“Imagining
Other... “
‘Inequality’
Updates
Links:
List of contents/topics covered: here
List of links to other relevant pages: here.
Explanatory Notes:
(i) See: Corporate Social Responsibility
and Inequality (CSR8) for my original notes on inequality, which go up to
the mid-‘noughties’. This page
(originally to update the above notes) has been compiled since the
mid-noughties. I have now (2012) uploaded this page - even though I know the notes are ‘bitty’ and many things are missing
- since it reflects the growth of awareness, especially since the credit
crunch of 2008, and the subsequent recession, of the centrality of inequality
to our economic problems.
(ii) The
‘Occupy’ movement must take a lot of credit for pushing onto the agenda public
disquiet at the disparity between the 1% and the 99%.
See Noam
Chomsky’s book: Occupy (Penguin May 2012). There is an extract from Chomsky’s
book in the Guardian for
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/30/noam-chomsky-what-next-occupy?
Also I have
written brief notes on Occupy at: Social
Movements Today.
(iii) My
notes, however, have very few comments on the current Tory/Lib Dem coalition’s
policies: the press is full of points about this, and it is hardly necessary
for me to re-iterate what anyone can read any day.
I would
only say that I am saddened and angered at the attacks on the poorest and most
needy, as the government claims to be ‘reducing the deficit’ – a deficit not
caused by the poor. No amount of cutting of welfare etc will get us out of the
recession: we need more and better-paid jobs, not less welfare!!
- contents/topics
(these notes are written in
alphabetical order by topic):
Academies: link
Anger: link
Attacking the poor: link
Benefits cuts: link
‘Capital’ by Thomas Piketty: link Childbirth
(stillbirths): #childbirth Child poverty: link Children’s teeth: link
[Class:
see social class]
Economics: link Education: link Equality and trust: link The establishment: link Executive Pay: link
Finance Capital and its effects on equality: link Freedoms,
capabilities (Amartya Sen): link
Health: link
Housing: link
Hutton, Will (articles etc): link
Inequality – Wilkinson and Pickett: link Inequality
and the crisis – possible slump...: link Inequality in London (Kensington and Chelsea
etc): link
Inequality &
publicly funded facilities: link
Islington: link
Labour’s record on child poverty: link
Land ownership in
Meritocracy link
OECD on wealth gap and growth: link
Piketty – see Capital above
Poverty – Business and addressing poverty: link
Private schools: link
Psychological effects: link
Race: link
Salary/wealth differences: link Savings
(rich vs. poor) link
Sennett
(Richard): link Social
class: link
Social
enterprise: link Social
geography: link Socialism:
link
Tax evasion: link Third world link: (health , population growth, women) Top 1%:
link Toynbee,
Polly articles: link
Travellers: link ‘Trust’: see Equality and….
Voluntary sector: link
Wealth: #link
Wealth tax: link Welfare: see benefits Women’s Pay: see Feminism notes: pp21,
sm6.
Working Class: link
Zero hours contracts: link
Notes:
Academies and ‘free schools’ as proposed
by Tories – all evidence suggests they do not drive up overall standards, but divert
money into the private sector, [e.g. Nestle!! according to a letter in Guardian
29.05.10] and they reward some schools at the expense of others. For example,
academies ‘will be allowed to spend the 7 – 10% of funding currently retained
by the local authority for support services that are most likely to be needed
by poorer children.’ (Letter, Michael Pike CASE, Guardian 29.05.10)
Also: what
is really happening with these proposals is the undermining of local
authorities’ powers, a process begun under Thatcher… (Letter ditto Susan
Lakeman).
You can fool some of the people some of the time: “A poll in 2000 showed that 19% of Americans thought they were in the richest 1% - and 21% expected to be in the richest 1% in the next 10 years.” (Michael Zweig, director of the centre for the study of working-class life at State University of New York, quoted by Gary Younge, 140408).
In the
Anger: Priyamvada
Gopal piece (G 010811) argues that the anger of the Norwegian gunman was of one
kind, but another – and justifiable – kind of anger is being shown in the
public reaction to Murdoch and co. And while Niall Ferguson dismisses popular
protests as ‘global temper tantrums’ – now even Charles Moore is saying:
“I’m starting to think
the left might actually be right… The rich run a global system that allows them
to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom
that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in
conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few.”
