Unmaking Decent Society
It's a terrible world--at least according to Tim Hazledine, Professor of Economics at Auckland University. Tim has provided us with his peculiar version of festive cheer, declaiming systemic injustice in New Zealand society. And what is this gross injustice? It is deeply imbedded income inequality. You know--same old, same old. The rich are getting richer and the poorer are not keeping up.
This egregious situation is a threat to what Hazledine nominates as the Decent Society (upper caps are his). According to Hazledine the Decent Society appears to be one where there are no great disparities between the unseemly wealthy and the grinding poor. It is a society where incomes cluster around the median. "Unrestrained, short-sighted greed" is unmaking us all.
Hazledine goes on to give an example of the very thing he is decrying.
Tim is a professor of Economics at Auckland University. (For our US readers, please note that in the English educational system, "professor" denotes not a lecturer or teacher, but the top shebang in an academic department.) He tells us that the Vice-Chancellor's stipend at Auckland University is $640,000 pa. Ten years ago, his predecessor's income was $360,000 pa.
What possible justification could there be for such an obscene, (short-sighted greedy) increase? Tim, an academic expert in economics, soberly tells us that there is "no objective economic reason" to justify this increase, and that the "vice-chancellors' pay should have increased in real terms four times more than pay on the shop-floor", and, more to the point, one presumes, why the current vice-chancellor's pay should be six times the income of a senior lecturer (which he also notes).
Tim, the economics expert, asserts that since there is no objective economic reason to justify these obscene salaries, the only justification that can be offered is "expert testimony" from salary panels, advisers, and consultants. Basically it's a lottery. "Pick a number," Tim tells us. Any number. As long as it is big.
Hold on. Back up the truck. The 2008 "award" for professors at Auckland University (of which Tim is one) was an income of $126,498 pa. At that time, the median income in New Zealand was $67,028 pa. Tim was earning double--double the median income in New Zealand. And pay on the "shop floor" at the minimum wage meant you would be earning $26,000 pa. Our good professor in 2008 was earning nearly five times as much as the poor working stiff in New Zealand. What objective economic reason could possibly justify that kind of income discrepancy? By Tim's lights we would have to say, none. None at all. It's obscene.
Tim's union had just gone into negotiations and picked a number. A big one. No rational economic justification. It's guys like Professor Hazledine, racked with greed and envy, who are complicit in destroying the very same Decent Society they purport to defend. They are part of the problem. They are the problem.
Well, actually they are the problem, but not for the reasons they advance. For Tim's protestations and his fulminations against the salary of his boss prove far too much. They condemn everyone who makes more than the median wage, Tim included. And since envy is so destructive and abrasive, let's all be reminded that Tim's income is way, way above the median wage.
Tim is destroying the Decent Society not because he earns well above the median wage, but because of his economics of personal greed and envy. His arguments are devious, self-serving and hypocritical. He dishonours the very university in which he serves. By rational economic lights he is being paid way, way beyond what he is worth.
Greed and envy when proclaimed from a bully pulpit do enormous damage to decent society. Tim's salary should reflect the damage and dishonour he does to us all.
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