Time for some pay restraint at the top
No capitalist economy has yet organised for itself arrangements that ensure labour market wages are perceived universally as fair; as day follows night, there will always be a class of workers convinced that their pay — or, for the managerial classes, salary — does not reward sufficiently the value of their labour, and that another group is laughing all the way to the bank clutching needlessly generous remuneration packages.
From street cleaners and soldiers to nurses, bus drivers, and pilots, it’s an unending and often valid cry. In a market economy such as ours, there is just one, albeit imperfect, way in which perceptions of unfairness can be improved: Self-restraint by those who uniquely have the power to fix their own salaries and those of others in the higher executive echelons.
