How equal should Ireland be?

johnty56 · 10-12-2013 11:37PM

I see comments on here about there needing to be a reason, in the form of reward, for those 'at the top' to create wealth.
Businesses were started etc throughout the history of capitalism but never have we seen the disconnect between the levels of income garnered by those at the top and the input they have.

Modern economies have become geared towards concentrating wealth in the hands of a very few to an extent not seen in human history. I think that is what the OP is getting at.

Yes, they deserve a high level of reward.. but seriously, is it right that the system should facilitate the top 300 wealthiest individuals in the world having amassed the same tangible wealth as the poorest 3 billion. Thats 3,000,000,000 people.

Fair? Unbalanced? Inherently biased and becoming more so??

Vitaliorange · 10-12-2013 11:44PM

johnty56 wrote: »

I see comments on here about there needing to be a reason, in the form of reward, for those 'at the top' to create wealth.
Businesses were started etc throughout the history of capitalism but never have we seen the disconnect between the levels of income garnered by those at the top and the input they have.

Modern economies have become geared towards concentrating wealth in the hands of a very few to an extent not seen in human history. I think that is what the OP is getting at.

Yes, they deserve a high level of reward.. but seriously, is it right that the system should facilitate the top 300 wealthiest individuals in the world having amassed the same tangible wealth as the poorest 3 billion. Thats 3,000,000,000 people.

Fair? Unbalanced? Inherently biased and becoming more so??

Its the shareholders problem if their CEO is being paid too much. Whats not right is telling people how they can spend their own hard earned money. If shareholders want to waste their potential profits on ceo salaries thats their business both literally and figuratively.

johnty56 · 10-12-2013 11:48PM

I'm not necessarily referring to CEOs, and I don't really think they are the issue.

I am talking about the real holders of wealth, the shareholders, bondholders, etc.

Vitaliorange · 10-12-2013 11:53PM

johnty56 wrote: »

I'm not necessarily referring to CEOs, and I don't really think they are the issue.

I am talking about the real holders of wealth, the shareholders, bondholders, etc.

Like my grandmother, she's a bondholder but can barely afford her shopping each week.

If someone earns money fairly why should it be taken off them?

Tiddlypeeps · 10-12-2013 11:58PM

Eoin247 wrote: »

But, without the well paid job creators and the pursuit of wealth everybody would still be hunter-gatherers and we would have never left the stone age.

I'm reffering to your earlier posts now, but has there ever even been an innovation in the economy that wasn't linked increasing wealth?

Just a side note here. It's also not true to say that most organisations can't function without these workers. Most low paid jobs can be done by machines these days, the only reason they aren't usualy is due to the fact that the workers are still cheaper than the machines.

I'm not saying the job creators shouldn't be rewarded for taking the risk of setting up an enterprise. Just that the people at the bottom should be paid fairly.

I don't understand the innovation in the economy question.

I'm not so sure that most jobs can be done by machines, or even close to the majority. Not yet anyway. To use Wallmart as an example again since they are Americas largest employers and the poster people for being ridiculously underpaid. We are a long long way off mechanising most of those jobs. Cashiers will probably be the first to go since we already have automatic check outs but I think it'll be a good while before the cashier is phased out completely because there are still a lot of completely computer illiterate people out there that would freak at the idea of having to use a computer to check themselves out. I don't think the cost of the machines are the reason these machines haven't taken over yet because if it was they wouldn't be used at all. We are ages off mechanising shelf stacking and cleaning.

whiskey_bottle wrote: »

the person at the top is usually the one who launched the enterprise in the first place , put capital into it , if the workers on the ground were so talented , surely they would have simply started up their own company , companies don't magic up out of nowhere so its silly to claim the workers make a company , they have an important role and deserve respect but they are not the main reason companies are what they are

Ireland has an incredibly generous welfare state , I see it becoming less generous in the future

You are very right, the person at the top often risked a lot to get where they are and they do very much deserve to be rewarded otherwise I don't think people would innovate as much. But the gap between the top and the bottom in the US at the moment is enormous and in a lot of cases the people at the bottom aren't even paid a high enough wage to have a reasonable standard of living. Just because anybody can do the job isn't a good enough reason to expect them to work full time hours for a wage that isn't enough to pay basic bills.

