998, the average FTSE 100 CEO was paid 47 times their average employee, which means that while average incomes have stagnated in relation to the cost of living, the incomes of the very richest have almost trebled in 15 years.

The video below illustrates this in stark terms by comparing the typical wage of a nurse with that of a typical CEO, the headline figures being as follows:

  • A CEO earns as much in 3 days as a nurse does in a year.

  • A CEO earns more in a year than a nurse will earn in her entire life.

  • If we redistributed the income of the top 1%, then on average each household in the UK would be better off by £3K a year.

 Related questions you might like to think about include….

1. Why does such income inequality exist?

2. Is this fair? (are CEOs worth 130 times more than their average employee?)

3. Is income inequality good or bad for society?

4. If you’ve answered ‘no’, and ‘bad’ to questions 2 and 3, can anything be done about increasing income inequality?

Corporate Pay Rises by 49% – Another reason to support #LSX

Research from Income Data Services showed that directors of companies on Britain’s FTSE 100 index enjoyed a 49 percent rise in total salaries last year compared to 3 percent rise for the FTSE 100 in the last business year.The total annual pay for the directors now averages 2.7 million pounds

This compares to a recent drop in annual average salaries – according the Mail, a drop of £2500 in the average in a recent 6 month period

For some reason, radio 4 gave air time to one such CEO justifying the inreases due to the fact that these companies are global in scope – and if we didn’t offer such huge salaries in the UK, the ‘talent’ at the top would go.

It’s unusual for radio 4 to give airtime to such nonsense! Nonsense according to Toybe and Walker’s book – unjust rewards – Chapter 3 of which investigates why Britain’s chief executives get paid so much money – and finds those at the top are not especially talented people – and there is no correlation between company performance and executive pay – for every Alan Sugar there are dozens of bureaucratic pen pushers who just go with the flow. Worryingly old boy’s networks restrict access to the boards of the FTSE 100 companies – how else could it be that, in the age of globalization, 85% of CEOs of the FTSE 100 companies are British?

Also, If there was true competition for these jobs the field would be much more international, and if there was genuine competition for these jobs, wages and bonuses would be driven down!

Instead CEOs get paid as much as they do because they demand it – and they base their demands on what other CEOs are demanding – and their demands for ever increasing wages get pushed through at board meetings because of recommendations by consultants who make their recommendations for wage and bonus increases by looking at other CEOs salaries.

Of course the government is on the side of the Corporations and it won’t do anything to combat inflated and unjust corporate pay levels- which yet another reason to protest, strike etc – It’s up to us to, after all, to control these Corporate leaches….

Related posts –

 Disparities between top pay packets need better explanation

Socialist review – unjust rewards

My review of ‘unjust rewards’

Common Criminals?

Can you imagine working for a company that has just 635 employees, but has the following employee statistics? 29 have been accused of spouse abuse, 7 have been arrested for fraud, 9 have been accused of writing bad cheques, 17 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses, 3 have done time for assault, 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit, 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges, 8 have been arrested for shoplifting, 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits, 84 have been arrested for drink driving in the last year – and – collectively, this year alone, they have cost the British tax payer £92,993,748 in expenses! Which organisation is this?

It’s the 635 members of the House of Commons. The same group that cranks out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us in line. And just to top all that they probably have the best ‘corporate’ pension scheme in the country! If you agree that this is an appalling state of affairs, please pass it on to everyone you know.

Thanks to Brian for forwarding this on and to someone called Dan Pit who he got it from via facebook.!

Happiness is just around the corner and other ‘anti-Capitalist’ cartoons

– Double header of Marxism* coming up in Sociology next week – The Marxist perspective on crime in A2 and intro to Marxism in AS – and here’s some nice cartoons that illustrate the broad marxist critique of Capitalism –

Firstly, an animated cartoon – the rat race –

And the non-animated version

And secondly – from our concerned friends organising this year’s buy nothing day – on November 26th this year!

And putting things in global perspective –

 

And this should bring a certain Marxist concept to mind – for ‘business man’ read the ‘Bourgeois’ or the ‘Capitalist Class’

*Or at least what the AQA call Marxism – which basically involves teaching it in a very generalised way – in fact anything that is critical of Capitalism and Elites can count as ‘Marxism’ in this context – which means anything from Marxism all the way through to Anarchism comes under the heading. Loose I know – but then again it is just the start…

Related Posts

My Book – Why Western Notions of Happiness are Unsatisfactory and How Buddhism Can Lead to a Deeper Sense of Happiness

Mainly for my own reference – some postcards

Fifa – a bunch of crooks?

OK it was five months since Russia won the 2018 world cup bid, but the investigations into FIFA’s corruption are ongoing  fifaand this is a very good example of how the transnational elite are corrupt.

