Monthly Archives: January 2015

Are you one of the 1% of the World’s top earners who thinks they’re not rich at all?

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How much money do you need to join the super-rich? A lot more than you might think.

The current hot topic for those who would like to see more equality, i.e. 99% of Planet Earth, is that the remaining 1% are forecast to own 50% of the world’s wealth by 2016.

To be in that 1% you need assets as well as cash worth a $1m dollars (c£660k). But it’s not such a fine life for the rich as one can be led to believe and certainly if you want to live in London’s Chelsea.

Very expensive Chelsea garage

THIS CHELSEA GARAGE WAS SOLD RECENTLY FOR £550,000 ($720,000)

So it’s not surprising that if you’re a just a $ millionaire you are not one of the super-rich. You need to be worth between £33m-£66m ($50m-$100m).

Catherine Tillotson, joint managing partner of Scorpio Partnership, a London-based firm which advises the super-rich, says while $50m is the starting point for serious wealth, “in reality your spending power and investing power really gets to the next level when you get to around $100m”. Ms Tillotson also opines there is a reason for this dividing line between the wealthy elite and the rest of us.

“This is the point at which families will start to think about employing people purely to help them manage their financial affairs,” she says. So if you aren’t banging on the door of Scorpio Partnerships then you really will need to queue for buses, shop at Lidl (UK’s Walmart) and doff your cap to your betters.

And of course this isn’t just a UK phenomenon, on average the richest have incomes nine-and-a half times greater than the poorest. The actual figures vary widely across the 34 OECD’s member states.

How much more do the top 10% earn than the bottom 10%?

  • Denmark: 5.3 times more
  • Norway: 6.1 times more
  • Netherlands : 6.6 times more
  • France: 7.4 times more
  • Ireland: 7.7 times more
  • UK: 9.6 times more
  • Italy: 10.2 times more
  • Greece: 12.6 times more*
  • Spain: 13.8 times more
  • USA: 16.5 times more
  • Chile: 26.5 times more
  • Mexico: 30.5 times more

Source: OECD

 * I wonder how much tax this lot pays?

And it is not just the super-rich that are doing well – those whose business is dealing with super-rich customers are profiting too.

Alex Cheatle is chief executive of Ten Group, a lifestyle concierge service that can helps its clients get that exclusive restaurant table, sell-out theatre ticket – or finds that vintage sports car in a particular colour. He says “Business is booming for us, we’ve grown every year since 2008 – growing at an average rate of 25-30% a year.”

When you consider how much the super-rich spend, that growth is perhaps not surprising. Over the course of a year, it’s reckoned the world’s top 1% spend a staggering £30bn ($45bn) on travel and hospitality, £26bn ($40bn) on cars, and £16bn ($25bn) each on art, jewellery and watches.

Or course, the ultimate statement of wealth is to have your own super-yacht.

Super yacht

A WATER PARK FOR THE SUPER RICH

Superyacht sales according to Boat International:

2014 412 superyachts sold $3.7bn (£2.4bn)
2013 355 superyachts sold $3.0bn (£2bn)
2012 270 superyachts sold $2.5bn (£1.6bn)
2011 262 superyachts sold $2.8bn (£1.8bn)
Source: Boat International

Of course the big question is: How do the Super Rich justify this enormous wealth and what benefits accrue to the less fortunate? According to the Institute of Mediocre Management  it’s not for sharing with the lower orders who should know their place. After all the Super Rich are the Masters of the Masters of the Universe.

Trickle-down economics means the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor

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According to The Independent’s economics editor Ben Chu, what would later be championed by the free-market right was actually first spun as a joke by one-time circus cowboy and humourist Will Rogers. At a time when the US was in the midst of the Great Depression he said:

Money was appropriated for the top in hopes that it would trickle down to the needy.

Trickle-down economics is the idea that reducing the tax burden on the wealthiest is good for the least wealthy, as the rich see their disposal incomes increase and therefore spend more on services that companies can reinvest and create new jobs.

It’s also completely wrong, claims a report out this week from former US Treasury secretary Larry Summers and shadow chancellor Ed Balls.

The report, from the Centre for American Progress, states:

Left to their own devices, unfettered markets and trickle-down economics will lead to increasing levels of inequality, stagnating wages, and a hollowing out of decent, middle-income jobs.

