Employers seem happy with the wages they're paying employees

It’s possible to hear a certain whine as the outrage generators spin up:

Shareholder revolts at annual meetings have “little impact” on restraining runaway pay across FTSE 100 companies, despite a fall in the average salary paid to chief executives last year, according to the CIPD and the High Pay Centre.

Between 2014 and 2018 shareholders approved all FTSE 100 company pay policies presented at an AGM, with most votes sailing through, a report by the association for human resource professionals and the think tank found.

“Despite the rhetoric about shareholder dissent, most remuneration packages in 2018 were voted through with levels of support of 90pc or more,” it said.

We, being reasonable and rational people, take a 90% vote in favour of current arrangements to mean that 90% of the people voting - or of the votes cast - are happy with the current arrangements. That is, the shareholders who determine the pay of their employees, those managers, are happy with the amount they pay those employees, the managers.

The outrage here coming from the manner in which the High Pay Centre thinks they shouldn’t be. And the whine is that of the prodnose finding that reality doesn’t agree with their prejudices.

That is, there’s no problem with shareholder dissent here because the shareholders aren’t dissenting. Despite the HPC’s insistence that they should be. This is therefore all a problem that we’ve solved. Those footing the bill are happy with the cost they’ve got to pay, what else is there we should think about in a market economy?

Voluntary exchange of money and or resources for services performed being rather the point of that market economy….