Panorama did a programme about this a few months ago, you can watch it till the end of 2011 (roughly) on iplayer

This week a parliamentary select committe heard some allegations about how the Russian bid may have been secured. Lord Triesman, the former head of the FA, testified that Jack Warner, vice-president of FIFA, had proposed that England build a football academy in his native Trinidad at the cost of 2.5 million in return for his vote. The Paraguayan, Brazilian and Thai (he’s going to sue over the allegation that he’s corrupt btw) representatives also made demands of the english delegation in return for their votes.

Then there’s the claim that two African members of FIFA were each paid one million dollars in return for their voting for Qatar to hold the world cup in 2022.

So out of 24 members of the executive committe,  there is sufficient evidence for accusations to be made against 5 of them of serious corruption. Just goes to show – it’s not just the ‘feckless underclass’ who are criminal!

Work is more violent than the streets!

According to Professor Steve Tombs anyway – in this report where he compares the costs of work based crime (deaths and injury caused by breaches of Health and Safety law) with the costs of street crime

http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/opus685/crisisenforcementweb.pdf

Although such comparisons can only be broadly

indicative, they do lead us to the rather undeniable

conclusion – that work is much more likely to be a

source of violence in Britain than those ‘real’ crimes

recorded by the Home Offi ce.

 

Thinking Allowed – White Collar Crime

The link below will take you to the ‘Thinking Allowed’ archive for Crime and Deviance – if you scroll down you will find three programmes on ‘White Collar Crime’ – The programmes look at the culture, practice and prosecution of white collar crime, with Laurie speaking to leading academic experts and professionals on both sides of the law.

A summary of these three programmes can be found at 

(see http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/thinkingallowed/thinkingallowed_crime_deviancy.shtml) says:

You should listen to these programmes for yourselves. Some of the key findings are as follows –

 

Point 1 – Evidence that Corporate Crime is harmful

Criminologist Garry Slapper, argues that Corporate and white collar crime cause considerable harm

Some dreadful deaths happen as a result of corporate negligence – Workers have been buried alive, eloctocuted, fallen into vats of chemicals. However,  breaches of health and safety law are often considered to be ‘not really crime’ (Croal). Those who commit the corporate crimes which maim and kill are hidden from view.

Steph Tombs and Dave White – criticise the lack of moral compulsion. Base line figure – HS executive – about 200 people die each year, 500-600 if you dig into it, max estimate is that up to 50 000 die each year because of a result of exposure to substances at work

At one point the programme interviews an accountant called John who worked for a local authority and who illeagally siphoned £360 000 from client’s accounts over a four year period. This amount barely registers compared to other Frauds, but £360 000 would make the top ten list of amounts stolen in face to face robberies.  

Mark Levi assesses the amount of damage done by fraud – (despite the obvious problems) – a conservative estimate was that it costs the UK economy £11.5 billion – £20 billion if one includes income tax fraud -2005 figures.

Former senior police officers who worked on White Collar Crime – argue that unreported white collar crime represents a ‘serious economic attack on the country’

A city insider argues that systemic fraud is built into the very structure of a market place (think big city stock broking firms.) He argues that many at the top of these companies are fuelled on cocaine and  points out that you only reach these organisations by being dominating – and once you get to the top, you will do what is necessary to stay there – if Fraud is necessary you will commit Fraud.

He argues that city types justify their crimes by talking of ‘being in a war’ with other companies, or being in ‘a battle of survival’ he also argues that they talk in aggressive macho language – when taking over other companies – ‘ we’ve got to bust or rape that company’

 

 

Point 2 – White Collar and Corporate Crimes have a very low prosecution and clear up rate

Q – The clear up rate – the proportion of detected fraud is 5% – why so low???

Reason 1 – While the opportunities for fraud have increased exponentially because of the growth of the internet. You don’t have to look far to witness them – the Nigerian Government fraud squads have been stripped and declined over the last ten to fifteen years

Reason 2 – Garry Slapper – argues these agencies are too under resourced to actually regulate let alone prosecute –  there is 1 building inspector for every 3000 building sites

Reason 3 – There is also a culture of negligence towards crime and fraud prevention – The Financial Services Authority or the Health and Safety Authority (who are the bodies who prosecute corporate and financial criminals) do not see the same moral compulsion to prosecute as ordinary Police Officers tackling Gun Crime.

70% of deaths at work are caused by violation of law – the average fine for a worker death is about  £50 000 even where you cans show where the director of a company is responsible

Record Health and Safety fine was in Runcorn in the NW against ICI – due to a mercury leek – £300 000 fine, -0.1% of profit for that year.

HSE –46% decline in Health and Safety Prosecutions over the last 6 years, even though the number of deaths and accidents have remained roughly the same.

Very complex array of agencies – and it is easy to defend against, also used to

Corporate Manslaughter act (2008) should make this easier.