Fat Cat Thursday - morning of shame

Fat cat capitalist image
Clichéd fat cat capitalist, not such a cliché then

Research shows top chief execs in the UK make more in one morning than average UK worker makes in a year.

Submitted by Serge Forward on January 6, 2018

The poorest sections of the working class continue to bear the brunt of capitalist austerity while the rate of exploitation increases and levels of poverty become ever more pronounced - especially with the catastrophic effects of Universal Credit here in the UK.

Still, it’s not bad for everyone. Research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and the High Pay Centre shows that, on average, chief executives of FTSE 100 companies are paid around £898 per hour – that’s 256 times what apprentices earn on the minimum wage. If that’s not sickening enough, how about the fact that last Thursday morning (now known as ‘Fat Cat Thursday’) the UK’s highest paid bosses actually ‘earned’ more before lunchtime than the average UK worker earns in the whole year! In other words, the median wage for chief executives of FTSE 100 companies is around £3.45m a year… that’s 120 times the UK average full-time wage of £28,758.

While this Guardian article contains further horrifying statistics for Fat Cat Thursday, as anarchist communists we have to say we are not really surprised by this kind of behaviour from the most exploitative sections of the boss class. After all, it's what the capitalist system's all about. What is more surprising, however, is how people can still continue to swallow myths like 'we're all in it together' and 'the national interest' when, in reality, the national interest is, by definition, what's of interest (and profitable) to the bosses. So it goes without saying that we, as a class, need to totally reject the myth that workers have anything in common with these parasitic leeches if we ever want to see any change for the better in this world.

Original article on https://communistanarchism.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/fat-cat-thursday-morning-of-shame.html

Comments

rat

8 years 9 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by rat on January 6, 2018

Nice one Serge.

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Submitted by drake on May 26, 2017

Responsibility, accountability and punishment all do have an essential and pivotal role in our society in order to live within boundaries of civility. Unfortunately, contemporary psychiatry views all of this differently. Throughout the course of time, as a society, we have institutionalized mental patients with some form of mistreatment and abuse. Locking patients in a cell, caged in 8’ by 10’ rooms, being subjected to humiliation, mental, verbal, physical and even psychological abuse is not the answer. Reasonable, caring people would definitely disagree. The million-dollar question is why as a civilized society do we not bring about desired changes? Even our elected government officials do not realize that there is room for much improvement. It’s quite obvious, it all has to do with maintaining social control and hold down behaviour to determine what is acceptable and is deemed abnormal, inappropriate, weird/strange, bizarre behaviour. However, we don’t track down, apprehend, lock up, and punish corrupt politicians who constantly implement arbitrary laws that only benefit the rich and ultimately stick it to the poor and other disadvantaged people. Do we go after Wall Street brokers who have literally stolen and screwed working class people’s lives and deprived them of their life savings? If that isn’t two-tier justice, I don’t know what justice is. The history of asylums can be traced back as early as 490 in Jerusalem, Unfortunately, even after all these years, advances in treatments are still lagging behind and are regressive in nature. Psychiatric wards have not fully evolved to treat patients with due respect, understanding compassion. To name a few people, going back in time, French historian, Michel Foucult, condemned the use of institutionalized torture. Former prominent psychiatrist, Franco Basaglia, condemned his own profession of its abuses, including torture, humiliation, clearly stating that it serves as unnecessary punishment and cruelty. Thankfully, the horrific tortures of asylums of the past are history now but there is still much room for improvement Today, at Riverview Hospital and places like Colony Farm in Coquitlam, B.C., patients are not re-habilitated but drugged into a stupor. Doctors, nurses and staff basically just pump their patients with mind-altering, brain/nerve damaging drugs; so therefore, the profession of psychiatry does not have the patients’ best interest at heart. How could those who study and train as medical doctors, swear under the medical oath not to do harm patients end up doing the exact opposite. If the majority of society was well informed they would find it utterly and totally untenable. There are solutions to urban psychiatric wards such as safe houses for people in mental crisis/emotional distress. A couple of examples are a runway house in Germany, Soteria house in California. The cost of “imprisoning” people in psychiatric wards is roughly about a thousand dollars per day per person to run and operate. I encourage and implore people to fully lobby their MP’s and their Provincial MLA’s to bring about progressive measures to treat patients with dignity and the respect they so fully deserve.