| This is information from Barclay's release of their pay data this week | Barclay's pay 2012 | | | | | | | | Pay band up to | # in Pay Band | Amount paid | As % of staff | | Total received | % of total pay | | | | | | | | | 25,000 | 71,581 | 1,789,525,000 | 49.17% | | | | | 50,000 | 37,300 | 1,865,000,000 | 25.62% | | | | | 100,000 | 22,766 | 2,276,600,000 | 15.64% | below £250,000 | | | | 250,000 | 10,158 | 2,539,500,000 | 6.98% | 97.40% | 8,470,625,000 | 71.71% | | 500,000 | 2,440 | 1,220,000,000 | 1.68% | | | | | 1,000,000 | 910 | 910,000,000 | 0.63% | | | | | 2,500,000 | 373 | 932,500,000 | 0.26% | | | | | 5,000,000 | 50 | 250,000,000 | 0.03% | above £250,000 | | | | 6,000,000 | 5 | 30,000,000 | ~0.00% | 2.60% | 3,342,500,000 | 28.29% | | | | | | | | | Total | 145,583 | 11,813,125,000 | | | 11,813,125,000 | | | | | | | | |
Most comment here has been focussed on the numbers who are still receiving more than £1 million in pay, even though the bank has been fined a lot for various kinds of fraud. But to me that is only part of the story. What is the more shocking is the sheer inequality within this company. As you can see, 2.6% of the people get 28.29% of total remuneration (it is probably more than that: I have assumed that everyone is at the top of their pay band: and there is no upper limit specified for those who get more than £5 million so I have assumed they all got £6 million. I have also included those who get up to £250,000 in the lower half of the table, though that is a truly enormous wage in a country where the median is about £25,000 per annum. Does anybody work 10 times harder than another? I don't think so. Or are some people 10 times smarter than others? I don't believe that either We are often told that if the wealth was redistributed it would not make much difference to those at the bottom and so it is not worth doing. I think it is fairly easy to see that is not true if you look at those numbers. If the top 2.6% confined themselves to £500,000 each, everyone else could get an extra £10,250 a year: and they would still be getting 20 times what those on the bottom rung receive. How is that sane? It is very likely that those at the bottom would spend the extra: and that would help the economy. It is extremely unlikely that those at the top spend their income, though: there is only so much you can spend, even if you are the greediest person on the planet. Course you can drive up the price of assets with all that money: but that isn't actually very helpful in terms of our economy, as we can all now see. This is just one bank. Redistribution of the sort proposed would release £1,453,500,000 into the economy: it is not of the same order as QE to date: but it would certainly help Edited by FionaK - 10/3/2013, 00:01 |
