Rich get richer and the poor . . .

PATRICK Craven has a point. For any old lefty, never mind the ranks of minimum-wage drudges who grudgingly keep the economy grinding on a sub-2% growth path, the gall sure rises in the craw about the level of pay bosses like to award themselves.

The resident angry white man in the Congress of SA Trade Unions fairly burst a spleen after last week’s Business Times Rich List was published, and one can see where he is coming from.

Trouble is there is blow-all chance, barring a Venezuela-style intervention, that the government will shoot itself in the fiscal foot and ban top executives from earning what they reckon they’d be worth if they had to leave our sunny shores.

So forget about that little levelling of the scores: the status quo will remain just that.

What really crushes the collective gonads is when middling drones — your kings and queens of the spreadsheet, princes and princesses of PowerPoint — have their deals sweetened via undisclosed incentive schemes.

Shareholders have of late gone berserk about the lavish share-option entitlements being spread among the creamy middle decks of management at certain JSE-listed companies — while, needless to say, the heaving masses who actually produce stuff get sub-inflation increases and bonuses.

Yes, of course, the common scum are lucky to have jobs. Tell them that once too often, though, and you’ll be lucky to get away with a head-butt to the nose.

Incentives are all well and good for the geese who supposedly lay the golden eggs that magically transform profits into rising share prices — and hence more cash in the

Incentives are all well for the geese who lay the golden eggs that transform profits into rising share prices

trousers of the suits with share options — but what about the workers?

The iniquity and inequity of white-collar supervisors profiting from fickle investor sentiment (rising equity prices) makes the Patrick Cravens among us the devil in.

Non-unionised wage slaves can do very little about it, apart from borrowing money to invest in their employers’ companies.

Going by the market’s performance in the past five years, your capital gains will more than eclipse the paltry tip you receive as your annual salary increase — and you may get a passing frisson of what it is like to benefit in the way that your manager does (in manifold multiples).

Zerohedge.com this week posted charts showing how company profits and share prices spiralled while salaries crept across the floor. South Africa is not the US, but the JSE’s corporate sector has prospered in lock-step with the cheap-money policies of the Fed and the central banks of the European Union, UK and Japan.

It is easy to pillory the 1% of the population that profits most from the fallacy that a rising tide lifts all ships.

And, by Toutatis, I will do my best to join in demonising the Hoggenheimers that continue to suckle while the rabble sinks. Comment on this: write to letters@businesstimes.co.za or SMS us at 33971 www.timeslive.co.za