Is it all down to bad education?

IT IS quite embarrassing to listen to the commercial and political opinions of businessmen and economists of this country on TV, as they explain their concern and alarm when a Government declares that the minimum wage must be raised a titchy amount.

None complained when Sir Martin Sorrell coaxed the boardroom to raise his personal emolument to £46m a year. Should we blame the educational system, the perjury of the national media, or the self-centred culture of a materialist society? How can adults be so stupid?

The whole idea of raising wages is so that all these citizen employees and their families can take their natural place as consumers, spending much of those wages in the economy, in order to support all those businessmen who otherwise would go bankrupt.

Money is a convenient token to circulate throughout a nation. It is not so difficult to understand the idea that a nation could become an intelligent balance of the mutual and reciprocal interests of all its citizens.

Tories prefer to “conserve” Victorian values, because of their belief that the deprivation of the poor should teach them that they and their children do not deserve riches, unlike Sir Martin.

But this different idea, of a just society, might be worth trying. I fail to see why university educated economists cannot perceive that the most efficient form of economics might be developed upon the most just and principled form of human society.

That must be a fault of their education.