c4countdown

People are always squeamish on this topic but I'm curious about it so hopefully a nice anonymised poll will bring out some facts. For the avoidance of doubt, this is the amount of income that appears on your tax return (or would do if you did one).

At the moment, £0. Before that, about £35,000 per annum before tax. Future...fuck knows.

Restructuring apterous pricing?

I don't get this thing about money. There's been 20 respondees but only I have actually said what I now (and used to) earn. This could be an interesting survey if more people would give information. Is it because you feel guilty for earning a lot, or ashamed for earning so little? Are you in a particularly high-paying niche, or stuck in the fucknuttery of the short term and zero hour contract scene? Without background information this survey doesn't tell us much.

I don't get it either. I'm on a back to education scheme. It's the same amount as unemployment benefits so I get 188 euro a week.

I earn nothing. I had a rubbish £18,000 a year job until two years ago and got made redundant and got a reasonable payout and haven't worked since. Although having said that, betting is a sort of work and I've made about £4000 in that time.

As for the thing about money - yeah, it is a bit weird, but I think people see it as some sort of "measure" of a person and so don't want to be judged in those terms. Well maybe it's more that people think that other people see it as some sort of measure. I'm not sure how many people actually do. There is probably some sort of judging going on at some level (whether consciously, unconsciously or whatever) by many people, even if most people wouldn't admit it. But I suppose on a superficial level, you're asking - how have you done in your life: are you a success or a failure?

Gavin Chipper wrote:As for the thing about money - yeah, it is a bit weird, but I think people see it as some sort of "measure" of a person and so don't want to be judged in those terms. Well maybe it's more that people think that other people see it as some sort of measure. I'm not sure how many people actually do. There is probably some sort of judging going on at some level (whether consciously, unconsciously or whatever) by many people, even if most people wouldn't admit it. But I suppose on a superficial level, you're asking - how have you done in your life: are you a success or a failure?

As I'll try to explain further at COLIN, I've actually made a conscious decision to do nothing for at least a year (I registered as self-employed when I left my job to keep up NI payments, for what they're worth (clue: nothing)) and just drift about, see what's out there. I'm not claiming any benefits so I can do this guilt-free. But I'm lucky, I bought a house when houses were worth fuck all, and saved as much as I could when I was making decent money. I don't claim that this was some grand strategy that I had all worked out when I was 18, my point is more that had I been born 20 years later, this option simply wouldn't be available to me.

For instance, when I bought my house (1998) it was almost impossible to get a mortgage worth 3.5 x your salary; banks and building societies simply wouldn't take the risk. My house cost £36,000 and I could only just get a mortgage because I had saved a few grand for a deposit and was earning about £10,000. Now the norm seems to be mortgages available up to 9 x your salary - when did that happen? It's a fucking recipe for disaster, whatever.

As a teacher in Scotland in my first year my salary is £26,235. This, as any teacher will tell you, isn't enough!

£0 as well. I'm on an accredited distance-learning journalism course which I don't get (or need, tbh) a student loan for, and the necessity for regular work experience means I can't really get a part time job. So I've paid for it with, and am now just living off, the last of the money I earned from my shitey data entry temp jobs over the last few years. It's fortunate that there are quite a few nearby local papers and magazines - if I wanted to do work experience in London for a week, the commute would set me back over £100.

My likely starting salary as a trainee reporter is between £12,000 and £15,000. Won't go up for me until I'm apparently worthy of the new minimum wage in 2017. Cheers Gideon!

JimBentley wrote:As I'll try to explain further at COLIN

YES!
(first proper confirmation I have seen, and I'm so happy!)

Yeah salary stuff is weird. The fact no one is willing to talk about what they own is probably a bad thing for most workers. If you think you get paid well, you don't want to tell anyone as you feel guilty and somehow feel like you'll be hated if you earn more than them or will feel inferior yourself if you get paid worse than them. In reality, both of these things are sadly probably true as humans are cunts but they certainly should not be true about anyone who you would consider a friend. I'll happily tell anyone what I earn in person but yeah even I feel a bit weird doing it on a forum. That's no reflection on what I get paid really as it's (for what I do, and where I do it) average as fuck.

Another aspect is how good it is for business that salary chat is taboo. It gives the top brass a lot more power to control people. If everyone knew what everyone else got paid there would be much less room for top-of-the-food-chain boardroom cunts to get away with what they do get away with, and at the other end of the scale it would be much harder to pay people badly as employees would have such easy access to like-for-like comparison, particularly in companies where there are more than one person doing roughly the same job.

One of my favourite related moments was when someone at the top-ish of the management in my office was presenting to most of the rest of the office and, maybe due to some quirk with his messaging software not automatically going into Do Not Disturb mode, had a little pop up appear in the corner from the financial director saying "your bonus is still £17k this year yeah?". Cue huge embarrassment and awkwardness. Personally, because I work in an environment where there are definitely a lot of people getting paid a lot more than me that I believe are not always deserving of it, my summary feeling was probably a cross between jealousy and anger. But then one of my closest friends at work, who gets paid less than me and also works incredibly hard, could also add to that just a general feeling of sadness and resignation. She found it incredibly demoralising to see that number and know that his bonus was well over 50% of her salary.

I don't really know what the perfect amount of disclosure would be. Pros and cons abound.

It's a complex issue. If I hypothetically set up a small business, with maybe 5 employees to start with, on at least £15 an hour, producing something unique, selling at £35/unit, with sales at a level to produce a small profit, then that would be good, for a bit. Buy if it did take off, it would quickly be copied by others paying minimum wage, enabling them to sell the same item at £29/unit. And if it really took off, it would be outsourced to China and the price would be driven further down, to say £12/unit, because of Chinese state aid. There is a fundamental problem in the world economy that promotes this drive to the bottom and fuck everything else.

As a lower management-level civil servant, it's public knowledge what I'm earning, so we don't have any of that private-sector nonsense here. We all know we're getting shag-all pay rises for the foreseeable