Is there a pulpit handy? Because this unreconstructed Puritan, sick and tired of greed and fed up with poor-bashing, feels a sermon, if not a rant, coming on.
The text for today is Timothy I, chapter 6, verse 10. You know the one, much beloved of yesterday's grandmothers: it's about the love of money being the root of all evil. The verse then suggests that those who covet money pierce themselves with many sorrows.
Far be it from me to disagree with Holy Writ, but there are more than a few CEOs in this world that appear to love money to an inordinate degree, but give no sign at all of being pierced through with sorrows. There is, of course, nothing wrong with money in itself. The real problem with money, it goes without saying, is that many, many people have not got enough of the stuff.
I'm certainly no economist, and often wonder how reliable Internet information is: it probably needs to be taken with the proverbial grain of salt, but financial facts and figures are interesting, to say the least. And while comparisons are said to be odious, they are also mind-boggling.
In America, Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon, received a salary of more than $40 million in 2012. He is apparently a devout Christian, so I wonder whether he ever worries about Matthew chapter 19, verse 24. You know that one, too: it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.
But Tillerson is just one example of the stupendously rich: the 400 richest Americans now own more wealth than the GDP of India. In contrast, vast numbers of their fellow citizens have less than $1000 in their savings and cheque accounts combined, hardly surprising when one considers basic wages.
Federal law in the USA makes $7.25 an hour a compulsory salary, (about $10 in Australian currency), but the states can decide their own rates of pay, with Washington DC having the highest at $10.50. Struggles to bring the basic wage up to $15 have, as far as I can gather, so far failed.
Australia's basic wage is $17.29 an hour, and the highest paid executive in the country is CSL's Brian McNamee, who is currently earning a mere $19.11 million, while the average CEO takes home $4.84 million, 63 times the average earnings. Less than