The government wants public sector wages cut -- so, let's see if we can help them get what they want. Even better, we'll try to improve their chances of slashing all wages, public and private -- including the wages of RTE's Top Ten -- such as Pat Kenny (€950,976 last year, €630,000 now) and Marian Finucane (€570,000).

We'll show them how to get the kind of cuts that would give the Small Firms Association wet dreams. Soapbox just loves to be helpful.

Apparently, this is a time of great national peril. And extreme sacrifices are called for. Politicians, bankers, business people, economists, academics and journalists keep up a drumbeat of demands. More than soaring unemployment, more than the tens of billions borrowed to bail out the bankers -- what agitates them all is public sector costs.

They must be slashed, they demand -- jobs, wages and spending. And most of them want private sector wages cut, too. To encourage "competitiveness".

Now, let's put aside my personal views. I believe it's self evident that a policy of cutting public spending in a recession makes things worse. But that's just me. I believe the last thing you do with borrowed billions is give it to bankers, but I'm not an intellectual powerhouse like Brian Cowen. I believe that the deliberate worsening of blatant inequality leads to social instability, but -- sure, that's what we have an army to deal with.

Already, public sector jobs have been cut -- contracts not renewed, positions unfilled. In parts of the country we've run out of dentists. The disabled have already had their lives damaged further, as necessary supports are withdrawn -- and the havoc hasn't officially started.

Programmes that successfully divert kids from socially damaging lives are withdrawn, but that's alright. The kids' chances are shattered, and 10 years from now we'll be complaining about the rise in crime. Not to worry, goes the argument -- by then we'll be out of the woods and we can afford to beef up the police force.

As jobs are cut, emigration will rocket. As services flag, waiting lists will grow and people will die. It happened in the Eighties and it's happening now. Promising 12-year-old hurlers will be playing baseball in Queens before long. Family plans will be crushed. As wages and jobs are cut homes will be lost. Many lives will become unbearably cramped.

And this will continue for at least a decade.

But, hey -- those are just my personal views. Our job this week is to help the Government achieve brutal wage cuts. Soapbox just loves to be helpful.

Now, there's one big problem. Credibility. Whole layers of the elite are recession proof. It's not just the Ceann Comhairle, Limousine John, who has his nose in the trough. Politicians, civil service mandarins, consultants, executives -- they're on megabucks. Enormous salaries, incredible perks. There are layers of society that make RTE's Derek Mooney (€286,809) and Eamon Dunphy (€328,051) seem like paupers.

Last week we got a lecture from a Central Banker about the need to cut wages. The last Governor of the Central Bank was on €369,078, plus pension, plus car. The total in Central Bank HQ salaries and pension contributions last year was €67m. And all that for watching impotently as the bankers pushed the economy off a cliff.

All over the place, executives are charging Brown Thomas prices for Pound Shop performance. And demanding Budget cuts and cuts in the minimum wage.

Last week, RTE's Sean O'Rourke (a superb journalist, worth every cent of his €218,656) interviewed Aer Lingus head Christoph Mueller. O'Rourke suggested a 10 per cent cut in Christoph's salary of half a million might be seen as "superficial and patronising".

Christoph replied that he wasn't taking a bonus on top of his €475,000 salary.

Let's leave aside the bizarre concept of executive bonuses (money for doing jobs for which they're already well paid). Last month, the Irish Times reported that Herr Mueller, after two years, "will receive 500,000 free shares in Aer Lingus . . . currently worth about €295,000". The free shares "have been awarded in lieu of bonus".

The paper said Mueller may receive, depending on share price, another €1.33m in share options. All going well, he can rake in €4m over the next five years.

Ten or 20 per cent cuts in vast salaries are meaningless. When those calling for sacrifice are recession proof, there's no credibility at all.

In her unmissable Irish Times column, Orna Mulcahy chronicles the thinking of our better off. In recent times her column (I think of it as Ross O'Carroll-Kelly without the jokes) described the well-off discussing whether it was better to move their money into Krugerrands or German state bonds. She described how such folk were spending the entire summer in "Portugal, Spain, France, Italy or wherever", while hubby commuted. "The word is that it's cheaper and cheerier", while Ireland is "increasingly seen as downbeat and depressing".

Last week she asked that workers stop whining about budget cuts and "take one for the team".

Deeply felt sentiments, no doubt, but a demand somewhat lacking in credibility.

Which is why we've come to the aid of our betters -- because, Soapbox just loves to be helpful.

Two of my former bosses, Fintan O'Toole and Vincent Browne, have suggested a cap on all income. Through regulation and taxation it would be possible to cap all income at, they suggest, €100,000. Personally, I think we could push it down to €80,000, but I'm an agreeable sort, so I'll go along with the Hundred Grand Plan.

Anyone can keep a family on that kind of income (though it might reduce the Krugerrand potential).

The Hundred Grand Plan wouldn't solve the fiscal problem -- true enough, but no one unwilling to accept that kind of restraint has any moral right to demand that anyone else accept any cut whatever.

Fr Sean Healy reminds us that one citizen in six is in poverty -- around €28,000 for a family of four. The elite want this cut. They want cuts in the minimum wage. They want people on 40 and 50 thousand to accept having the bottom kicked out of their world, while they offer no evidence of willingness to accept even minimal discomfort.

If the elite continue to demand sacrifice from those least able to bear it they might just get away with it. They did in the Eighties. People suffered, people died, many were driven out of the country, the well off thrived. Perhaps the new generation will accept this. Perhaps not.

I'm not saying the trade unions should accept any of these demands. I'm saying they shouldn't even answer the phone from Brian Cowen until he cuts his own salary and those of his ministers to a hundred grand. They shouldn't even bother rejecting the demands of the elite until the Hundred Grand Plan is up and running for six months, with the kinks fixed.

But, we'd be told, any such plan would mean a flight of the best and brightest. Really? All those Central Bank geniuses would bugger off and offer to do to the Germany economy what they've done to ours? We'd lose some of the greediest, certainly, but this is a country of young, talented, capable people. The resulting equality dividend would invigorate the country.

So, anyone believing they're irreplaceable -- just sod off. The worst of the next generation couldn't possibly screw up this country more than the highest paid of our elite have already done.

It's just an idea. Soapbox just loves to be helpful.

- Gene Kerrigan

Originally published in