Attacking
the poor and the disadvantaged: February 2007:
It’s almost unbelievable that these two news stories came out on the same day (Tues. 6th Feb, both stories in the Guardian):
1. President George Bush’s budget includes a huge rise in military spending, which will be paid for by cuts in Medicare, the health scheme for the poor. (Report by Ewen MacAskill in Washington).
There will be $66bn cuts over five years in Medicare for the elderly, and $12bn cuts in the healthcare scheme for the poor.
The wars in
The
“The New York Times noted that the cost of the war would have paid for universal health care in the US, nursery education for all three and four-year-olds in the country, immunisation fro children around the world against a host of diseases, and still leave about half the money left over.”
2. (Report by
Polly Curtis). In
This is no comfort to parents or carers of students who can no longer study, and David Congdon of Mencap suggests the courses that have been cut are those which the LSCs “have never particularly liked because they don’t lead to qualifications.”
This is an experience
many of us have had, with adult education courses in, for example, yoga threatened,
and choirs no longer receiving funding –simply
because they don’t give you a qualification or prepare you for a job!!!
It seems there is no interest in the quality of life of the elderly or of those
with learning difficulties: a short-sighted policy, since without courses to
study and satisfying leisure activities there will be more depression and
ill-health.
Benefit Cuts and
the least well-off: Guardian editorial (
Article:
This week 70,000 seriously ill people will lose their £99-a-week allowance: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/apr/29/sickness-benefit-cuts?INTCMP=SRCH
Sep 2013. Polly Toynbee has another good piece on ‘whose recovery’ – i.e. the lower and middle earners are not gaining from the improvements in the economy:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/06/recovery-election-question-living-standards.
She highlights the way that stories and examples of fraud have been publicised,
which are designed to turn public opinion against claimants. She says the
government’s claim that the new system of Universal Credits will save money by
detecting fraud is untrue, as the National Audit office has said it cannot be
done. The same press release with the dramatic stories in it claims that
benefit fraud cost £1.2 billion last year – but doesn’t say that this is 0.7%
of the budget. Many businesses etc have fraud rates higher than this she says.
The problem with benefits now is (i) that the cuts are eating into them in a harsh way (ii) incomes in Britain are getting left behind the pay of directors etc, and a million are paid less than the living wage - hence the need for more benefits to enable people to survive. A million people are on zero hour contracts, and of the ‘new’ jobs that have been created, a third are part-time and a third are temporary!
Feb 2013. Yet another report – Resolution Foundation think-tank, shows that the top 1% of earners now pocket 10p in every pound (10%) of income paid in Britain, while the bottom 50% take home only 18p in every pound between them (i.e. 18%). Inequality has worsened in the last 15 years: in the mid-90s the top 1% took 7% of earnings, and the bottom 50% took 19%. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/feb/10/uk-super-rich-richer-as-majority-squeezed?INTCMP=SRCH
Sep 2012. Observer, 23.09.12 cites new report by Inst for Fiscal Studies and Inst for Employment Research, for Resolution Foundation: Who Gains From Growth? Shows that even with growth, the incomes of the poorer half are set to fall, and the incomes in the top half will continue to rise.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/sep/22/living-standards-report-divided-britain?INTCMP=SRCH
Aug 2012. Tanya Gold, Guardian 25.8.12: the King’s Fund reports that the rich outlive the poor by seven years on average... a committee of MPs concludes that social mobility in the UK is among the lowest in western Europe, it has declined in the last 30 years, and the professions and parliament are over-populated by the 7% who went to private school.
The media confuse the issue by talking of those on £80,000 as middle class, when the average wage was £26,200 last year. More than 70% of the population self-identify as middle class.
The PM said in 2010 that ‘The differences in child outcomes between a child born in poverty and a child born in wealth are no longer statistically significant when both have been raised by confident and able parents.’ He took this from a Demos report, but the co-author of the report disputed it – love is not enough to compensate for the disadvantages of being poor. The danger, as Gold points out, is that people will conclude from the PM’s position that it is only parental failure that reduces a child’s opportunities – ‘Only the bad die young’ will be the story...
Letter from Michael Meacher MP, Guardian
Sunday Times Rich List 2012 shows that: the richest 1,000 (=
0.003% of the adult population) increased their wealth over the past three
years by £155 bn. This
is enough to pay off the
Some 77% of
the budget deficit is actually being recouped by cuts in public expenditure and
benefits, and only 23% by tax increases. More than half of the tax increase
comes from VAT, which hits the poor hardest.
The total
wealth of the richest 1,000 amounts to £414 bn – which is more than a third of
Britain’s
The richest
few include 77 billionaires and 23 others each possessing more than £750
million.
