RBS and politics: two conundrums quite beyond me

I'm finding all this difficult to understand and would like someone to explain it to me (the bold is mine):

Last week, after delivering a speech on "popular capitalism", the prime minister refused to say whether he would block a bonus for Hester, who is widely seen as having done a good job at RBS, after taking over from the much-maligned Sir Fred Goodwin in 2008. The board of RBS, which is 83%‑owned by the taxpayer, is said to be considering a bonus of £1.3m to £1.5m for Hester, on top of his £1.2m annual salary. A final decision from the company's remuneration committee is expected on Wednesday.

But Miliband, who is determined to define his leadership around the issue of "fairer and better capitalism", said it was entirely wrong for a bank, majority-owned by taxpayers, and which is making thousands of people redundant, to pay its boss a £1m-plus reward in such circumstances.

The Labour leader told the Observer that the public would not regard it as "fair or right" for the head of a company whose share price had halved in the past year and which had missed its target for lending to small businesses to cash in when so many hard-working people were struggling to make ends meet. [...]

A good job?  A bonus equal to his salary?  Thousands of people redundant?  A share price which has halved in the past year?  A bank which has missed its target for lending to small businesses?  A good job?  A bonus equal to his salary?  Thousands of people redundant ...?

And so the circle continues.

I don't know.  I mean I understand - but I don't know.  There is nothing unusual, of course, about top-flight executives being paid enormous amounts of money to fire thousands of workers, not hit targets and fail their shareholders.  Nor is there anything unusual about large companies believing that to retain such leaders - allegedly able to stand usefully on the pinnacle of these pyramidal organisations - they will need to reward them whatever they do because reward is the preserve of such beings.

It seems natural, in fact.

Even so, I don't know.  Why can we not agree on something as simple - and as key - as remuneration policies in industrial relations?  Why has it become so natural for money to accumulate more money - and for its relative absence, as time goes by, to lead to even lower incomes for everyone else?  As I am clearly ignorant of the technical aspects of the conundrum under discussion, all I can do is presume that it's because we don't all value the same things.  Balance sheets in such times are incompatible with full employment: those of us who want a job will never appreciate the intelligence required to slash a workforce by frightening percentages. 

How can we ever possibly agree under such circumstances?

Meanwhile, Chris points out most accurately that capitalism is no longer efficient - not even on its own terms.  Its ever-concentrating circles of wealth have meant that the money which used to swill more broadly around the economy now spends far more of its time in the pockets of the incredibly wealthy.  Innovation and renewal - the opportunities for business ingenuity - are falling dramatically as fewer are able to get a sniff at that cash which once flooded our hopes.

The conundrum that is RBS, then, is but an element of a wider conundrum: how do we agree on what our society should value?  Are we finally condemned to permanent disagreement?  Are resolution and cooperation - words which we manage to value in other contexts - not to have their place in business and politics?

And how is it possible that governments themselves are never more firmly in place than when they break their election promises, ruin entire communities, send unemployment rates soaring and make a society more conflictive?

Why - essentially - do we reward so generously bad behaviours like these the higher up the hierarchical scale we go?

Why is it so good to be so bad when you're at the top?