The first topic that I have decided to focus on has stemmed from something I learnt in my news agenda lesson on Friday. I learnt that the Chief Executive of the Hampshire County Council is paid an annual salary of £207,969. Anyone can see that this is an extremely large salary, but allow me to put this into perspective compared to other salaries:
Wayne Rooney - £6.2m
Justin Bieber - >£5m
Chief Executive - £207,969
Prime Minister - £142,500
GP - >£80,000
Teacher - >£25,880
I know there are football fans who would say that Wayne Rooney deserves his ridiculously large income, but it appears to me that the figures above which show a deceasing annual salary, also show a descending importance of job! I don't think that anyone would argue with me that a doctor or and teacher is less valuable to society that Wayne Rooney and Justin Bieber are!
However this priority of relatively meaningless people is reflected constantly in society. For example, current charities are asking for the following monthly donations:
WaterAid - >£2 - (http://www.wateraid.org/uk/)
Barndardos - >£5 - (http://www.barnardos.org.uk)
WWF - >£10 - (http://support.wwf.org.uk/)
Some people may claim that it is unethical to make the statement that one charity is more important that another, however I am going to out on a limb and say that while I think saving endangered animals is incredibly important, I do not think that adopting an animal should be 5x more expensive than paying to give people in poverty clean water. I think that it would be incredibly hypocritical of anyone to suggest that paying more to save animals than people is ethical. I think that these people need to imagine how they would feel if they were dying because they did not have clean water and then someone came up to them and said that they would give clean water to their animals to drink but no to the people. I highly doubt there is anyone who would accept this and agree that the animal deserves clean water over humans.
I do however want to be clear that I am not suggesting that no one should give money to the WWF or any other animal charity, I am suggesting that we should give at least as much money to other humans.
I think it is despicable that if Wayne Rooney donated one month of his wages to Water Aid it would equal to roughly 260,000 people giving one month's donation. I know that Wayne Rooney does do charity work, particularly for Claire House and Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool, but I can't help to think that if he was donating what he could afford rather than what he wanted to then I am sure he would be able to make a massive difference to charities all over the world.
In 1970 the third world debt totalled $25 billion, by 2002 this total had increased to a staggering $523 billion (£322 billion.) This seems like an amount so large that the third world will never be able to pay it back - and that is true. It would be impossible for countries where workers earns the equivalent of 60p a week to ever be able to pay back their enormous debt. However, if you look at this total from the view of the western world, it is still a huge sum because it is not out of the realm of possibility to be able to pay it. For example, the total net worth of the Forbes top 20 richest people in the world list is £502billion. This is more than what is needed to completely eradicate the debt - and in fact would leave each man with at least £2billion which I am sure you will agree is more than enough to survive on!
It is simple enough for me to tell you a simple way of eradicating the third world debt, but I am not naive enough to think that the 20 richest people in the world will ever hand over their fortune for the benefit of the third world. It is a sad fact that people are selfish and I do not ever think we will see a world in which the richest people are willing to sacrifice their fortunes, or even a world where people finally admit that £6.2million is too much money to give someone for kicking a ball back and forth.
I am not going to suggest that everyone reading this should go and donate their life savings to charity, but I think it is important that you think about how you spend money and where it is going to end up.
Although Wayne Rooney gets that money 90 percent (possibly 95 percent) in tax if a UK citizen. So if paid £6 million he will pay £5 million at least in tax, and get actually less than £1 million in his pocket. With very high marginal rates of taxation you have to give very highly paid people massive pay rises in order to give them a bit more money in reality...
ReplyDelete... unless they move to your hometown of Guernsey, wherre I think they pay no tax, or much less tax. If the £6 million is paid to Rooney's agent or lawyer, and they are based in the Channel islands then he gets to keep most or all of it.
Before I forget - a really good feature for 'WINOL' would be The Winchester Rich List - who gets what...
Money is always very interesting to people - probably the most interesting thing.
I understand what you have said about his tax, although £1 million is still a ridiculous amount for a footballer!
ReplyDeleteWe do pay tax in Guernsey but we have our own government so no tax is paid to the UK government, and yes the system there unfortunately is that the richer you are the less tax you pay so Rooney probably wouldn't have to pay anything! Which is probably why Jenson Button recently moved to Guernsey!