At 08/06/01 07:58 -0700, you wrote:
At 10:35 PM 06/07/2001 -0700, you wrote:
PAXMAN:
I understand what you are saying. The question is about the gap.
BLAIR:
Yes, I know what your question is. I am choosing to answer it in my way
rather than yours.
PAXMAN:
But you're not answering it.
BLAIR:
I am.
PAXMAN:
You are answering another question.
They are both very skilled, and they both knew what they were doing.
Because of repeated work from focus groups Blair will know that the
majority of the population do not begrudge the gigantic wages earned by
David Beckham, the footballer, who also markets his looks and his marriage
to a Spice Girl as an international cultural iconic commodity for equally
monumental fees. Also that the public does not begrudge people winning
millions on the lottery. Therefore he studiously avoids giving Paxman a
headline for the morning press: Blair attacks top wage earners.
Instead, what the Labour government has done is to nudge the process of
accountability at annual general meetings of companies, requiring more
transparent monitoring of directors' salaries. Yes a slow process, but it
is moving.
He is also correct that as long as there is perceived to be an
international market in supposedly top-flight management, Britain cannot
afford not to pay what are conceived as competitive rates, otherwise there
will be questions about the composition of its companies, and this will
inhibit the inward flow of capital.
The best way citizens in the USA could help is to esnure that US company
law ensures an equal transparency on remunerations.
Besides it does matter in terms of serious scientific political economy,
what exactly is the source of the enormous salary. The topmost management
of a monopoly capitalist company, although technically managers, and in
practice the nearest thing to owners or controllers of the giant joint
stock company.
Why get a bad name for being beastly to Beckham or petty about Pavarotti,
when they are not finance capitalists? Real moves to socialism, however
incrementally small, tend to be not about addressing redistribution, but
about control of production.
Chris Burford
London
