more unpalatable truths
I blogged before about the notion of deserving and undeserving poor (http://ulsuni.blogspot.com/2011/11/inconvenient-truths.html) and here's some more. Underlying this is the fact that the distribution of wealth is random and bears no relation to worth or worthiness. Once you accept that then saying someone is deserving or not is meaningless. If you don't accept that (and I can hear protests about how you play the hand you are dealt - which doesn't make any difference if the game itself is rigged and crooked) then you need to think very carefully about the following question: What is it about you and the way that you behave which makes you more deserving of your wealth than the billions of people who have less than you?
This is not another polemic about benefits, actually it's the direct opposite. This is about the rich and whether they can be undeserving. There is a furore in the media about huge bonuses for CEO's in particular those of banks which are mainly public owned due to government bail-outs. Now, here is the unpalatable bit: you can no more make the distinction about whether a boss is worth his (or rarely her) inflated salary than you can about whether a benefit claimant is fleecing the system. There is a completely meaningless argument about whether the head of RBS (I can't be bothered to remember his name or proper title) is worth his £1 million bonus. Well, in one sense he isn't as there are almost certainly millions of people who could do his job if it was thrown open to them and many would do it for far less than him. But then that's true of just about all of us isn't it?
This is irrelevant anyway as you attach a salary to a job and then try and get someone to do it, you don't usually decide how much someone is worth based on how they are doing the job. I have absolutely no idea how bonuses are calculated and have even less interest in it but I have to say that I basically agree with David Cameron (not a sentence you'll hear very often) that it is a personal matter for whatsisface whether he takes the bonus or not. It is dumb luck that the money will go to him and not someone else. Anyone who disagrees: how do you justify people who win this much on the Lottery? How can they deserve it?
Render to Caesar what is Caeser's. If it bothers you what money other people are getting then that is your issue about your own worth and nothing else.
This is not another polemic about benefits, actually it's the direct opposite. This is about the rich and whether they can be undeserving. There is a furore in the media about huge bonuses for CEO's in particular those of banks which are mainly public owned due to government bail-outs. Now, here is the unpalatable bit: you can no more make the distinction about whether a boss is worth his (or rarely her) inflated salary than you can about whether a benefit claimant is fleecing the system. There is a completely meaningless argument about whether the head of RBS (I can't be bothered to remember his name or proper title) is worth his £1 million bonus. Well, in one sense he isn't as there are almost certainly millions of people who could do his job if it was thrown open to them and many would do it for far less than him. But then that's true of just about all of us isn't it?
This is irrelevant anyway as you attach a salary to a job and then try and get someone to do it, you don't usually decide how much someone is worth based on how they are doing the job. I have absolutely no idea how bonuses are calculated and have even less interest in it but I have to say that I basically agree with David Cameron (not a sentence you'll hear very often) that it is a personal matter for whatsisface whether he takes the bonus or not. It is dumb luck that the money will go to him and not someone else. Anyone who disagrees: how do you justify people who win this much on the Lottery? How can they deserve it?
Render to Caesar what is Caeser's. If it bothers you what money other people are getting then that is your issue about your own worth and nothing else.
posted by Seb at 2:04 AM
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