The bosses of Britain’s largest listed companies took home record high pay packets for the third successive year, according to a report.
Analysis found that the record set in the last financial year means the average FTSE 100 chief executive is now paid 122 times the salary of the average full-time UK worker.
Executive pay has been on the rise for the past four years, partly as a consequence of pay cuts taken during the pandemic, at a time when many households are still struggling with a cost of living crisis.
The median pay of a FTSE chief executive climbed to £4.58m in the last financial year, up from £4.29m a year earlier, an increase of nearly 7%, according to analysis by the High Pay Centre.
I was an immigrant in the UK for over a decade after having also lived for a long time in both Northern Europe and Southern Europe and my impression of Britain after a couple of years living there was that they mixed the worst of both America and Europe - power and wealth being pretty much all inherited and in the hands of the same families for centuries from Europe, and “Greed is good” from America.
Instead of the high social mobility and go-get it spirit that America use to have (but at least the former is pretty much gone) and a higher social safety net and people-focused politics of Europe (which, curiously is also a bit of a “used to have” thing), they had the entrenched dynastic wealth and power (even having quite literally royalty, though it didn’t stop there) from Europe coupled with a “everything is justifiable to make money” from America - basically almost total economic, political and even legal control on the hands of a fully predatorial “Nobility” which didn’t have even the tinyest bit of a sense of Noblesse oblige - plus a society which saw trying once to climb and failing as making somebody a Failure for life which was part of the more broad idea that “people should know their place” so against risk taking to improve one’s lot in life.