The increase in wealth of this group over the last 15 years has been £325 bn: if they had been taxed at 23% (current capital gains rate) this would yield £88 bn...
Book by Robert Peston: Who Runs
Article by outside observer (Katrin Bennhold) on
Capital by Thomas Piketty, reviewed by Nick Pearce, New Statesman 28
March –
http://www.newstatesman.com/2014/03/french-revolutionary
Argues that
in societies where the rate of return on capital outstrips economic growth,
wealth inequality ineluctably rises. The middle of the 20th century
was an exception, not the norm, and the fall in inequality was due to: capital
shocks of two world wars, decolonization, and the growth of the welfare state.
Capital was destroyed, taxed or nationalised to pay for the war effort and the
building of public services and social security.
In the late
70s and 80s growth rates slowed, capital was rebuilt, taxes on wealth and top
incomes were cut, and the institutions of social democracy dismantled.
We now have
levels of wealth inequality that are like the Edwardian era – except that the
middle class holds a bigger share (between a third and a quarter as against 5%
before – taking the middle 40%). The poorest half of the population own less
than 5% of the wealth, as it did before WW I.
Piketty is
critical of what he calls ‘meritocratic extremism’ – the argument that high pay
is needed to contribute to social justice by rewarding talent, and by avoiding
the situation where only those who inherit wealth can gain.
We seem to
be headed for the worst of two past worlds combined: very large inherited
wealth and very high wages (the latter justified by the meritocratic argument)
– a race between super-managers and rentiers
to the detriment of those who are neither...
Proposes a
global tax on wealth - a tax of 1% on fortunes of between 1 and 4 million euros
and 2% above 5 million would only affect about 2.5% of the population of the EU
and would raise 2% of
Another
review, by Will Hutton: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/12/capitalism-isnt-working-thomas-piketty
And an
interview; http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/13/occupy-right-capitalism-failed-world-french-economist-thomas-piketty
And a
riposte by Paul Mason to an attempt
by the FT’s Chris Giles to dismiss Piketty’s statistics as ‘constructed out of
thin air’. Mason’s point is that there is no clear way of measuring wealth,
especially since those who hold it go as far as they can to hide it! Also,
Piketty’s main point is a prediction based on a simple logical prediction: ‘if
growth is low, and the bargaining power of labour low, and the returns on
capital high, then it is more logical to sit on assets and speculate rather
than accumulate wealth by work, invention or entrepreneurial risk.’ All the FT
is trying to do is justify their adverts for ways of hiding wealth e.g. Rolex
watches, fine art etc.
Childbirth: still birth rates:
See article
by Sarah Boseley, Health Editor of the Guardian: the rate in the most deprived
10% (3043 stillbirths 2000 – 2007 inclusive) is twice that in the wealthiest
10% (1489 in same period), according to BMJOpen (online journal):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/25/stillbirths-900-preventable-england?INTCMP=SRCH
900 babies
a year could be saved if the rate was the same as in the wealthiest section.
15.06.12: 2 million still live in poverty – and face an
increasing risk of homelessness. Dept for Communities and Local Government
figures show 50,290 households are homeless and in priority need – an increase
of 14% on the year before. Almost 2/3 of these have dependent children. 61% of
children in poverty have working parents – up from 45% in the 1990s.
Poverty is
currently measured by income – £251 a week or less per household. Row brewing
as Duncan Smith wants to change the definition. See Randeep Ramesh:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jun/14/children-homelessness-housing-crisis?INTCMP=SRCH
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jun/14/child-poverty-iain-duncan-smith?INTCMP=SRCH
Child poverty in
Britain – the reality, 2009: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/mar/27/global-crisis-impact-poor
- a staggering
account of how a young mother of two small children gets by: she gets £136 in income
support and tax credits, spends £20 a week (a week!) on food shopping, regular
bills (gas, TV, nappies etc) take £47.50.
The article doesn’t say how much rent she pays, and there’s clothes etc
on top… but all she has left is just under £70.
