by Rab Bruce’s Spider

Mastodon: @RabBrucesSpider1@Mastodon.Scot

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I was listening to The Newsagents podcast the other day, and I heard Emily Maitlis interviewing someone from the Labour Government. She was asking about the fears of the wealthy business owners who are, as usual, insisting they will abandon the UK if they have to pay more tax. Ms Maitlis referred to these people as "Wealth Creators".

This got me thinking. Just once, I’d love someone to push back on that traditional way of referring to wealthy business owners. That’s because, in my opinion, many of them are not wealth creators but wealth extractors. Yes, they may invest in or own a business which provides employment, but does that employment create wealth? If it does, who does it create wealth for? The ever-widening inequality gap suggests that it is rarely the workers who benefit.

You can look at some examples near you. If you own, say, a retail distribution warehouse employing people to send out goods ordered online, how much to the ordinary workers (as opposed to supervisors or manages) earn? I’m fairly sure it won’t be very much above the legal minimum wage. Indeed, some journalists have claimed that some workplaces don’t even pay that.

Or, say you own a chain of health centres. How much do the ordinary workers there earn? Again, I doubt it will be much above minimum wage.

What about workers in the hospitality sector? Do the servers in your local hotel or restaurant earn more than the minimum wage?

I’m sure readers can think of plenty of other examples. The point is that people trapped in low paid jobs have very little chance of getting on the property ladder. Unless their place of employment offers plenty of opportunity for promotion, and let’s face it, few do, then they are going to be stuck in low paid work for perhaps the whole of their lives. Some will need to have more than one job just to survive because the so-called wealth creators simply don’t pay their employees enough.

It's just as bad with investors, as we’ve seen with the huge dividends paid out to shareholders in various English water companies. Where does the wealth go?

I’m sure there will be some exceptions, but in most cases, I believe that people who own or invest in large businesses do so because they want to extract the wealth rather than share it. Now, I’m not against someone with a good business idea and capable management skills becoming wealthy as a result, but if they are truly to be considered as wealth creators, then surely that wealth should be more evenly distributed.