IN spite of professing their concern about the growing gap between the rich and poor of this country, successive UK and Scottish governments have done little to redress the imbalance. Recently there has been media interest on the desirability and practicalities of introducing a Universal Basic Income. While this may lift many people out of abject poverty, it does nothing to redress the rich/poor gap. To do this we need new and radical ways of tackling the problem.
In the 1960s the "multiplier factor" between the lowest and highest-paid employees within an organisation was less than 10. Today it is not unusual for the remuneration of a CEO to exceed the basic living wage by a factor of over 100.
So how do we redress the iniquity of this imbalance?
We should examine the need for regulation which limits the "multiplier factor" between the lowest and highest remunerated members of an organisation’s workforce. If a CEO knows that his remuneration is limited by that of the lowest-paid person providing a full-time contribution to the organisation’s operation, then greed may be the driver of a fairer distribution of wealth in this country.
We should examine legislation to make it a requirement that all large companies, government and non-governmental organisations have workers' representatives, elected by secret ballot, on their board of directors and renumeration committees.
I know that many will argue that there will be a "brain drain", and we will lose the most capable, and entrepreneurial in our society. This assumes that these are the only people capable of driving our economy and that they will be willing to uproot themselves and their family to enter a market which may be overloaded with others jumping ship.
We need our politicians to consider innovative solutions to reduce the rich/poor gap.
James Beckett, Renfrewshire.
THERE is renewed interest in the media about introducing a Universal Basic Income in Scotland, with annual payments from the taxpayer of £5,200 to every adult and £2,600 to every child. I will now estimate how much this may cost in total.
I assume a population of 5,450,000 and that 20 per cent are children. I assume that Jobseekers' Allowance is scrapped and use the pre-Covid figure of 96,000 unemployed; also that 15 per cent would be clawed back in income tax. My total is roughly £21 billion, which is very close to other estimates that I've seen in the media.
There is the obvious question of where the money will come from. But even if this problem were solved there is the unintended consequence that employers who already have severe problems recruiting workers into low-paid, unpleasant jobs such as care homes and agriculture will find it even more difficult to recruit.
Geoff Moore, Alness.
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