The Thinking ‘Kat: Robbing Peter to Pay Paul
Not for the first time, I find myself drawing inspiration from the simply brilliant Rawi Woof, via our interactions over at Mastodon (check out my profile here). Rawi responded to a post of mine with an observation, and that observation, which also links to this prior post of mine, form’s the subject matter of this particular article.
Before, I had posed the question, ‘does anyone truly earn a billion dollars?’ Rawi responded, with ‘If someone claims so, a nice follow-up question would be: “At whose expense?” Sadly we can often figure out the disturbing answer.’
He has hit the nail on the proverbial head, so to speak.
To illustrate this point, check out this Guardian article from August 2024, discussing the disparity between CEO wages and the average wage. In the UK, CEOs were being paid, on average, 120 times that of the average full-time UK worker, in 2023. This Unite post shares how profits of corporations have risen a lot faster than wages, leading to rampant, unchecked profiteering, which benefits no one except those at the top of those companies, and their shareholders. In real terms, people are earning less, whilst those at the top get more richer. This is a blatant case of theft. In this scenario, Peter – the average worker – is struggling to make ends meet, staring down the barrel of increased costs, and not receiving a pay rise to even compensate for that, whilst their boss – Paul – is awarding himself bonuses and pay-outs, off the back of Peter’s labour.
Despite this obviously flawed and broken system, some people, even those who are of the very working class exploited by this system, continue to stubbornly defend it. At this point, I can only assume there is a strong measure of indoctrination/brainwashing at play. Celebrating this kind of uncontrolled corporate greed, usually at the expense of the working class, suggests something seriously wrong with those who fete the exploitative billionaires. Of course people should have the opportunity to earn money, but that opportunity is being denied to most, because those at the top won’t pay a fair wage. Enough is enough where the excuse of inflation is concerned, because this oft-cited, rarely-demonstrated bogeyman has not stopped massive wage hikes for CEOs and executives.
It’s long past time for this broken system to change.
