Like smoking over a baby's cot: excessive pay needs to become unacceptable

Submitted by Bill Kerry on 9 January 2012

An encouraging start to 2012 has seen leading Lib Dem, Labour and Conservative politicians setting out their plans to rein in excessive executive pay. Jenny Jones from the Green Party has also made the issue of fair pay central to her candidature for London Mayor.

The usual suspects have immediately, and predictably, started to grumble about the prospect of modest reforms that may lead to a curbing of their undeserved wealth and are trotting out the usual tired defences all over again. Let's hope they've cried wolf one too many times.

It is unlikely that the proposed reforms will deliver all of what we want. What is needed, ultimately, is an enduring public ethos that is intolerant of grossly outsized salaries and bonuses, especially during a time of constrained resources and rising inequality and poverty.

We need to encourage a public mood that equates excessive pay and bonuses with other forms of social behaviour that have come, over time, to be seen as unacceptable, distasteful or just plain ridiculous. This mood has probably already had some success in keeping the 50p top rate of tax (although there is clearly all to play for!) and it is our best guarantee of robust policies in the future to tackle the unjust rewards that we know drive our high level of inequality.

Photo credit: wheelzwheeler