{"id":2933,"date":"2011-12-04T16:41:02","date_gmt":"2011-12-05T00:41:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/?p=2933"},"modified":"2011-12-04T16:42:47","modified_gmt":"2011-12-05T00:42:47","slug":"practical-definition-get-tough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/practical-definition-get-tough\/","title":{"rendered":"Practical definition: Get tough"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to BBC News:<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>The government should not be setting pay rates, Mr Clegg stressed, while making clear he supported top executives being well rewarded if their companies were successful.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What does he mean?\u00a0 Well, we need to take that phrase in the context of the speech where he declares:<\/p>\n

We need to get tough on irresponsible and unjustified behaviour of top remuneration of executives in the private sector…What I abhor is people getting paid bucket loads of cash in difficult times for failure.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A politician will say all those things in the same speech because he wishes to whip up the mob that loves bashing the wealthy elite, but he doesn’t want to alarm that elite by saying he actually wants to determine how much they are paid.\u00a0 And he can say these things without worrying that the press will call him on it, and will, more likely, lay out these points as a balanced position rather than a contradictory one.<\/p>\n

The press won’t question that “the government ‘getting tough'” necessarily means that
\nthe politicians in charge should use the police power of the state to get the private sector to do what the politicians want them to do.\u00a0 In this case, Mr. Clegg means that the British government should decide how much an executive is allowed to make in a company deemed not successful.\u00a0 This, in turn, means giving bureaucrats the authority to make the distinction of “successful,” which would necessarily have to be applied to every single company.\u00a0 Is a company that loses any market value successful?\u00a0 What about a company that loses value in difficult times?<\/p>\n

In other words, having the government “get tough on pay” means having the government set pay rates<\/em>, at least in some situations, and potentially for any company.<\/p>\n

There are citizens who don’t mind the idea of bureaucrats actually setting pay rates in the private sector, and there are some who don’t mind as long as it’s not their pay.\u00a0 But there are many people who would bristle at the thought of government setting pay rates for anyone not in government.\u00a0 By threatening to “get tough” on pay but claiming that they “should not be setting pay,” a politician can have it both ways, and the print media that boasts its role as an agency of letters and, occasionally, as a public watchdog will go right along with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to BBC News: The government should not be setting pay rates, Mr Clegg stressed, while making clear he supported top executives being well rewarded if their companies were successful. What does he mean?\u00a0 Well, we need to take that phrase in the context of the speech where he declares: We need to get tough […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-reporting-on-pay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2933"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2936,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2933\/revisions\/2936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}