I'm a historian, and in my humble opinion

bin men and women should be paid more than bankers.

So a good way to illustrate this point

is to look at a couple of strikes that happened throughout history.

So for example in New York, 1968, there was a big strike of bin men.

They were just angry that their wages were not going up anymore

so they said, 'You know what, we're gonna go on strike

and then you'll see just how important we are.'

And indeed, six days later,

the state of emergency had to be declared.

New York really couldn't handle it.

Turns out you can't do without bin men.

Two years later there was another strike, in this case of bankers.

It's the only strike that I know of throughout history

where the bankers actually went on strike.

And all the experts at that point, all the economists,

they all predicted disaster.

This was supposed to be like a heart attack for the economy.

But then the strike started.

And nothing much happened really.

It actually lasted for six months in the end.

the economy just kept growing, businesses kept operating.

There are nowadays many people in professions

in say Wall Street or Silicon Valley

that are often described as the visionaries and the whizkids

who come up with all these wonderful products.

There was someone at Facebook who worked there for years

and said, "the best minds of my generation

are thinking about how to make people click ads."

That's one of the tragedies of our time

is that we're wasting so much talent.

There are so many smart people right now

in jobs that don't contribute anything.

And it's not necessary. It's not inevitable.

We need to rethink who the real wealth creators actually are

in our society.

So there's some fascinating research actually,

new research from two Dutch economists.

Max van Lent and Robert Dur who looked at this whole phenomenon

of what they call...

They asked people the question...

Turns out that in modern economies, developed economies,

25% of the workforce says...

Now who are these people, is an interesting question.

Turns out that actually, they have wonderful LinkedIn profiles.

They have wonderful, excellent salaries,

they're often at the top of the pyramid.

They're bankers, corporate lawyers, consultants.

Basically, you know, a lot of people sitting in offices all day,

sending emails to people they don't like,

writing reports no-one's ever going to read

but still making a lot of money.

So that's quite fascinating right. That the rest of the population

is supporting this whole class of people

who don't really contribute anything.

Right? What we're doing is we're spending billions of pounds

to educate our best and brightest and they go to Oxford and Cambridge

and then they go on and they do jobs that they absolutely don't like.

I mean, it's not me saying, it's people themselves saying it,

where they don't really contribute anything.

What's going on here? Who are the real wealth creators?

And the reality here is, I think,

is that we're living in an inverse welfare state.

Where most wealth is actually created at the bottom

by people who are doing the real work.

The teachers, the nurses, the garbage collectors, you know.

This state of affairs, it's not inevitable, we can change it

and I would like to live in a society where we actually pay people

according to their contribution.

Where we have a real meritocracy.

And in such a society I believe in the long run

bin men and women will be paid more than bankers.

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