“When we realised these jewels were only stolen to inflate the share price of a company whose entire value relies on the wholesale theft of other people’s art, we had no choice but grant immunity,” Genius from @waterfordwhispers.bsky.social waterfordwhispersnews.com/2025/10/20/l...

🚨NEW PAPER🚨 We all know the 2022 energy price shock fueled the cost of living crisis. It also caused a profit bonanza for the very rich. We show the US reaped the largest profits ($377bn) of any country. 50% went to the richest 1%, only 1% to the bottom 50%. A🧵 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Just a quick note to say that I am leaving @highpaycentre.bsky.social this week Many fond memories of nearly 11 years(!) at HPC but narrating the the Liz Truss premiership was certainly a particuarly interesting time Am moving to @shareaction.bsky.social to work in the UK policy team

More likely the exact opposite of this US has big economic advantages (eg energy resource, younger population) leading to higher per capita wealth. But still has lower living standards - worse crime, health, poverty - because of extreme free market dogma & refusal to regulate/redistribute

This deserves *way* more attention than it’s getting Reform’s former Wales leader admits he received corrupt payments in exchange for making statements in the European Parliament to promote Russia’s interests in #Ukraine.

The most abominable recent innovation in football, divorcing the game from its purest form, is not VAR but the increased number of substitutions

Watching Trump's speech to the UN for some reason prompted a second look at this Vice article from 2013... www.vice.com/en/article/w...

fascinating research from @theifs.bsky.social most people greatly underestimate wage inequality in their country. Accurate information generally has little impact on policy preferences, but makes far right voters significantly more supportive of redistributive measures ifs.org.uk/publications...

V interesting to see Nick Clegg use the term "Vassal State" to describe US/UK economic relationship, echoing Angus Hanton's book of the same title www.theguardian.com/politics/202... guardianbookshop.com/vassal-state... such an under discussed issue in UK politics

[me, a journalist who spends all day every day on a social media app where the discovery algorithm is personally controlled by its owner, captain birdseye] you know, a lot of people are talking about fish fingers, we should probably cover that

Pope Leo XIV, possibly an avid reader of @highpaycentre.bsky.social output, decries rising CEO to worker pay gaps edition.cnn.com/2025/09/15/b...

I wonder how many UK pension funds are invested in Tesla while the CEO uses the prominence/respectability deriving from his position at the company to call for racial violence in our country? It feels unlikely that this is consistent with a happy, comfortable retirement for pension savers…

As far as the Anglo consensus is concerned, Spain's assertive centre-left government has done everything wrong: Keynesian, redistributive, socially open, net-zero-friendly, multilateralist, Trump-sceptical. Yet the governing PSOE just hit 33% in latest CIS poll, above even its 2023 election win.

Barclays CEO paid £10.5m last year says teachers, nurses & local government workers shouldn't get a payrise www.theguardian.com/business/202...

interesting poll. would be kind of curious to understand more about the 17% still sticking with the Tories over Reform

I was a guest on the 'anti social economics' podcast, supported by @jrf-uk.bsky.social & hosted by @wealtherty.bsky.social of @lseinequalities.bsky.social discussing limits to extreme wealth with Fernanda Balanta of @neweconomics.bsky.social open.spotify.com/episode/1bFz...

new High Pay Centre report on FTSE 100 CEO pay - Median CEO pay up 6.8% to £4.6 million, 122 x pay of the median UK worker - number of firms paying their CEO over £10 million increased by 30% - FTSE 100 firms spent £1bn on the pay of just 217 executives www.theguardian.com/business/202...

This surely means they will end up recognising Palestine in September anyway, and in the meantime the conditions will raise awareness of concrete commitments Israel needs to make, in Gaza *and* the West Bank. Isn’t that actually…better than straight up recognition? www.bbc.com/news/article...

Enjoyed this guerilla signpost on the rame peninsular in Cornwall

The risk of attracting lesser people than the current crop of water industry executives seems tolerable for the benefit of sending a firm message about the public service ethos expected of public utility bosses & the limits to indulgence of executive entitlement A missed opportunity!

It seems inconsistent, to say the least, that the BBC and other critics of 'Bob Vylan' continue to use a tech platform with an AI tool that praised Hitler www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Comments to the Guardian for a feature on the pay of infrastructure project leaders, which is very symbolic of the inequality that characterises the UK economy www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Europe's biggest businesses are fined more for corporate misconduct in the US than the EU. V interesting finding in light of constant agonising re: over regulation in Europe and ongoing dilution of proposed directives on corporate sustainability goodjobsfirst.org/europes-bigg...

new @highpaycentre.bsky.social report on CEO to worker pay ratios Typical FTSE 100 ratio was 106:1 in 2023/24. Highest FTSE 350 ratio was 628:1 at Mitie Our report discusses idea of a maximum wage, capping CEO pay at a fixed multiple of lower earning colleagues' highpaycentre.org/ceo-to-worke...