- 30% of children in
Under New
Labour 600,000 children have been lifted out of poverty in the last ten years –
but at least another 1billion needs to be spent to lift another 250,000 out
(this short of government’s target, but would be a start says Lisa Harker) G
100308. See IPPR…
Jenni
Russell, G 060809:
On
inequality, internships etc: Lynsey Hanley (G 040809): at age four children
already show deficits if born into households that qualify for school meals:
may not know their name, or alphabet, whilst others are reading and writing (see
millennium cohort study). Working class boys worst off: ¾ not get 5 GCSEs above
C (whilst 2/3 rest do). Low Pay Unit is investigating whether interns are
exploited, but if someone is able to get an internship they are already way
ahead of the game – and you don’t need one if you are only going to earn £7 an
hour as a retail assistant. Nearly half the working population earns less than
£20,000 a year, and Government could do more: when minimum wage level was
raised, pay rates of a quarter of all jobs in hotel and catering sector
improved.
Children’s teeth as
indicator of inequality, including in the
China: ... may have as many as 600 dollar billionaires, as well as 300 million people without access to clean drinking water (Julia Lovell, reviewing: Tiger Head, Snake Tails: China Today... by Jonathan Fenby (Simon and Schuster); Saturday Guardian 07.04.12.
*July 2017.
Aditya Chakrabortty in Guardian Tues 18th, on Greek workers who have
taken over a factory called Viome, in
* Sep 2012.
It is worth noting that the John Lewis Partnership is not a co-operative... Its
staff are ‘partners’ and benefit from this, but currently it has excluded its
cleaners from being partners – and they are campaigning for inclusion and for
better pay. See Polly Toynbee, Guardian 14th Sep 2012, and
correspondence Tues 18th Sep. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/13/john-lewis-model-ethical-cleaners?INTCMP=SRCH
A letter
from Stuart Newbold, the secretary of Cambridge and Saffron Walden Co-operative
Party summarises the values laid down by the Rochdale Pioneers in 1844:
‘self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity;
plus the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring
for others. And to ensure the values work, co-operative principles of open
membership, democracy, autonomy and independence, member economic
participation, education, co-operation among cooperatives and concern for the
community must be practised.... The model works for 1 billion co-operators in
over 100 countries in areas from finance to housing, schools, retail and
farms... 2012 [is] the UN International Year of Co-operatives.’
* Radical
Routes is a ‘co-op of co-ops’ according to Rob Ray (Freedom 280209). ‘An
umbrella organisation for some 28 co-operatives, at various stages of
development, representing hundreds of people, and provides sustainable finance
to radicals wanting to set up horizontally-run housing or workers’ groups,
primarily on low incomes.’ The group has an investment vehicle ‘Rootstock’
which supplies bridging loans until co-ops can get loans from e.g. Triodos
bank. The recession, with lower prices for property, has seen an increase in
co-op activity. Success rate for paying back of loans has been pretty much
100%. Officially founded in 1991. In Germany there is a much larger equivalent,
Methauser Syndikat, with 33 million Euros of property, whilst RR has a few
million.
* Details
in Money Guardian 30.07.11 of east London housing co-op: The Drive – see www.thedrive.coop. They bought a former
children’s care home in Walthamstow for £620,000 with funds from Co-operative
and Community Finance and the Co-operative Loan Fund, but mainly with a
mortgage from Ecology building society. Seeking loans from members of the
public… Also noted at: Alternatives ('imagining other...')
* Robert Oakeshott Obit: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/aug/03/robert-oakeshott-obituary?INTCMP=SRCH
Corporate
Power (the ‘revolving door’...)
Economics: 10 economic myths, from New
Internationalist: http://newint.org/themes/politics/economics/
Schools to be given targets to reduce
inequality
(Guardian 14.04.12, Patrick Wintour). £2.5 billion a year will be spent on the
pupil premium, (given to schools on the basis of the number of children
qualifying for free school meals). Children from low income backgrounds are
half as likely to get five good grades at GCSE as their classmates. They are
also more likely to leave school at 16, become NEWTs, and less than half as
likely to go on to higher education. “Britain has one of the widest and most
entrenched education attainment gaps between poor and wealthier children in
Europe.” (PW).
Jan 2012: Nick Gibb (source?): analysis of Dept of
Education League Tables shows that children from disadvantaged backgrounds have
only a 35% chance of getting five good grades – as against 58% of all pupils in
state secondary schools. There is therefore no equality of opportunity.
Fiona Millar (G 0812009): five years ago, (2004) before the
last election, there had been some
improvement in education: more money (*) for schools, and better results;
fewer schools failing, more young people wanting to go into higher education
than could be catered for.
