PROGRESS: Join the debate over John Hutton's Progress speech

tbp Mon Mar 17, 2008 at 06:33:12 PM GMT Print-friendly version Facebook

Last week, John Hutton gave the opening speech in Progress' Progressive Challenge series, in which he argued that 'rather than questioning whether high salaries are morally justified, we should celebrate the fact that people can be enormously successful in this country.'

This week, we will be publishing a number of response articles, exclusive to Progress Online. Today's contributions come from Ruth Lister, Professor of Social Policy at Loughborough Univeristy, and the Labour blogger Luke Akehurst.

'Hutton’s ‘progressive individualism’ thus represents a dead end for those committed to the eradication of child poverty. It also offers a picture of a society that I, for one, do not want to live in. Successive British Social Attitudes Surveys, which reveal that the public appear to be more affronted by the levels of incomes at the top than the bottom, suggest that I am not alone.' - Ruth Lister >

'If anything, aspirational views are stronger amongst Labour's core working class supporters - who want a better material future for themselves and their children - than amongst more middle class voters who are already comfortably off and often want to pull up the drawbridge of opportunity behind them.' - Luke Akehurst >

Tomorrow: Derek Draper and Alex Kemp.






tags: , , (all tags)

Display: Sort:
PROGRESS: Join the debate over John Hutton's Progress speech | 5 comments (5 topical)

Re: PROGRESS (#1)

by Limony on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 09:21:08 PM GMT

I felt sorry for this posting because it had no comments. Readers perhaps fell asleep before getting to the end of the self-important title of the series.

Discussions about high salaries are essentially about the following:

Under what conditions should we tolerate gross inequalities in society? Talent, social usefulness or the sheer amount produced?

Under what conditions is society justified in confiscating a greater portion of the reward received by one worker or another?

Hutton seems to be saying that there are no conditions under which a high earner does not deserve their earnings but we can all think of some. They range from from the criminal or irresponsible actions of the earner, to Rawlsian, Marxist or utilitarian principles.

Hutton needs to explain why he thinks a high wage is a mark of success, whether it is a sufficient mark of success and whether it is feasible to expect everyone to aspire to and reach this kind of success.

If I could creat a politician from parts, I would create one who accepted that a small group of people paid each other high salaries but used their speeches to recognise and promote other kinds of success.   

 


Re: PROGRESS (#2)

by tbp on Wed Mar 19, 2008 at 12:08:25 PM GMT

Cheers.

There has been a lively debate on the Progress website. Read the next two contributions, which were posted yesterday:

Derek Draper
Such disregard for equality is simply not Labour - old or new

Alexandra Kemp
It's official. The gender agenda is good for business

 


[ Parent ]

Re: PROGRESS: Join the debate (#3)

by NorthernMonkey on Wed Mar 19, 2008 at 09:28:34 PM GMT

John Hutton is right to say that we shouldn't care how much people earn. If people earn a spectacularly high wage then good for them (provided they're earnt it legally and fairly).

But what we should care about is how much tax these super-high-earners pay. If they're avoiding paying their fair share by expoliting loopholes then clearly that is not acceptable.


Re: PROGRESS: Join the debate (#4)

by CitizenAndreas on Sat Mar 29, 2008 at 05:22:48 PM GMT

I disagree,while Labour most certainly shouldn't discourage wealth creation and entepreneurship I think we really need to take a look at what's going on at the top.

The pay for most working class and middle class jobs has not changed a huge amount, it has risen steadily roughly in line with inflation. The problem is that wages at the top have increased steadily at well above this rate, the rewards for success are being disproportionatly taken by the richest.

The problem is that many of the people taking these rewards are not what I would consider entepreneurs. Entepreneurs are people who take risks, people who put their time and money on the line to make their ideas work.

We need to recognise the difference between fair rewards and greed, something that John Hutton failed to address in his speech.


[ Parent ]

Re: PROGRESS: Join the debate (#5)

by rwendland on Sun Mar 30, 2008 at 11:58:25 AM GMT

Totally agree CitizenAndreas. The reward-risk balance has become so one-sided for those at the top of finance they have been incentivised to take the enormous risks that have brought us to the current financial crisis. As Robert Peston points out hedge-fund/private-equity executives were getting 20% of the gains made on investing their backers’ funds, but taking virtually none of the risk. For them a financial gamble had an enormous upside and trivial financial downside.

I'm inclined to the view we are at the end on the neo-liberal bull run, and entering a phase of regulation and some state control of the markets to bring some overall sanity to them. Even some of the neo-liberals now think this with Irwin Stelzer writing "The era of free-market, no-government-intervention purists is over". I hope Gordon Brown has a strategy for riding this new wave rather than being dragged through it.

Some stats: From 1976 to 2003 "the speculative capital that could be deployed or invested by the bottom 50 per cent of the British population fell from 12 per cent to just 1 per cent."  Over the same period "the richest 10 per cent of the UK population increased their share of the nation's marketable wealth (excluding housing) from 57% to 71%". Time for this trend to start reversing.


[ Parent ]

PROGRESS: Join the debate over John Hutton's Progress speech | 5 comments (5 topical)