$M provides clear indication of how much better higher end US consumer is doing than others: Bloomingdales comp UP 3.8% and Macys DOWN 1.9%. Even adjusted for how troubled Macys brand is, a huge gap. $HD $WSM $RL $TPR $URBN $XLY $XLF

Parts of the right wing media have got themselves into a strange place over the Employment Rights Bill. Both the objectives and potential outcomes of the Bill implied in this headline are completely reasonable and sensible www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

very nice to see @highpaycentre.bsky.social commentary on the sunday times rich list in the guardian www.theguardian.com/business/202... and Daily Mirror www.mirror.co.uk/money/sunday... this weekend Slightly more extensive thoughts on the rich list via linkedin www.linkedin.com/posts/luke-h...

Increase in US gdp per capita post financial crisis reduces a lot (much closer to Germany/UK levels) if top 10% of earners are excluded. Pretty important finding given how much supposed US outperformance has exercised policymakers…

v interesting @novaramedia.com article on union busting tactics at Apple - novaramedia.com/2025/05/08/a... The Employment Rights Bill will stop some of the worst tactics for manipulating votes on union recognition but there's a good case for just forcing employers to remain more or less neutral

So many Barcelona players seem like Champ Man regens… Fermin Lopez, Gerard Martin etc… incredible how they just whistle them up!

There’s so little policy content in most local election media coverage for the first time ever, millions of people live under a Reform Council responsible for vital public services & billions of pounds of government spending. Would be useful to know what they’ll do… www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/...

CL semi final is some game... If PSG & Barcelona go through it would be a rare occasion of probably the best two teams in Europe meeting in the final

Have listened to a bit of kneecap via the spotify algorithm & from the sound/references to northern ireland conflict assumed they were a band from the early 90s who’d passed me by. No doubt Kemi Badenoch’s condemnation will be a major blow to their career www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/202...

I'm quoted in this FT piece noting the link between the very high inequality in America and support for the Trump regime and it's 'burn it down' approach to the economy UK shareholders backing vast US-style CEO pay awards in Britain ought to be conscious of this www.ft.com/content/0e86...

Much talk of whether British CEOs should be paid more like Americans (median S&P 500 CEO pay about 4 x FTSE 100 equivalent) Meanwhile, majority of American workers think their CEO is overpaid & couldn't last a week in a normal job www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/em...

There’s a real link between AI writing and Silicon Valley meal replacement drinks and the entire fuckin swath of maximizing the human experience and it’s that they view pleasure as being unhelpful to life. I don’t want a drink that replaces a meal, I don’t want a book summary, I want to savor things

an 'annual CEO's letter' is a good sign of a corporate leader having 'jumped the shark' Jamie Dimon parroting Fox News talking points on topics of little relevance to banking like border control, culture wars or incompetent government is a case in point www.jpmorganchase.com/content/dam/...

Such sad news. An all time great - possibly I’ve just missed it but afaict no mention of this on 6music this morning which feels slightly remiss… www.theguardian.com/music/2025/a...

World inequality database suggests that over the same period, the share of UK pre-tax income captured by the top 1% increased from 7% to about 14% So share of taxes paid by the 1% has increased, but a rise of 1.5 x their share of total incomes to just over 2x isn't that dramatic

Musk is surely not stupid enough to miss the hypocrisy here, so the obvious conclusion is that he thinks (or knows) that his disciples are.

This letter is bonkers really. Ruminates on 'scarcity amidst abundance' and an economy where 'wealth builds on wealth, hardship on hardship' without any reference to distributional issues, then segues into Blackrock's private infrastructure funds as the solution.

Absolutely brilliant letter.

US asset manager State Street Global Advisors loses custom of €21bn Danish pension fund following SSGA's alignment with MAGA-driven backlash against environmentally/socially responsible investment www.ipe.com/news/ssga-lo...

The context to this seems quite pertinent to a lot of current debates German govt debt is like 60% of gdp vs 99% UK, even though Germany spends way more on welfare (26% of GDP vs 20% UK). They also tax more (40% of GDP vs 35% UK) so welfare spending compatible with €1tn investment #taxtherich

UK increasingly a low wage, low welfare economy, with incomes outside the South East poorer than almost anywhere else in North West Europe - research from National Institute of Economic Research UK living standards review niesr.ac.uk/wp-content/u...

how much would people like Vance cry and moan if European politicians started punditing on America’s low life expectancy, disastrous healthcare system, rates of extreme poverty, violent crime, opioid abuse, school shootings, inequality etc etc

idk whether this is a good or bad advert for high ceo pay and inequality: bigger CEO to worker pay gaps correlated with increased employee whistleblowing hbr.org/2025/03/rese...

Great piece by @yuanfenyang.bsky.social & great to see the football governance bill progressing. It’s been a bit gross watching millionaire football club owners disingenuously lobby against the bill, which is very much in supporters’ interests

"billionaires have controlled everything for a very long time" Julia Hartley Brewer's with an amusingly unconvincing case for the Musk Presidency, in the face of a more persuasive argument to the contrary from @ewanmg.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tujc...