Money could possibly purchase you happiness, however it will probably’t purchase you brains. A research revealed in January discovered that billionaires aren’t any smarter than the remainder of us – certainly, these within the prime 1% of earners scored decrease on cognitive means checks than those that earned barely much less.
That is in line with researchers who analysed information from 59,000 Swedish males, then tracked their lives for greater than a decade. They discovered a robust connection between how good somebody was and the way a lot they earned – till they reached a wage of 600,000 kronor (£46,700) a yr. After that, components similar to luck, background and character grew to become extra vital.
“Alongside an vital dimension of benefit – cognitive means – we discover no proof that these with prime jobs that pay extraordinary wages are extra deserving than those that earn solely half these wages,” the researchers famous.
Except your major passion is licking billionaires’ boots, I’m positive none of that is significantly shocking. Certainly, you want solely take a look at Elon Musk’s Twitter feed to grasp that being obscenely wealthy doesn’t routinely equate to being extremely clever.
Nonetheless, contemplating the hovering pay hole between CEOs and employees, research similar to this have to be shouted from the rooftops. The wage hole between CEOs and US employees jumped final yr to 670 to 1, up from 604 to 1 in 2020. To place that in additional tangible phrases, CEOs at US firms with a few of the lowest-paid workers made a median of $10.6m, whereas the median employee obtained simply $23,968.
The pay disparity isn’t as stark within the UK, nevertheless it’s nonetheless unhealthy. An evaluation final yr discovered that FTSE 350 chief executives have been anticipated to gather 63 instances the common median pay of employees at their firms, whereas 43 FTSE 350 bosses obtained greater than 100 instances their workers’ common wage in 2020.
How are you going to justify this huge wage hole? You possibly can’t. As research similar to this clarify, it’s not meritocracy that’s driving the wage hole; it’s plain outdated greed.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