I don't think there are any reasonable arguments that make that justifiable, at least I've yet to hear one.

whiskey_bottle · 11-12-2013 12:09AM

Tiddlypeeps wrote: »

I'm not saying the job creators shouldn't be rewarded for taking the risk of setting up an enterprise. Just that the people at the bottom should be paid fairly.

I don't understand the innovation in the economy question.

I'm not so sure that most jobs can be done by machines, or even close to the majority. Not yet anyway. To use Wallmart as an example again since they are Americas largest employers and the poster people for being ridiculously underpaid. We are a long long way off mechanising most of those jobs. Cashiers will probably be the first to go since we already have automatic check outs but I think it'll be a good while before the cashier is phased out completely because there are still a lot of completely computer illiterate people out there that would freak at the idea of having to use a computer to check themselves out. I don't think the cost of the machines are the reason these machines haven't taken over yet because if it was they wouldn't be used at all. We are ages off mechanising shelf stacking and cleaning.

You are very right, the person at the top often risked a lot to get where they are and they do very much deserve to be rewarded otherwise I don't think people would innovate as much. But the gap between the top and the bottom in the US at the moment is enormous and in a lot of cases the people at the bottom aren't even paid a high enough wage to have a reasonable standard of living. Just because anybody can do the job isn't a good enough reason to expect them to work full time hours for a wage that isn't enough to pay basic bills.

I don't think there are any reasonable arguments that make that justifiable, at least I've yet to hear one.

the usa is incredibly unequal , no argument there

Ireland is not remotely comparable to America when it comes to the issue of inequality however , its not a particulary unequal country

Eoin247 · 11-12-2013 12:24AM

Tiddlypeeps wrote: »

I don't understand the innovation in the economy question.

Things like the industrial revolution or today making business models more efficient. They happened because people wanted to make a profit

Tiddlypeeps · 11-12-2013 12:27AM

whiskey_bottle wrote: »

the usa is incredibly unequal , no argument there

Ireland is not remotely comparable to America when it comes to the issue of inequality however , its not a particulary unequal country

I think Ireland has a pretty acceptable gap between the rich and the poor. At the very least the minimum standard of living is quite high, compared to the US anyway. Even the standard of living on welfare is quite high.

Most of my points were aimed at the US, or any country where there is a large gap between the top and the bottom. But most importantly where the bottom can't even sustain reasonable living conditions.

I'd have no problem with a system where there is a large gap between the top and the bottom as long as the bottom have reasonable living conditions and reasonable opportunities to increase their standard of living.

Tiddlypeeps · 11-12-2013 12:28AM

Eoin247 wrote: »

Things like the industrial revolution or today making business models more efficient. They happened because people wanted to make a profit

And? I still don't know what you are getting at.

Qualitymark · 11-12-2013 09:42AM

whiskey_bottle wrote: »

the person at the top is usually the one who launched the enterprise in the first place , put capital into it

Not so, whiskey_bottle. Most of the highly-paid CEOs are men hired in to do a job; the senior civil servants haven't founded the country either.
A friend recently told me about meeting a former Minister in Brussels in the 1970s; when he left politics he got a job in the EEC. He had a normal-sized pension (which I think he could only draw down at retirement age, in those days), and the EEC job was not very highly paid.
People nowadays assume that supersized salaries and double or triple pensions and pensions paid before retirement age have always been the norm for civil servants, but they haven't. In Ireland, these happened under the successive rule of Haughey and Bertie; before, civil servants were paid well, but normally.
And people assume that enormous pay for company executives was the norm; it wasn't either. They were well-paid, before the Thatcher/Reagan era, but the pay was commensurate to their work and talent, not to fantasy.
A kind of craziness happened when "the market" became an idea, when stock and bond prices became a gamble rather than the money people pledged to companies and countries they believed in.

Vitaliorange wrote: »

Its the shareholders problem if their CEO is being paid too much. Whats not right is telling people how they can spend their own hard earned money. If shareholders want to waste their potential profits on ceo salaries thats their business both literally and figuratively.

That would be fine, Vitaliaorange, if the company had no funding or backing from the country's taxpayers. No company is purely responsible to its shareholders now that no company is funded purely by its shareholders.

