Sorry Dally this is the daftest thing that I've read in a long time.

I agree with wire-quin let the high earners get on with it with the wrencat proviso that the taxation system is administered fairly.

I suppose in the real world that would be over dependent upon the honesty of the tax payer, the gumption of the exchequer to collect correctly and fairly and the sensibility of the government and policy makers to redistribute that wealth for the greater good.

All of these 'real world' issues wouldn't be solved by having a maximum wage limit, the high earners would either be dis incentivised once they had reached their target, or more likely move to a freer market or spend time searching for and exploiting loopholes denying the exchequer of funds

What is working harder? Should labourers be the best paid workers in the country?

Should we also not be considering responsibility, competence........ or is it all about the 'graft'

This is entirely true, and the sole reason that the NLW has been scaled upwards; to take people out of tax credits and thus, reduce the benefit bill. This is of course ignoring the fact that the single biggest element of the benefit system is pensions - but you can't touch those, because pensioners vote Tory.



That however is nonsense; unless your only measure of 'hard work' is sweat and graft, which is clearly not the case. The harsh reality is that not many people have the skills, qualities and mindset to be a CEO - whereas many many more people are able to do the £7 an hour kind of job you're referring to - so the market values those rarer qualities accordingly. I'm uncomfortable about interfering with that.

That was written with my shareholders hat on.

Why? If a minimum wage is in order (a distortion of market forces), why is a maximum daft? Your logic defies logic.

So a director of a plc would work less hard and produce less for £1 million per year than £6 million? Really? If so, he / she is the wrong man for the job. There is simply no need to pay these managers so much if there was say £1 million on offer rather than say £6 million there would be just as many would be takers for the job.

The rate is what a company is willing to pay, its uncontrollable. The minimum wage of course can be set. If we limit the high earners potential they will move on which cant be good for business. Not to dissimilar to the Premier football league which it could be argued gets the best players because its willing to buy them.

Unlike the Premier League FTSE 100 companies still have a disproportionate number of British directors and so the top talent argument doesn't hold water. These people would still do the jobs for less pay of that there is no question. If they were any good and wanted more money they'd have gone to the USA years ago.

Why would any company pay over the odds for senior staff??

Excellent!!

At the next AGM whilst you have your shareholders hat on, stick your shareholder hand up and vote against 'your' CEO's remuneration package if you don't think that you are getting value for money that's fine by me. What isn't fine is a government committee, cross party social think tank, or are you calling for a referendum/public vote, to decide how much I or anyone else can get paid

Institutional investors have started doing so as they finally grasped the point I have being making for years.

As directors effectively recommend each others pay and the public school educated have a sense of entitlement. Witness the publicly funded BBC - they claim they pay big salaries for top talent but a couple of years ago ITV complained that the very small marketplace was being distorted by the BBC paying their (self-entitled) senior staff / 'talent' over the odds.

The top talent argument totally holds water, unless I've failed to notice that someone has already instigated the maximum wage limit since this thread started. The people that we have are or you must presume so by and large happy to work in our free market

Oh yes let's all go to the USA, really? No matter where the big bucks are, you are aware that income isn't the only measure of contentment or the only reason to live in a particular place?

Which is fine by me as it is market forces that must be driving it? This is not the same thing as the government insisting upon a maximum wage because of the illogical nonsensical argument that we have a minimum wage therefore its only fair....I'm glad that 'your' institutional investors have finally grasped your point though

Except there isn't a free or open market in the selection and remuneration of CEOs and other business executives. Executive selection and remuneration is decided by a small subset of stakeholders with specific interests in mind (I deliberately don't use the term shareholders as most shares in large UK corporations are not held by individual investors but by other corporate entities managing other people's capital). This is why CEOs and other execs tend to come from a small in-group of people and the skills and experience required is less tangible than certain other well paid, highly skilled roles i.e. you would expect a Consultant Surgeon to be a qualified doctor, with many years of certified training and experience in their specialist field, whereas CEOs and executives may not actually have any specialist skills and experience in their industry and instead have more opaque credentials where their exact contribution is harder to quantify.