How so?

Crowds are dumb. This isn't an insult but an important statement of fact.

I do think about the politicians who incentivised a generation to invest in worthless degrees and at the same time thought throwing money into the system would help.

I spent a decade watching grads becoming more and more unemployable along with school leavers.

This hasn't been the fault of business but the fault of bad parenting and a state which lied and deceived the youth generation.

Talk to any big employer and it will be the same problem, a desperate need to employ youngsters but unable to find ones that will actually work.

It's why so many firms employ over qualified immigrants instead. They can already read, they know how to tell the time and understand what work is.

Govt policy has created an unfounded sense of entitlement amongst huge swathes of the youth and a safety net that means people can quit when the sun shines etc.

I'm afraid that the youth generation has done itself no favours while also being betrayed by those in power. To find the good ones is expensive and risky for a firm so many opt to employ an adult from the EU instead.

On top of this the deliberate creation of an artificial property asset boom combined with the destruction of small business by red tape and taxation has devastated the opportunities and incentives for the youth generation.

The simple fact is that deluded kindness is not only cruel but socially destructive.

I'm afraid that if people could not claim benefits until they had contributed for 5 years then youth unemployment would be a significantly smaller problem than it is.

If schools made children shut the fk up, sit up straight and face the front it would also help. School isn't just about academic hurdles but also preparing children for the work place. Another comprehensive failure of govt.

Absolutely, record profits of over £1Billion up 20%, how dare he think a reward should be due.

Morally it is wrong to reward success, shame on them.

I'm not a communist Murph. I understand that the boss gets paid more than the tea-boy. There is space for debate as to whether he ought to get twice as much, ten times as much or a hundred times as much and how these inequalities in wealth affect society.

I have read that it is indeed the case that countries with less inequality in income tend to be overall happier places for both bosses and tea-boys. The Nordic countries are somewhat predictably usually cited. I'm not an economist or a sociologist so I can't give you chapter and verse I'm afraid.

I wasn't calling you one (necessarily And if not a commie then a hippy ).

I just thought you had something that would conclusively show the link from what you posted.

The trouble is, it's not possible to do IMO. If only because some of the biggest social "experiments" to eradicate inequality failed hugely over the last century (lasting just 80yrs or so) and demonstrated very clearly that you cannot overcome human nature!

Income inequality is actually growing in Nordic countries. I have no idea whether this is making them happier or not.

Equally it's declining in places like France, Greece, Turkey (not sure how happy they all are, but I don't think the Greeks are smiling a lot these days - apart from those evading tax - and the French are right moaning fqers anyway ).

I do feel that what tends to happen when you try to level these things out is that everyone declines rather than gets stronger. Maybe that would be for the better. Personally I don't think so.

The debate about what an acceptable gap is, to me, a key one. Otherwise it's just hot air.

Also, why do we focus on specific industries? How much more, for example, do you think YaYa Toure earns than the cleaning lady at Manchester City? And yet you don't hear front page uproar at the gap. Indeed I'd proffer that some of the most ardent followers of futblers are likely to be in the "poorest" sections of society and many will want to be like him. Why can't those self same people want to be like Sorrell et al? Why don't we see them as positive role models rather than having a desire to see them cut down?

A good summary of the truth, although its important to recognise that not all young people fit into the category. We desperately need to, excuse the cliché, mend this broken society of ours. Becoming a less divided society is just one small step that will obviously test the powers of Governments during the next few decades.

But the focus is on helping those at the bottom. Cutting the salary of a person at the top doesn't help those at the bottom. All it does is make those in the middle feel less envious but in reality results in their salaries dropping as well.

There are two fundamental issues in the UK.

Firstly, we actually pay people physical money to behave undesirably. We have created this fecklessness because we have said to society push out a sprog and we'll give you money. Don't bother working, we'll give you money.

Secondly we have failed the youth by removing all structure and discipline from their lives. They leave school and cannot then understand why they must start by sweeping up after everyone or making teas when they had been led to believe they were important at school.

The solution is to remove huge chunks of money from the welfare system and plough this into intelligently targeted rewards to small businesses for employing under 25s.

Remove all these adult style rights from the school environment. By treating them as adults you are installing unfairly a sense of entitlement which will prevent them being able to hold down those ahitty jobs that everyone starts put with.

No payments for having children an no payments for not working after leaving school. You need to force the youth to step up and compete against the EU sandwich makers, crop gatherers, floor sweepers, brick carriers. Not pay them to sit doing nothing.

At the same time as removing all these payments from welfare you also change welfare to be a safety net for workers and social contributors not a lifestyle choice.

Why not even create a 'workers' cars for under 25's? Similar to a rail card but it gives them discounts on everything a worker would need to help them work. Tie it in with big business so they can get discounts off petrol, travel, accommodation, certain clothing and certain food.

We need to start rewarding those who work not incentivising them to not work. We need to stop this madness of paying people for bad behaviour.

What exactly do you mean in this instance by that clichéd term, social inequality?

However defined, social inequality is present from birth and gets a real head of steam on as soon as people start to make their own life decisions. The degree of inequality depends on a complex mix of factors, few of which would be affected by a cap on executive earnings either as an absolute amount or as a multiple from lowest to highest earner. Labour's pay policy in 1975 with its 27% annual inflation was aimed at lower income workers - was social inequality on vacation?

People will achieve social inequality of any degree you care to name regardless of how little or how much incompetent politicians meddle with citizens' lives as a result of control freakery and damaging egalitarian delusion.

Social equality is an unachievable utopian concept and distorts debate on executive pay as it has only superficial relevance. In spite of that, it sounds good and worthy so it will definitely be trotted out again and again.

The remuneration of A N Executive is not contributing anything except more taxes and as a mirror to the lower achievement of others and as fuel for growing shoulder chips nationwide.

Maybe but not everybody holds that view.

It could also be said that reasons put forward for arbitrarily limiting executive pay are usually from those who think the capitalist system is at odds with their view of fairness, which bizarrely is sometimes seen as a one-way concept only applicable to low earners.

Could somebody indicate how, in a direct way, the income of a previously unknown executive has any impact on those who complain about it, apart from an emotive one linked to perceptions of worth including self-worth?

On PH there is usually an objection to allegations of envy, and that can also have justification in some contexts but in the case of earnings of distant individuals, who apart from much closer shareholders and employees (possibly clients / customers too) has a significant reason to be vexed about it other than via an unhealthy emotive interest in relative financial success?

I agree, and thought it was clear from the post as a whole that motive and basis were what I had in mind, not restricting or censoring the debate. There was nothing to suggest that in what I typed.