Vitaliorange · 11-12-2013 09:46AM

Qualitymark wrote: »

Not so, whiskey_bottle. Most of the highly-paid CEOs are men hired in to do a job; the senior civil servants haven't founded the country either.
A friend recently told me about meeting a former Minister in Brussels in the 1970s; when he left politics he got a job in the EEC. He had a normal-sized pension (which I think he could only draw down at retirement age, in those days), and the EEC job was not very highly paid.
People nowadays assume that supersized salaries and double or triple pensions and pensions paid before retirement age have always been the norm for civil servants, but they haven't. In Ireland, these happened under the successive rule of Haughey and Bertie; before, civil servants were paid well, but normally.
And people assume that enormous pay for company executives was the norm; it wasn't either. They were well-paid, before the Thatcher/Reagan era, but the pay was commensurate to their work and talent, not to fantasy.
A kind of craziness happened when "the market" became an idea, when stock and bond prices became a gamble rather than the money people pledged to companies and countries they believed in.

That would be fine, Vitaliaorange, if the company had no funding or backing from the country's taxpayers. No company is purely responsible to its shareholders now that no company is funded purely by its shareholders.

State owned companies are a different matter altogether. Private companies should be allowed to pay their employees whatever they want.

Karl Stein · 11-12-2013 09:59AM

whiskey_bottle wrote: »

the person at the top is usually the one who launched the enterprise in the first place , put capital into it

Rubbish.

Based on U.S. tax return data, only 3% of the wealthiest 130,000 Americans are entrepreneurs. Most are in management or finance.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/07/09-2

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1 · 11-12-2013 10:02AM

How much less than whom?
Can you measure in terms of twice as little?

Is equality measured in monetary terms only?

Karl Stein · 11-12-2013 10:12AM

Vitaliorange wrote: »

Private companies should be allowed to pay their employees whatever they want.

05 cents an hour?

Most private companies are corporations. Corporations are privileged fictional entities created by government and underpinned by the state. Corporate status is eagerly opted into because of these privileges. If the people of the state that grants and underpins these privileges decide to strengthen corporate governance then they suck it up or simply opt-out.

Btw you cannot separate the private sector from the state. We live in mixed economy state capitalist societies. China has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in a generation because of highly managed state capitalism. The vast majority of China's principle companies are owned by the state.

KyussBishop · 11-12-2013 11:28AM

Vitaliorange wrote: »

Ok so why not increase the minimum wage to 50 euro per hour.
You increase the amount of money people have, which spills over into discretionary income, which gets spent on products, increasing aggregate demand and business income, which keeps up employment.

That's not what the minimum wage is for - the poster advocated putting it at a figure, to meet a minimum standard of decent living.

KyussBishop · 11-12-2013 11:34AM

ScumLord wrote: »

It's not sop much an inevitability but the practicality of it means it's hard to find another fair way of doing things.

Again, you're speaking of the way things are is if (this time for practical reasons - ones you haven't explained) they are inevitable.

The rest of your post is a mainly various oversimplified ways of describing the economy, to try and make it seem like societal/economic problems are somehow intractable and unfixable - again just repeating yourself.

You add to that, a lot of unbacked assertions about the economy (promoting private over public), and again, asserting that trying to make it better makes it worse (i.e. more 'it is intractable/impossible to fix, the way it is is inevitable') etc..

Vitaliorange · 11-12-2013 11:47AM

KyussBishop wrote: »

That's not what the minimum wage is for - the poster advocated putting it at a figure, to meet a minimum standard of decent living.

But why not, increase the minimum wage to 50 euro per hour, everyone wins.

KyussBishop · 11-12-2013 11:49AM

Eoin247 wrote: »

But, without the well paid job creators and the pursuit of wealth everybody would still be hunter-gatherers and we would have never left the stone age.

I'm reffering to your earlier posts now, but has there ever even been an innovation in the economy that wasn't linked increasing wealth?

Just a side note here. It's also not true to say that most organisations can't function without these workers. Most low paid jobs can be done by machines these days, the only reason they aren't usualy is due to the fact that the workers are still cheaper than the machines.

The Internet was developed by government services in the US, and further developed by physicists working at publicly funded places like CERN and other US scientific/academic institutions, and very little of that (fundamental particle physics, requiring transmitting extremely high bandwidth of data) is profitable, it's pursued primarily for scientific purpose.

A lot of economic dogma today, is not about recognizing the beneficial role of both public and private enterprise, but of deferring most blame onto public institutions/projects, and handing most credit to private institutions/projects (in order to fit the public=bad private=good dogma), and similarly in private corporations, setting up management so all the blame falls on those lower down in the hierarchy, and letting the higher up management take credit for the success of business, and all the work of those lower down (thus giving them an excuse to pad their salaries/bonuses).

