Zack Polanski has taken to X to highlight that we have now passed the point of the year when CEOs’ earnings surpass the average person’s annual income. Addressing the futility of the current wealth inequality, Polanski used this to make another push for a wealth tax:
We can’t go on like this.
In just two days, the average FTSE 100 CEO has made a median workers full time annual salary.
The right calls this “wealth creation”.
It’s wealth extraction.
Time to tax the rich.@HighPayCentrehttps://t.co/sb00QF9tMR
— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) January 6, 2026
Wealth extractors: not wealth generators
Polanski refers to the findings of the High Pay Centre, who revealed that by lunchtime on 6 January, FTSE 100 ‘fat cats’ were already earning over and above the average UK worker. Even more sickeningly, Peter Dilnot (CEO of Melrose) had to put in just two-hours work to meet the compensation afforded for a median-income worker’s annual graft.
Polanski makes the point that CEOs on exorbitant salaries, £4.4m on average, are actually extracting wealth from society. This is in reference to the tired, virtue-signalling defence that these CEOs are ‘wealth-generators’ and the backbone of our economy.
In an article we published yesterday, we highlighted a new measure which could partially address this wealth disparity:
In December, the Employment Rights Act received Royal assent. The new law includes measures promising to give trade unions reasonable access to workplaces to speak to workers and requiring employers to inform new employees of their right to join a union. The decline in trade union membership is widely recognised to have been a key factor in rising CEO to worker pay gaps and widening inequality that has occurred in the UK and across other Western countries since the 1980s.
It’s also notable that while workers have seen their wages depreciate in real terms, the ability for CEOs to meet the average income in two days has been well sustained for many years. We wrote a decade ago on this exact issue, signifying that inequality has been maintained despite years of calls for a wealth tax.
Accounts on X have been quick to point out under Polanski’s post that systemic changes are needed to really address this issue:
Not just tax the rich, but fundamentally change the system that leads to hideous extremes. Why not insist that a nurse is valued the same as a “merchant banker” or “hedge fund manager” #Socialism #VoteGreen
— Dave The Cardboard Box (@dave_cardboard) January 6, 2026
Wealth extraction is exactly the correct term.
Taxing some of it back is ok, but it’s a tough task as the wealthy use their money to hire accountants, lawyers and politicians to fight their tax bills.
Way better if we nationalise assets so they dont get rich in the 1st place.
— Chris Corney (@ChrisCorney1) January 6, 2026
As well as Polanski, Your Party MP Zarah Sultana has been a fierce advocate for full democratic reform. This call follows decades of systemic attacks by successive neoliberal governments that have seen state assets sold off on the cheap, whilst taxpayers value for money has plummeted.
We need to nationalise our economy because the working class can run society better than the billionaires, the profiteers and the war criminals who rule over us today. pic.twitter.com/bAxIasbmYe
— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) December 7, 2025
As we covered, Sultana further explained what she meant by ‘nationalising the economy’:
That looks like a socialist transformation of the country where we nationalise utilities, we nationalise energy, we nationalise transport, we nationalise communications, including the internet. We also have to broaden our horizons.
Polanski and Sultana on the money
We have repeatedly been spoon-fed the narrative that fat cat CEOs are essential to our economy and create wealth in British society. However, with workers incomes depreciating over the last decade while billionaire profits soar, it is becoming ever clearer that the real generators of wealth are the hard-working people beneath them.
As Polanski and Sultana astutely point out, we need to put these fat cats on a diet.
Featured image via Wikimedia / Barold
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