Like many people, January has found my eye drawn to job vacancy websites. The New Year often has that effect, making us think of change, especially when it comes to a career shift.

Actually, it’s surprising how many of us judge ourselves and others by jobs. The underlying assumption is that, somehow, your work is a measure of your happiness and worth, a litmus test for assessing your significance on this planet. Which begs another question: what exactly are we worth?

One answer, and the most common, is assessed by pounds and pence. It runs something like this. A good job is one with exceptionally high pay and, therefore, a bad job is poorly paid. In the case of voluntary work or acting as a carer for close relatives, millions of workers are not paid at all. For example, due to Government cutbacks, our library service, York Explore, relies very much on the goodwill of volunteers. By the pounds and pence argument their labour is of very little value.

A few weeks ago the national newspapers were full of a local boy made good. Jeff Fairburn, 53, the boss of York-based Persimmon Homes, grew up in York and went to Fulford School before becoming a trainee at the house-building firm.

Mr Fairburn became newsworthy when it was revealed he would receive a whopping £110m annual bonus (that’s on top of his salary, which I would imagine is not small).

To put this in perspective, between 2015 and 2016 City of York Council spent £70m on adult social care.

Never mind the bonus comes largely from public subsidies generated by the Government’s generous give-away to corporate builders, the help-tobuy scheme. This, we are assured, is what his work is worth. Never mind, too, that his pay deal could provide a brand new council house for every homeless family in Yorkshire. A £4.6m donation from Mr Fairburn – 1/25th of his bonus – could provide a home for all of the 58 statutory homeless families currently in temporary council accommodation in York. And just imagine how many other households it could help.

York Press:

Jeff Fairburn, group CEO of Persimmon Homes, whose £110m bonus caused widespread dismay

Nor is Mr Fairburn alone. Analysis by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and the High Pay Centre shows chief executives of FTSE 100 companies are paid an average of £898 per hour. Meanwhile the minimum wage for over-25s is set to rise from £7.50 to £7.83 on 1 April.

Under-18s can be paid as little as £4.05 and apprentices £3.50.

It seems we face a moral crisis when it comes to rewarding people’s jobs in austerity Britain. And a broader philosophical question lurks beneath.

Namely, just what is someone worth at work? Is an hour of a top boss’s time really a hundred times more productive and valuable than, say, a care worker ensuring elderly citizens live with dignity and independence in the twilight of their years?

In reality, dynamic companies and public services are not made successful by a handful of executives. It is ordinary working people who can claim that honour. Yet they are increasingly the people least rewarded.

So here are a few moderate ideas for the New Year. Firstly, let’s trim the absurdly greedy earnings of our millionaires through imposing high tax rates reminiscent of Scandinavian countries or even 1960s and 1970s Britain. Windfall taxes on excessive bonuses like Mr Fairburn’s seem simple, fair and doable.

While we’re at it, why not roll out maximum pay ratios in the public sector and in companies bidding for public contracts. This would mean bosses could “only” earn, say, twenty times the lowest pay of people they employ.

Excessive hand outs to the alreadywealthy are a false measurement of a person’s real contribution to our society’s well-being. Let alone the health of our communities. Contrary to the popular song about money, kindness and love make the world go round, not telephone number salaries.