The Rich Are Getting Richer

It’s little surprise that a depressing local lottery hysteria emerged in Ireland, as the Euromillions prize edged towards €200,000,000. The Government probably bought a few tickets as well. Such are the parlous times in which we live, you might even think it was worth a shot!

Moral crusaders are sharply critical of such distractions. Gambling is gambling. And the spurious hope that’s offered in lotteries, in particular, bears no real relation to the odds against winning. True. Yet one also understands. What could you do with the money? What wrongs might you right? As The Beach Boys sang, in more innocent days of yore: “Wouldn’t it be nice...”
That kind of bonanza would, as it happens, place a person amongst the wealthiest in Ireland. But, and here’s the rub, it would hardly register on the world scale. In front of me is a report from the New York Times by Pradnya Joshi. It details the payments made to American Chief Executives. Against the sturm und drang of recent weeks about bonuses paid to CEOs of semi-states in Ireland, it’s sobering to say the least... According to the NYT, the median pay for top executives at 200 big companies in the USA was a staggering $10.8m. And in these straitened times it will stick in your craw to know that this is an increase of a whopping 23% on 2009. Not only that, but this is in a weak economy – as the US is right now – and not a boom.
Top of the pile is Phillippe Dauman, CEO of Viacom. He netted $84.5 million. So, bearing in mind that he got paid a lot of money in other years too, he’s made more in thirty six months than you would if you won the Eurolotto at its peak. In an economy with unemployment holding steady at 9%! Would you be wrong to see this as an outrage?
The article is also fascinating in giving a list of executives with holdings in their companies’ stocks. Warren Buffett holds stocks and options worth $46.17 billion... In fairness, along with Bill and Melanie Gates, Buffett has spearheaded the idea that such terrifyingly wealthy people should commit to giving up half of what they own or earn to philanthropy. Nonetheless, the idea of such wealth is deeply unsettling.

One such very wealthy person is Rupert Murdoch. He and his children and their companies, including News International, have not been shy about deploying that wealth to influence the world, in a way that favours their own narrow interests. The Murdochs deny having had knowledge of the phone-tapping and skulduggery that has brought down the News International-owned News Of The World. Sure. They would say that, wouldn’t they? But in any event, they wouldn’t have to know about it, in that the people responsible would see themselves as pursuing the firm’s interests – and as sheltered by the might of the corporation.
It’s gratifying that the truth came out and that the rest of the world took a moral stance on what was an appalling series of totally immoral and unethical actions by the newspaper and its staff. To the cynic, however, the decision to close the NOTW had nothing to do with morality, it was an economic one. And as Hugh Grant – one of the victims of their scandalous invasion of privacies – said, a cynical one. But, as Jack Charlton always had it, a result is a result.
So, money can’t buy you love. Somewhere there’s a limit.

The economy of the West remains in disarray, even if some countries, Germany among them, may be capable of bucking that trend. We’ll see. But things are so bad in the US and in Europe generally that many are now forecasting that global economic and political primacy is passing to China, India, Russia and Brazil.
If that’s the case, aren’t those companies that pay CEOs multiple millions fiddling on the decks of the Titanic? And isn’t the idea that some of the stocks and shares and options held by these overpaid individuals and their companies are in banks that hold bonds from Anglo Irish Bank really upsetting? 
Despite the collapse of the banks, and the impact that has had on the wider economy and on the lives, income and living standards of ordinary people, the very rich and powerful aren’t getting much less rich or powerful – while the rest of us, that’s taxpayers here and in Europe, are basically guaranteeing that this will continue to be so.
Ideologists who suggest that there’s a magic bullet are – perhaps unintentionally – deceiving themselves and everyone else. But in a world where a CEO can be paid $84.5m, there is no moral basis on which to crucify hard-pressed taxpayers and mortgage holders.
Their money would be better spent in the real economy, buying real things and keeping real people in real jobs...