Unjust rewards?

Polly Toynbee and David Walker from the Guardian have a new book out this week - available on Amazon - which looks at the depth of inequality in modern Britain.

“The top 10% of income earners get 27.3% of the cake, while the bottom 10% get just 2.6%. Twenty years ago the average chief executive of a FTSE 100 company earned 17 times the average employee’s pay; now it is more than 75 times. Since Labour came to power in 1997 the proportion of personal wealth held by the top 10% has swelled from 47% to 54%.” A gross income of just under £40,000 is sufficient to get you into the top decile of the income distribution (making an adjustment for household size). The book will be a timely reminder that - eleven years into a Labour government committed to a mild form of redistribution through policies such as New Deal, tax credits and the minimum wage, there are incredibly powerful forces that drive inequality higher in modern economies. One way of measuring income inequality is to use the gini coefficient - the latest figures for the UK are available here..