According to Summers and Balls, the only thing tax cuts for the rich create is a growing income gap, as the wealthiest members of a society do not necessarily ‘invest’ in it, they could just save their money for example.

This graphic helps explain the idea versus the reality.

Trickle Down

Once you realise that trickle-down economics does not work, you will see the excessive tax cuts for the rich as what they are: a simple upward redistribution of income, rather than a way to make all of us richer.

Ha-Joon Chang, economics professor at Cambridge University
What’s the alternative? The Summers-Balls report’s suggestion is simple: Higher wages for ordinary workers, increased tax rates for the super-rich and corporations, and the closing of international tax loopholes, with the money instead being spend on public infrastructure.

That doesn’t sound like too much, especially in a week when it was revealed that within 12 months the richest one per cent of the planet will be richer than the remaining 99 per cent…

Original article by Ben Chu (edited by i100 staff) 

The Institute of Mediocre Management

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IMM Coat Arms

The Institute for Mediocre Management was founded to promote the values of Mediocrity, Self-Aggrandizement and Cant. We firmly believe that the old business values of Clarity, Honesty and Respect are outdated concepts in the 21st Century and we should now;  Aim low, Reap the rewards. Succeed at any cost and Enjoy life at others expense. By following these key principles and becoming an A.R.S.E has seen our members thrive in the U.K’s top Mediocre companies with our pay rates increasing disproportionately to our companies’ success.

IMM Aims:

(1) Higher Pay for Senior Executives: 

A recent report showed that Executive pay has grown from 60 times that of the average worker to almost 180 times since the 1990s with the pay of the average FTSE 100 chief executive increased from £4.1m to £4.7m last year.

But we’re worth it. Here at the IMM we believe that an hourly pay rate of £1,000 is deserved and although we now earn in 2.5 days what the average colleague does in a year we still need to raise our game and hit the 1 day’s pay = 1 year’s pay target.

Our current advised policy, which is the most tax efficient, is to tie your remuneration to stock options based on profits. Profits are more easily generated by cutting costs than raising revenues so IMM members look to reduce workers’ pay and also to fire a few for better efficiency.

(2) A belief that firmness and fear in all things breeds obedience and order

The Institute also firmly believes that some are born to lead, others to follow and as our honorary ancient patron Aristotle so rightly observed:

 For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.

The behaviours required at the club reflect the high esteem that we all hold about ourselves. You will be expected to be pompous, high handed and curt with all club employees and any other lower orders.

In the member’s lounge, a relaxing atmosphere is created by ensuring members do not concerns themselves with the travails of the little people but promote ideas that benefit themselves or other members, that is the elite.

 We discourage the discussion of politics (there is only one Party after all) and religion (we’re all Deities to the huddled masses anyway). Bragging, Boasting and One-upmanship are all perfectly acceptable of course. There is an annual competition to find the richest and the poorest member and the latter is then traditionally mocked, humiliated and then blackballed.

Self-depreciating humour is not acceptable at any time.

(3) We are the Masters of the Masters of the Universe

 As you can see our aims are clear and our entry standards are high. Many of the senior executives from the UK’s leading mediocre companies are members. Most have seen their financial wealth increase dramatically since the recession as they reduced pay and staff numbers and took advantage of the billions pumped in the economy to invest in their wealth creation schemes whilst protecting the Masters of the Universe who created the mess in the first place.

So although the Banking industry must be thanked for inadvertently making us all a lot richer, we are unlikely to be able to have a banker as a member as they are mostly really beyond the pale and would upset our Lady members.

 Membership Criteria:

If you would like to become a member you will be required to provide evidence for:

[A] The multiple of your salary versus the lowest paid employee  (> 60 is the lowest benchmark)

[B] The average percentage of your workforce you expect to downsize per year (our members would consider around 10% to be the norm)

[C] The amount of tax paid (please provide evidence of any tax actually paid; < 5% is the target)

You will need two sponsors, one of whom needs to live abroad for tax or legal reasons and the club chairman will then review the application when he gets out of prison next year after an unfortunate misunderstanding with HMRC.

Fees: If you have to ask how much then you can’t afford them.

