UK Business Secretary: "no-one needs to earn £1m a year" - Polidicks

[QUOTE=Antdawg;44249531]Well gee, cutting bonuses wouldn't have taken that company out of the red now, would it.[/QUOTE] Not exactly. But a company that's still giving multi-million dollar bonuses to people who are already making million dollar salaries while that heavily in the red speaks volumes. Would be interesting to see how much each individual is getting for a bonus. I would think any self respecting executive would rather have their business succeed then their yearly bonus. It's a different story for the employees though.

What's the issue? Being that rich, you won't have to worry about not being able to pay for your needs, and if there's any financial crashes (Company goes bankrupt, stocks crashing etc.) you won't have to worry that much about your next meal because you can still live in comfort even though you may not afford some of the luxurious items you used to have. Its all about financial security.

Money can't buy happiness because money is happiness

"No-one*..." *except for garry

[QUOTE=OvB;44249492]Those are just bonuses on top of their salaries. And the company had an 8.2 billion dollar pre-tax loss for 2013. Not doing so great.[/QUOTE] A profit loss and "operating in the red" are two different things. One means their sales are down from the previous year. The other means they're literally losing money, which is coming out of selling off parts of the business. It's one thing to lose $8.2B in profit from the previous year. It's another to actually lose $8.2B to expenses.

Work hard, earn hard.

is it really that odd that politicians say this? its just an excuse for them to tax more and get more money themselves....

It doesn't matter how much the person is paid it matters about the moral character of said person. When you attempt to bring this bullshit and start messing with businesses and more importantly CEO's of said businesses, some whom are there legitimately and are actually hard workers, they will most likely end up moving their Headquarters elsewhere or attempt to game the system. Instead make sure nothing ambiguous is going on in corporations and try to limit that, not some arbitrary wage cap for CEO's or anyone for that matter.

If i own a small company with 3 people that brings in a few million every year, and i pay them a fair wage, above the average of said task they do, there is no reason i shouldn't pay myself as much as i want out of the money that is left, weather its £70,000 or £2,000,000. You can't just pay everyone in your company outrageous amounts, for example, paying someone who labels letters £15 an hour when most people would be paid, at most £7 an hour for such a job.

[QUOTE=Antdawg;44248981]Well to be honest, why not. If I was applying for a $100k salary job, I might agree on only a $90k salary contract just so I'm a more competitive choice as an applicant, but I wouldn't set myself down to the level of a $50k salary. Why? Because that's less money for me and more money for the company. It's not like that money, if in the hands of the company, is going to go to charity or something.[/QUOTE] And less money for the person who is doing the $50k job since he is less competitive.

Too damn true, no-one needs £1m a year to survive, let alone live. All I'd need is coin for rent, food, utilities and a good internet connection, with just a bit left over for disposable income and maybe donation to a cause that helps advance humanity. Might only makes right when that might is applied to helping better human civilization.

Nobody actually [B]needs[/B] £1m earnings a year, sure they might want that much (and honestly who doesn't?), but if the money is then just sitting in a bank account somewhere, not being circulated through services like it normally would we have a problem. We start seeing massive wealth inequalities popping up again. Which is one of the bigger reasons I'm supportive of high tax rates on earnings in that area, the stupendous amounts of money just sitting around doing nothing could at least have a fraction of them put to use to benefit the society that made earning that money possible. You still have a majority of the money if the tax system is set up correctly, so it's not like you'll become insta-poor or anything. It's not "envy" or "jealousy" or whatever those of you who seem to support business dicks being bigger and bigger dicks think. It's just preferring that society as a whole benefited from it, even if it has to be done by force because they refuse to play fairly.

[QUOTE=woolio1;44249247]Why shouldn't someone make a million pounds* a year, though? I mean, if stocks are paying out, and the company's got revenue to spare, and the board of directors thinks that they should pay their employee absurd sums of money for the work he does, is it not justified? Does he somehow not deserve that much money? Is it just because he's making more money than the person making the claim? Where does the million pounds figure come from, anyway? Is that just arbitrary, because you feel like saying that? What if someone's managing a corporation raking in multiple billions of pounds a year in profit? Are they not entitled to a cut representative of the work they do? This all sounds pretentious, snobbish, and really more jealous than beneficial. Sort of a "Well, if I'm not making that much, then nobody should be able to!" It borders on the delusional. *I don't have a squiggly L key. Sorry.[/QUOTE] I have nothing against a well-payed CEO, but I'd rather the general workforce got that raise instead.

It's incredibly easy to be in the top 5% earners in the world. Thats 350 million out of 7billions fyi.

[QUOTE=godfatherk;44255840]It's incredibly easy to be in the top 5% earners in the world. Thats 350 million out of 7billions fyi.[/QUOTE] incredibly easy for someone born into a state of perpetual wealth. for anyone else, it's pretty hard.

Instead of forcing and putting an arbitrary cap on individuals who're (Hopefully) outstanding and corporations who gain more money than they know what to do with it, the government should instead be looking for ways to encourage said multi-million/billion surplus companies to give back to the country by funding research or education, and i'm not talking about the satirical episode of the Simpson's when a corp takes over the school, but instead a benevolent corporation giving back to society. And although one might say to push up the minimum wage, instead of giving a gross amount $ to every employee the corporation should instead be looking to bring the living wage down.