Hi Jim, Jo Bennett set off quite a debate about his views on
extreme differences in pay rates and it continued with more discussion about
whether large differences in pay rates are well deserved and a necessary driver
to get better performance out of an economy.
My contribution to this debate would be to to tell you
about behavioural research with social primates that I read about. It
showed that when unequal rewards were given to individuals asked to do similar
tasks in full view of the others, the least and the most rewarded performed the
worst. When the rewards became more even, their performances improved.
Similar research was done in a later study with humans and much
the same thing happened. It seems to me that initial satisfaction of
the over-rewarded was followed soon by guilt and and anxiety
which affected their performance. Resentment dampened the enthusiasm of the
under rewarded.
Apparently, when the rewards in both studies became more equal,
the performances improved across all the groups. It seems to me that
social primates and humans accept some inequality quite happily, but become
agitated and stress out when it becomes extreme.
When the levels of reward for work were more even in Post War
NZ, I too remember a country that was less stressful in many ways and more
prosperous relative to other countries at that time. Today we appear to be
suffering the effects of accepting a more unequal society .
In my opinion we are slowly losing our ranking in many ways
relative to other nations because of this. My solutions would begin by
restoring what worked in Post War NZ economically and keep the hugely
beneficial social reforms since then. We can even use small parts of
Rogernomics, that we like and work for us. The big question is, have we got the
guts to stop the rot and demand change for a more equal income distribution
from our Government or will it take more social problems, severe recessions,
depressions and wars to inflict enough pain for us to sort our problems as a
nation?