You could call it 'reputational fraud/deceit' (and the public vs private narrative 'intellectual fraud/deceit'), and it's a large part of how inequality is politically maintained in society today.

KyussBishop · 11-12-2013 11:56AM

whiskey_bottle wrote: »

Ireland is not remotely comparable to America when it comes to the issue of inequality however , its not a particulary unequal country

True but we're in the middle of an economic crisis that is only at the early stages still, which is widening this gap and will transform this situation.

Xeyn · 11-12-2013 12:02PM

hfallada wrote: »

I wouldn't put Mandela and equality in the same sentence considering inequality has soared since apartheid
And corruption which never existed during apartheid is everywhere.

The ignorance of that statement beggars belief.
All people in South Africa were created unequal during apartheid - by law. Corruption that exists now has no bearing on that. There was plenty of corruption during apartheid.

KyussBishop · 11-12-2013 12:03PM

Qualitymark wrote: »

Not so, whiskey_bottle. Most of the highly-paid CEOs are men hired in to do a job; the senior civil servants haven't founded the country either.
A friend recently told me about meeting a former Minister in Brussels in the 1970s; when he left politics he got a job in the EEC. He had a normal-sized pension (which I think he could only draw down at retirement age, in those days), and the EEC job was not very highly paid.
People nowadays assume that supersized salaries and double or triple pensions and pensions paid before retirement age have always been the norm for civil servants, but they haven't. In Ireland, these happened under the successive rule of Haughey and Bertie; before, civil servants were paid well, but normally.
And people assume that enormous pay for company executives was the norm; it wasn't either. They were well-paid, before the Thatcher/Reagan era, but the pay was commensurate to their work and talent, not to fantasy.
A kind of craziness happened when "the market" became an idea, when stock and bond prices became a gamble rather than the money people pledged to companies and countries they believed in.

An interesting point I read recently, is that these high salaries/pensions for high ups in the public sphere, are part of what is getting used to justify the increases in salaries for high ups in the private sphere as well - so, for all the anti-public-sector narrative you hear talked about, all the 'reforms' (i.e. cuts) from that tend to get loaded onto the average worker in the public sector, not at the higher-ups.

So, puts an interesting spin on the real agenda behind the anti-public-sector narrative, how that profligacy among higher ups is used both to justify harder hits/cuts against those lower down (promoting right-wing destruction/privatization of public services), and at the same time used to aid in justifying high salaries among CEO's in the private economy.

KyussBishop · 11-12-2013 12:06PM

Vitaliorange wrote: »

But why not, increase the minimum wage to 50 euro per hour, everyone wins.

KyussBishop wrote:

That's not what the minimum wage is for - the poster advocated putting it at a figure, to meet a minimum standard of decent living.

.

Vitaliorange · 11-12-2013 12:12PM

KyussBishop wrote: »

.

Thats not a good enough answer. If raising the minimum wage increases the standard of living why not raise it even more and raise the standard of living even more.

"Thats not what its for" is a ridiculious reason not to make everyone's standard of living better.

What the minimum wage does is reduce the general standard of living. Morr wealth and jobs can be created without the minimum wage. With a minimum wage in place you create unemployment where there otherwise would have been none.

Eoin247 · 11-12-2013 12:13PM

Tiddlypeeps wrote: »

And? I still don't know what you are getting at.

I'm not sure if you're just messing with me or something? What exactly is vague about what i said?

The fact that these days we have the highest standard of living we have ever had = only possible due to the pursuit of profit.

KyussBishop · 11-12-2013 12:20PM

Vitaliorange wrote: »

Thats not a good enough answer. If raising the minimum wage increases the standard of living why not raise it even more and raise the standard of living even more.

"Thats not what its for" is a ridiculious reason not to make everyone's standard of living better.

You're the person who thinks people need to be paid €50 an hour to have a 'minimum standard of decent living', it's up to you to defend that position; even though I disagree with it, I don't think it's even worth the time spent arguing against.

KyussBishop · 11-12-2013 12:22PM

Vitaliorange wrote: »

What the minimum wage does is reduce the general standard of living. Morr wealth and jobs can be created without the minimum wage. With a minimum wage in place you create unemployment where there otherwise would have been none.

Except there is no empirical basis behind this, based on past minimum wage increases, you're just trying to fúck around with specious anti-minimum-wage arguments.

