That measurement is Influence. To influence an outcome or achieve a desired outcome. It does not matter whether you move in wealthy circles or not. You may only desire to influence something small. So a large income is often not necessary.

However, in politics you often desire to influence something big and to have an influence you often need a larger than median income.

At the end of the day there is dignity in hard work, no matter what the status of job. Taking responsibility for yourself and your dependents is the ultimate source of human dignity, I have no time for snobs that look down on shelf stackers and garbage collectors, not do I have time for middle class socialists living in McMansions blaming society for the unemployability of the non-working class. Someone who slaves at 2 or 3 jobs to improve their lot in life have more dignity than both of them, and a bucket load more than those that would be kept by the state and can’t see past their own needs and rights.

More of dignity I think.

“Is it a serious contention that people respect wealth? Very few wealthy people are respected for their wealth, most either generate neutral feelings or they are mildly despised for it, especially if they revel in it publicly.”

I think you’re onto something there, Brendan. The Left’s definition of status isn’t an issue of respect, but envy.

Serious pressure. The last 25 years has seen shareholder revolt against complacement managments. These days the average lifespan of a CEO is about 4 years: less so if they fail. There is a huge demand for good CEOS because they’re capable of making enormous returns for shareholders. If they don’t perform they get booted.

The socialisation of pensions has made this possible.

Compare Chaney who created enormous wealth for his shareholders and Fletcher over at Coles who turned out to be a total failure. Everyone focuses on Fletchers payout because as a failure people rightly think he shouldn’t be paid anything.

However there are a few problems with that view.

1. Outsiders have no business worrying what Fletcher ought to be paid on his exist as it is beteen the board and the shareholders.

2. CEo’s know that on balance there is a good chance of failure and if they do fail they won’t find another job. So before signing on the dotted line they will negotiate a good exit package. If a firm isn’t prepared to accept that, good CEO’s won’t move. Good CEO’s are in demand all over the world.

Calpers started the ball rolling in the US in the 80’s, demanding that managements perform or get booted. Funnily enough Calpers is the Californian teachers and state workers pension fund.

So I guess the hardworking stiff who works at least as hard as the CEO of Macquarie Bank, is simply ‘less successful’, well at earning money certainly. But I haven’t seen anything here about how building a successful company or industry should be its own reward, rather than deserving amounts of annual income that would retire the debt of a small nation. Perhaps when people learn to just love working for its own sake, as the poor are regularly reminded they need to do, in order to earn our esteem and respect, those that work for the collective known as capital won’t demand incomes that bear no possible resemblance to the application of either talent of hard work known this side of the real world. The growth in the differential between the incomes of those that lead businesses, and those who work at various other tasks that are necessary for the creation of wealth and value, seem to suggest that something other than the divine ‘invisible hand’ has been at work over the last 25 years. I wonder what it was?

Yea, right. Was that a pig I saw flying past my window?

So the communists confiscations were just a joke. They were always intended to give the peasants their property back before they starved to death.

It’s all about money. The right doesn’t think it ought to be taken away from those who have it. The left, on the other hand think redistribution is fine and dandy.

Jeesh. listen to the poster girl for the left- Julia Chavez-Gillard. She was reported as saying that grwoth without “fairness” is not worth having. “Fairness’is a personal preference.

For rightist to deny that conservatives equate wealth with merit (i.e. deserved status) is to deny several hundred years of presbyterian tradition. Leftists tend to be anti-materialistic. So it follows that they see the association as inappropriate and undeserved.

I do wonder how one could ever break the link though. We spend half our waking lives working, and the success measure of our work in 99% of domains is financial. So rich people are basically successful at their work. How is this ever going to be separated from status? In their own mind, or in the public’s?

Absolute poverty is all but eliminated in rich countries. What people refer to as “relative poverty” is just another status label. If you simply define poverty as “the bottom x%”, then by definition, there will always be poverty.

If you “only” have one car, and can only afford to buy your playstation games after they go platinum, then you’re simply not in poverty – even if you are in the bottom 20%.

“If income were freed of its association with virtue then nobody would be forced to pursue increased wealth just to avoid low status. Money could be about consumption rather than signaling.”

There’s no reason income should be separated from virtue. Self-made people should be held in high regard (though we can still make fun of Paris Hilton).

But it’s a silly question anyway. It implies that people only care about money because of the status it confers. Perhaps it’s the other way around? You say if status were unlinked from money that people wouldn’t care about money… but perhaps they would no longer care about status, and would rather whatever else it is that money can buy.

When people are hungry, they want money for food. If they are homeless or live in a dump, they want money for shelter. Then they want an even bigger house, and so on. Once they have all the necessities, they will go after the luxuries.

Perhaps after these, status is simply next on the list. People always want money because of what it can buy – and it can always buy something. If we are at a stage where status is the primary concern, then perhaps we have succeeded in providing all these other things?

Poverty is relative, as you allude.

Hasn’t this already happened to some extent in rich economies where the relative levels of poverty are low?

Don, are you serious? Please tell me you’re joking. The left is obsessed with money. Who has it. Who doesn’t. It’s all they think about. Take a look at some of the threads at this site and tell me there isn’t obsession with mullah. Please!

Given all the stoic talk about how material consumption doesn’t bring happiness, it must be a mystery to you why leftists care so much about something they say doesn’t matter.

It may be the case that leftists are more sensitive to status than non-leftists AND that they project their concerns onto other people (who don’t share them). But I think my argument still stands. If you want to convince these leftists to accept income inequality that’s caused by the market then you’d be more successful if you broke the link between wealth and status.

As for Hayek’s Mirage of Social Justice, I think he’s right to say that:

“It is probably a misfortune that, especially in the USA, popular writers like Samuel Smiles and Horatio Alger, and later the sociologist W. G. Sumner, have defended free enterprise on the ground that it regularly rewards the deserving, and it bodes ill for the future of the market order that this seems to have become the only defence of it which is understood by the general public. That it has largely become the basis of the self-esteem of the businessman often gives him an air of self-righteousness which does not make him more popular.”

Rather than break links (if any) between wealth and status, perhaps we need greater understanding of the division of labour and comparitive advantage. Over at Catallaxy I pointed you to Hayek LLL II pg 74, but also have a look at pages 70 – 74.

Status is a zero sum game but wealth is not… unless, that is, people are using wealth as a status symbol.

You say that “Those who would rather have a relative ’status’ closer to everyone else, at the expense of wealth and standard of living for everybody are misguided and ignorant at best.”

So why not break the link between wealth and status? Then the struggle over status inequality wouldn’t be at the expense of standard of living.