To some extent one can say that some people simply do not want as much wealth as others.  I know that I don't, especially.  I'm happy for the moment to scrape by.  Should people such as me have wealth foisted upon us? We would be most put out!

As you can see, I wasn't having a go at hard-working people, or even high earners, and I wouldn't presume to make assumptions about your own tax affairs. But I do feel that the very highest incomes have been inflated out of all proportion to what the ordinary person can command in the last couple of decades - whether or not these salaries have been negotiated fairly is beside the point: such a distribution of wealth contributes to the increasing inequalities in our society and the only effective means of redress that I can think of is the tax system - as Richard says, the 'trickle-down' theory hasn't worked. My issue is with what can be considered a reasonably handsome reward for hard work and excellence. And I merely suggest that one person earning ten times the average could be considered to be extremely well-rewarded. One hundred times the average is, I would say, beyond entitlement.

As an aside, someone very close to me often puts in 60-hour weeks and earns about £12,000 a year before tax. So hard work is not always (or even often) adequately rewarded.

I have worked out that if the CEO of my company gave up his salary and distributed it equally among the workers, my salary would rise by about £1000 per annum. That's about fifty quid a month in my pocket, after tax.

Now while I would certainly notice an extra fifty pounds in my pocket, it wouldn't really impact my quality of life.

(I'm not making a point... just an observation.)

In my opinion you're taking a huge leap of faith to saying all of that is "just human nature". Human beings have to act in selfish ways in our present society in order to be "successful", but that isn't the same thing as saying that human beings are inherently selfish. One could equally say that without collective activity and cooperation there'd be no society in the first place and that "therefore" human beings are inherently unselfish. The truth I think is that human "nature" evolves through history in step with the evolution of society. Human nature is a dynamic process rather than a static condition. So your argument here strikes me as denying the fact of evolution and change which we see in every aspect of reality, and I can't bring myself to look at things in such a defeatist way.

IRF, the fact of the matter is that in the world as a whole the poorest half of the population own less than 1% of the wealth, and the richest 1% own 40% of it.

I find that statistic very hard to believe, GG, when most large retail organisations pay the majority of their staff the minimum wage as a matter of course. Indeed, I know of one major retailer where the basic is below, and the balance is to be made up from commission targets. If staff don't achieve their targets, they don't receive even the minimum wage.

And if you conscientiously saved that extra £50 you would, in a mere 6 million years or so, have saved a sum equivalent to the Duke of Westminster's present wealth.  Just an observation from another perspective, IRF.  I tend to agree with Richard - only the abolition of property can really change anything.  Marx recognised over a century ago that the notion of 'a fair day's pay for a fair day's work' could easily be interpreted in a way that suited the most conservative of people and the true revolutionary called for 'abolition of the wages system'.

Whoops! My fault, Ron, not ONS's. I misread across two columns. Those figures are for people below the statutory minimum wage, not 'at or below'. Apologies. Yes, those figures were obviously too low as stated . Now corrected in earlier post.