Guardian UK: Unhealthy incomes

[marmar]

Unhealthy incomes
Astonishment at a nurse being paid more than £100,000 points up an outdated idea of value

Noreena Hertz
The Guardian, Monday December 1 2008


Shock horror. An NHS nurse has earned £100,000 in a year. Well, it was enough of a shock for it to make it on to the front page of yesterday's Sunday Times. This would have been fair enough if the tone of the piece had been positive - that finally, at last, nurses are being highly valued for their work.

But it wasn't. Instead the piece was all about "generous incentive schemes" and big bonuses. The implicit message was clear: it's bizarre and wrong for nurses to be paid a lot of money.

How anachronistic. At a time during which we as a society are collectively suffering from the greed and misdeeds of tens of thousands of bankers - almost all of whom would have taken home at least £100,000 and many more than 10 times that - shouldn't we be rejoicing that perhaps at least a few of those people who choose to care for the most vulnerable as a profession might not be going to struggle this Christmas?

The nurse in question seems to have earned £100,000 by, in effect, taking on two jobs - half her income was earned in overtime - and having reached the pinnacle of her profession. So she saves, lives and works incredibly hard. Good for her. But as far as nurses in general are concerned, the majority still earn so little that many have to take on third jobs, and most cannot afford to buy their own home. This is no nurses' pay bonanza. And it prompts a bigger question: how should we determine what is valuable in society today?

Up until a few weeks ago, this seemed straightforward. Apart from the public sector, where the state sets pay rates, we essentially left value for the market to decide. And the market not being an instrument of equity, justice or fairness, but a mechanism for wealth creation and distribution, rewarded bankers and hedge fund managers far more highly than almost anyone else in our society - despite the fact that the actual value they added to society was, it turned out, at best limited. At worst, it's now clear, their net value was negative - a huge pinata filled with paper money. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/01/nhs-nurses-pay-salaries-careers

[fasttense]

1. In today's world, labor is seen as a necessary nuisance.

Yet everything of value starts with someone's labor. To crush labor and any remnant of power wage slaves may have obtained seems to be the goal of the last 8 years.

The majority of people have come to realize how ignorant and dangerous this sneering contempt of labor truely is. But the guardians of the media and economic theory have yet to realize their ignorance.

[Cronopio]

2. "we essentially left value for the market to decide"

The reality of "the market" is that it is increasingly based on coercion, not negotiation. It's not even an instrument for wealth creation and distribution anymore - it's about wealth accumulation into fewer hands.

One of the fundamental problems with the global economy is the propaganda people have been spoon-fed about "the market". It's not a force of nature, it's an arbitrary and repressive belief system that needs to be questioned and reformed.