On joining the IMM we can deliver help and assistance by providing:

  • Vision Statements (custom or off the shelf)
  • Corporate Culture Creation (from pedantic to patronizing)
  • Consultancy expertise for ‘Change’ and ‘Downsizing’
  • Tax Avoidance schemes
  • Discounted red trousers

The Video to Be Shown at the End of The World

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(Published in the Independent 06/01/15)

CNN was founded in 1980 with a promise from Ted Turner that the world’s first 24-hour cable news channel would stay on air up to and until the apocalypse.

“Barring satellite problems, we won’t be signing off until the world ends,” the now former owner said 25 years ago, promising that in the event of the end of the world, the channel would fade out with a rendition of Nearer My God to Thee.

Now a blogger claims to have unearthed the actual video, long thought to have just been a myth.

Turner Doomsday Video

Former CNN intern Michael Ballaban published a grainy, one-minute long film of a US army band performing Nearer My God to Thee on the Jalopnik website.

He said that in the CNN database the video, named Turner Doomsday Video, was marked as “HFR till the end of the world confirmed”.

CNN, once ever so thorough in its fact-checking, knew that the last employee alive couldn’t be trusted to make a call as consequential as one from the Book of Revelation.

The end of the world must be confirmed.

Seems a bit downbeat to me, we’d probably need cheering up..any suggestions?

American Psycho, Patrick Bateman, style property Ad that’s creating a storm in London…

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The Ad designed to sell luxury apartments in London to bonus rich City workers has now been pulled by property developer Redrow admitting that “we didn’t get it right with this one.”

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/115968280″>Redrow London Luxury Development Promo</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user36122147″>Patrick Bateman</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

Actual quote from the movie……

“Yes, they say nothing comes easy. But if it was easy, then it wouldn’t feel as good.

To look out at the city that could have swallowed you whole and say ‘I did this’. To stand, with the world at your feet.”

Its a chilling view of what we have become……foreseen by Goethe

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.

10 Things to do to be a Better Boss in 2015

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Welcome to the New Year, Thought Leaders, Strategic Visionaries and Bosses of the Huddled Masses and I trust your underlings managed to cope whilst you were away during the Xmas holidays.  

 To help you start the New Year on the right foot, my team and I have put together a ‘starter pack’ for you the crème de la crème of Mediocre Managers:

10 Things to do to be a Better Boss in 2015:

  1.      Your  time is more valuable than your people’s, so delegate
  2.          Manage upwards, shout downwards
  3.    .      Remember this:  “The answer is no!’ Now what’s the question?”
  4.           A needy underling is not needed so downsize them.
  5.           If pushed into a corner remind them who’s in charge of the exit strategy
  6.           Opinions only count if they match yours
  7.           When you deliver bad news remember to smile, it adds authority.
  8.          You have a bigger car, a bigger house and a bigger wage hence your bigger  ego
  9.          There are very few bad bosses, just incompetent staff, so kick some ass
  10.      Integrity is a crutch for those with low self esteem

To help your teams get into the spirit my creative flunkeys have also provided a motivational poster that should be prominently displayed where your staff can read and learn from it.

Motivational Kitten 

 I have also got my people to prepare your first email for the New Year, which is designed to set the tone for the next 12 months:

Dear Colleague/Staff/Underling/Contractor

 2014 was a tough year but we managed to keep costs down by reducing headcount, wages and benefits. The good news is that those of you who were left increased your hours and so retained your jobs. Well done!

The outlook for 2015 though is tough and despite the board offering to keep their wage increases to just below the current Russian inflation rate its become clear that unless we pay them a significant increase we are unlikely to retain such a fantastic leadership team and so reluctantly I have also had to accept this pay rise burden myself.

 Those below this level of course are reminded that because of the ongoing global economic crisis there are plenty of cheaper replacements available at all lower grades. So don’t slack off!  

But lets start the year with a positive outlook and a spring in our step. In 2015 let’s seize the chance to drive forward our thought leadership, corporate culture and strategic empowerment to increase focused productivity, executive engagement and objective clarity enabling our people to increase outputs, become team players and drive shareholder engagement. Please ask your line manager if you need further clarification.

 On a more personal note the person who painted W*nk*r in my car parking space will be identified by CCTV and fired

Back to your desks now little people and lets make some dosh!

(Signed)

 

That’s it for now; please feel free to request further management help and advice. The first rant is free then you will need to pay, Yachts don’t grow on trees!