Dear Editor,

Three articles in Thursday's Guardian (links below) have prompted this letter, the first about the prospect of Britain's minimum wage being raised to £5 an hour, the second about one of Britain's best paid bosses receiving a wage of £5 million last year, and a third about a pop star having decided that he has made enough money and in future will offer his music for free on the internet.

Someone on a minimum wage of £5 per hours can expect to earn 52 x 40 x 5 = £10,400 per annum. In order to earn £5 million they would have to work for 480 years, which is about 10 working lives. Yet we live in a society which prides itself on the "equality" of its citizens.

Where, I ask myself, is the equality, or justice, in one citizen earning 100's of times more than another?

An economist will explain that it is a matter of market forces and of everyone being paid according to their market value. If Lord Browne can demand £5 million, that is what he is worth. If Joe Bloggs cannot even demand £10,000 a year without the government insisting on it, it is because he is not worth it.

So here we have them, Lord Browne and Joe Bloggs, two hard-working citizens of the same British society, on which they both depend to protect, feed, cloth and house them etc., but the work of one is considered to be worth hundreds of times that of the other. This is Britain today.

What I find as troubling as the injustice itself, is the fact that so few other people seem to have a problem with it.

It is not just that such huge income differentials are so unjust, it is the fact that they are a major obstacle to us achieving sustainability on our imperilled planet, Spaceship Earth (see How many millionaires can our planet, Spaceship Earth, support?).

Contrary to popular (and most expert) opinion, it is not the poor who are the world's biggest problem, but the rich. Not simply because they place a much greater per capita drain and strain on our planet’s limited natural resources and carrying capacity than the poor, but more importantly, because they act as role models, whose lifestyles the rest of us tend to want, and are encouraged by multibillion dollar advertising and credit industries, to emulate. 

If the world's role models and trendsetters are constantly held up, admired and envied for their material "success" and extravagant, non-sustainable lifestyles, as they generally are in the media, what hope is there of us ever establishing a sustainable economy and ways of life for what will soon be a global population of 7-9 billion people?

The answer, of course, is none whatsoever. Which must necessarily lead to climatic and ecological catastrophe and possible extinction.

I don't know Lord Browne personally, but I presume that he is a nice enough guy, probably a grandfather with young grandchildren, for whose future well-being he would be prepared to sacrifice everything, as most grandparents are. There is nothing altruistic, but much that is instinctive, about it. A little bit of ourselves (through our genes) survives us in our descendents.

I need to convince Lord Browne (along with most other people) that while it may seem (certainly always did in the past) to be in one's self-interest to make as much money as possible, this is no longer the case. Because it is in Lord Browne's and everyone else's "enlightened" self-interest that we create a sustainable economy and lifestyles for Earth's billions of inhabitants. Otherwise we are extinct.

For the reasons given above, this cannot be done so long as we have income differentials measured not in units of 1 to 10, but in multiples of 10, 100 and (globally) even 1000.

This is difficult to grasp, I know, and not just for Lord Browne, because the imperative of "making as much money as possible" is ingrained in us. It is the universal measure of personal stature and "success", although most of us will hotly deny it. While our more enlightened, human nature disapproves of such values, the more animal side of our nature sees money for what it is: the most versatile form of power. Power, which can be used for the greatest good and the most terrible evil, and for all that lies between these two extremes.

"Labour pledges minimum wage rise to £5 an hour"

"BP boss's pay goes up 22% to £5m"

"George Michael exhausts his patience with fame"