The message 4867c494@qaanaaq
from Andy Hall contains these words:

It seems that an average public sector dentist earns about £45k, which
is quite a comfortable salary.

By whose standards?

By most peoples.

To someone on minimum wage, I expect that the national average wage
would seem high.

So it would but that isn't most people. Even to those on the median wage
the average (mean) wage would be something to aspire to.

It's the private sector ones at over £100k that I take issue with.

Why? There is no reason why a dentist shouldn't make a five
figure salary.

No reason why they should either.

Like all remuneration, it is based on what the remunerator is willing
to pay. If the asking level were too high, the customers wouldn't pay.

If you would only return to the real world you would find that the bulk
of the population can't afford the fees your sort of dentist charges. If
the NHS didn't provide a subsidised service the number of practicing
dentists would reduce substantially.

There is no restriction on people becoming dentists or doctors and
hence having access to this market. A would-be has to have the
academic and practical ability, work hard and achieve the exam results.

Perhaps not everybody is able or wants to do that. It doesn't give
them the right to criticise or complain about the income of others.

Since when has dentistry been such an arduous discipline that the only
entrants are the cream of the cream? And I trust that you will remember
your words just above when you complain yet again about the income of
public servants.

Incomes of over £100,000 are probably
still the preserve of less than 1% of the adult population and over
£45,000 probably less than 10%. My starting figures for those
assumptions are that in 2001/02 the top 10% got £640 per week or better
and of those somewhat less than 3% got over £1000 per week.

You could well be right. It would be better to encourage more people
to stretch themselves and to achieve higher earning potential provided
that they are actually creating wealth and/or benefit to their
customers.

If everyone stretches themselves the competition just gets fiercer and
the pecking order and remuneration stays the same. Wealth is largely an
illusion, at least in terms of money.

Andy seems to inhabit a strange world where low paid public servants are
overpaid wasters

It's not a strange world to realise that there are way too many public
servants. What are they all doing? What are they producing? How
are they benefiting the economy and their customers? It's difficult
to see much benefit beyond the armed forces and one or two essential
government organisations.

Don't be coy. Which particular national or local government departments
did you have in mind either as essential to your well being or destined
for obliteration?

Those things can easily be measured in the private sector but are
obfuscated in the public sector. If the jobs are superfluous then it
really doesn't matter how little the people are paid. It would be far
better to have a tip out and to pay better salaries to attract people
of ability from the private sector to sort out the mess.

There is not an unlimited pool of talent either inside public service or
outside. Where the private sector scores is that they don't have to
stick so rigidly to all those silly rules and regulations governments of
all persuasions so enjoy handing down.

The trouble would be with paying unemployment benefits because most
would not be empoyable in the real world.

Why not. There is laziness and incompetence aplenty in the private
sector, quite possibly more than there is in the public sector.

while those he can empathise with deserve to join him
in the private sector with an income in the top 1%. He doesn't seem to
care a toss about the rest of the lower orders.

That's really missing the point. If your statement were true, I
would be proposing that there should be a massive reduction in tax for
me because I don't use services like state education and to a large
extent, state healthcare either.

Seems to me that is precisely what you have been whinging on about all
along. I don't suppose you could have been at all affluent back in the
late 70s when basic rate was at a peak of 33% and higher rates went up
to 83%, or 98% with the addition of investment income surcharge. You
would surely have died of a heart attack, private insurance not
withstanding.

I could even justify it on the basis
that were I to be in the top 1% of earners, I would be paying way over
the national average as well.

You may still end up paying a smaller proportion of your income in tax
than do those on modest incomes. If you are genuinely self employed you
most probably will.

However, you will notice that I have not said that, nor have I proposed
an alteration of the tax regime beyond removal of benefit in kind tax
for health insurance premiums. I have agreed that there should be
a basic level healthcare insurance funded by taxation in which
(obviously) the higher earners will pay more than the lower earners.

I thought you were advocating education vouchers as well.

Both measures would have but one result, that those on low incomes foot
more of the bill and given ******* Brown's penchant for rewarding 'hard
working families' that means in effect the childless on low incomes.

Therefore I do not feel that I can be reasonably criticised for not
"caring a toss about the lower orders". If people are making an
effort to support themselves to the maximum of their ability and are or
have given value to their customers, then it is quite right and
civilised for them to receive nett help, aid and assistance from those
more able to do so than themselves.

Which sentiments are totally at odds with the usual scorn you reserve
for public servants so I assume you are excluding them from any "nett
help, aid and assistance".
What is not reasonable is for those who are in the 90% or even 99% of
wage earners to criticise the contribution of the top 10% or 1%.
For the most part, they are creating the work environment for the
others, and/or providing high value services to them in one form or
another.

Much is said about the glass ceiling in relation to minority groups in
business. Successful people will simply say that they didn't
realise that it was there.

Prejudice comes in many forms as your irrational hatred of the public
sector demonstrates but we have developed a very curious public
definition of equality in this country. Employees should be judged on
their value to their employer, not on their sex or colour. Not employing
the most cost effective candidate doesn't really make sense except in
the PC world.

To say it a different way, for most of us, the largest limiter of who
we are and what we can achieve is ourselves.

Tut, Tut. You must know that it is now received wisdom that all children
are born equal and it is only deprivation that causes some to end up as
thick as two short planks. :-)

It's rather sad, that there is a curiously British disease that seeks
to put down anybody who is successful (read more than the person
commenting) on the pretext that it's "not quite nice". ********.
It's the good old fashioned "J" word.

Depends what the success is built on. Is the average part time lobby
fodder MP really worth what we pay him? Since there are a super
abundance of well qualified candidates (lying toerags with the gift of
the gab and an eye for the main chance) should we not have MPs income
fixed by market forces rather than self interest?

--
Roger Chapman