Fukuyama · 11-12-2013 12:25PM

Jesus... some of the economic 'theories' in this thread are laughable....

Increasing minimum wage? WHY?! I've worked many a job for €8.65 an hour and to be honest, although I would have liked to be earning more, I didn't deserve it. What was I doing? Nothing, really. Standing behind a till doing a job ANYBODY could do.

Plus, if minimum wage is increased then inflation rises devaluing the money in my pocket anyways. :rolleyes:

There was also a suggestion that lower workers are the backbone of the economy and that most corporations could easily do without middle managers and upper level management. :pac: Imagine a local McDonalds that was staffed and run by the fry cooks. The place would fold in less than a day. And although there are some examples of co-ops being run successfully, they're normally run by intelligent people that are highly motivated. In society, many people not only want to be led, but NEED leaders to tell them what to do and how to do it.

Now imagine if Microsoft fired all their mid to high level managers and left the engineers to themselves. The company would spin its wheels for a few days before falling into chaos.

And the asertion that "corporations" are "fictional" like it's some kind of big exposé is telling. Everyone knows what a corporation is, why it's set up and why the state facilitates the formation of them. If it wasn't for this entity, we'd all be plodding around in horse and carts, dying from TB and relying on the Pony Express for communication.

The idea of the "working class hero" breaking his back down a mine, day in - day out, is dead. At least in this country. Poverty can be escaped from in this country if people want to. There's free education up to degree level (anyone living in poverty will be entitled to it) and any students I've ever been in college with have worked part-time jobs on the side or done night shifts.

So after years of studying and working crappy jobs to fund themselves, along with the opportunity cost of having not had a fulltime job throughout college, the idea of then telling these people that the staff they'll be managing will be earning the same (or almost the same) as them is laughable. There'd be zero incentive to work hard or start a business.

We also forget that there are huge swathes of society perfectly comfortable in abject poverty. Yes they'd like more money, but they don't want to work. It's sad, but it's a fact of life and giving charity to those unwilling to help themselves just reinforces their vicious cycle.

The ridiculous suggestions here are the same type you see daubed onto poorly made posters at a looney left protest against "The Man" outside Leinster House.

Vitaliorange · 11-12-2013 12:32PM

KyussBishop wrote: »

You're the person who thinks people need to be paid €50 an hour to have a 'minimum standard of decent living', it's up to you to defend that position; even though I disagree with it, I don't think it's even worth the time spent arguing against.

I believe in no minimum wage. I dont think you can argue it.

Vitaliorange · 11-12-2013 12:36PM

KyussBishop wrote: »

Except there is no empirical basis behind this, based on past minimum wage increases, you're just trying to fúck around with specious anti-minimum-wage arguments.

I'm sure I saw empiricle evidence before. I'll have a look for it.

With a higher wage than market forces can justify fewer businesses can feasibly be set up or be profitable. This means fewer jobs. On top of that the products and services with overpriced staff would cost more or be or worse quality. Value for money drops for the consumer.

Fukuyama · 11-12-2013 12:36PM

Vitaliorange wrote: »

Thats not a good enough answer. If raising the minimum wage increases the standard of living why not raise it even more and raise the standard of living even more.

"Thats not what its for" is a ridiculious reason not to make everyone's standard of living better.

What the minimum wage does is reduce the general standard of living. Morr wealth and jobs can be created without the minimum wage. With a minimum wage in place you create unemployment where there otherwise would have been none.

The minimum wage should remain in place. There's balancing act needed here but it's necessary. Your thinking is applicable in a manufacturing economy where piece-rate is a more fair pay-scale for employees and the company. Generally, where minimum wage is paid in Ireland, it's just about earned and the companies can afford it (easily).

The minimum wage should be just that - a minimum amount of money for the low level work that's carried out for it that will enable a person to live above the poverty line in shared accommodation.

Your right about the absence of a minimum wage possibly creating more jobs - but it has too much of a knock on effect in terms of reinforcing abject poverty. What extra jobs are created would soon disappear as the products created by minimum wage recipients in THIS country generally serve fellow minimum wage recipients - so demand would go down as people have less money.

For the most part, Ireland's minimum wage is there for those using low-level jobs as a temporary measure (while in college, etc...) and those who either want to exist like that or have made horrible life choices which have put them there.

It also self-regulates. An engineer will not accept minimum wage but a petrol station worker will. I think, in general, people earning minimum wage know why they're earning it.

How equal should Ireland be?

Comments