Recently
media reports suggest there are serious problems, but this is a ‘travesty of
the truth’. Considerable progress has been made in most schools, though there
are unprecedented problems for a minority of schools. However, no-one agrees
how to measure progress/improvement…
Gap between
top and bottom socio-economic groups in terms of GCSE attainment is 57% (cf.
gender gap of 7%, ethnic gap 28%). Problem remains especially of concentration
of poor children in certain areas and schools, when ‘countless studies’ have
shown that school with balanced intakes do best for all children and are what
most parents want.
The
increasing stratification of schools is not helping – Prof. Stephen Gorard (to
be published in 2010 in British Journal of Education studies): segregation
between different types of school is now so great that we may be ‘recreating
and threatening to surpass the diversity of grammar, technical and secondary
modern schools created in 1944.’
(*) Polly
Curtis (ditto): by 2008, schools budget was £31 bn a year, up 56% in last
decade. In 2000 40.7% of pupils got five good GCSEs including English and Maths
by age 16. In 2008 47.3% did. Sats results p from 75% to 80% in English, 72% to
79% in maths, by end of primary school.
Only 7% of
young people go to private schools, but these then make up 50% of the students
at Oxford and Cambridge (Peter Mortimore, G 040308)
Sutton
Trust (charity) study of children who went to private schools under the Tory
assisted places scheme in 1980s and ‘90s: the children felt ‘estranged and
alienated’, were not able take part in extra-curricular activities (financial
and social reasons). Only around 7% came from working class backgrounds.
Small cadre
of elite feeder schools gets pupils into Oxbridge: 100 schools account for
nearly 1/3…
Nuffield
Review beginning of June (3 yr study): current system for 14 – 19 yr olds was
tailored to suit interests of richer pupils.
Official
figures also show drop in number of working class students admitted to
university last year. (Points from Freedom, 060609).
Polly
Toynbee comments 210709 on ?forthcoming report by Alan Milburn on social
mobility/inequality: well-coached but mediocre applicant from a ‘good’ i.e.
private school wins in job applications against someone from a state school who
had struggled but got good A levels – even though the latter get as good or
better grades at university.
Families
with average incomes and high aspirations also lack contacts and influence to
push their children into high positions – internships are ‘free labour slavery
for the young who can afford to do it and yet denies access to all without
parents to support them’. It should be banned, but all that is proposed is a
code of practice with a kite-mark and a requirement for wages and grants.
One of the
report’s authors works for Social Mobility Foundation which mentors pupils from
school who otherwise might not apply. He tells of a bank which send staff out
for a few days a year for community work in schools – but they won’t consider
mentoring schoolchildren.
Equality and trust: Larry Elliott, Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/25/trust-equal-gap-rich-poor-inequality
The link between trust and rising inequality was identified by the US political theorists Eric Uslaner and Mitchell
Brown in the early 2000s. Where inequality was higher, the
poor tended to feel powerless. Sensing that their views were not represented in
the political system, they opted out of civic engagement. What’s more,
according to Uslaner and Brown, people’s trust in one other rests on a
foundation of economic equality. “When resources are distributed inequitably,
people at the top and bottom will not see each other as facing a shared fate.
Therefore, they will have less reason to trust people of different backgrounds.”
24th Sep 2014 – reviews of, and extracts from, Owen Jones’s book The Establishment: and how they get away with it:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/29/socialism-for-the-rich
Executive Pay:
Notes from
article by Ed Smith (New Statesman 18-24 July 2014): In the first decade of
this century, the average pay ration of CEO to employee climbed from 47 to 128.
Clearly this doesn’t reflect improved performance!
It doesn’t
always have to be the case that executive pay must rise over time: between 1930
and 1960 the real income of top US managers fell.
Nor is it
explained by supply and demand, but by culture – e.g. contagion effect. Also at
work is the halo effect: we tend to ruch to appoint superheros, even on shaky
evidence (see Phil Rosenzweig in The Halo Effect).
Finally, we
must have transparency (we know how good sportsmen are, so we can compare their
– still too high – pay with other sportsmen – but we can’t do the same for
managers).
See also
Ferdinand Mount: The New Few.
Ed Smith is
author of : Luck: a fresh look at fortune (Bloomsbury).
Finance Capital and its effects on
equality:
Book: Who Runs Britain? By Robert Peston
(Hodder and Stoughton, 2008): new financial devices, whilst supposed to “direct
money where it can be used most productively” (P. Wilby review Guardian
02.02.08) actually direct it to the rich first and foremost. Wealth of 1,000
wealthiest in Britain is £360 bn (50 times economy of Uruguay). Hedge fund
managers can earn up to £120 m a year in UK (£500 m in USA). Sir Philip Green
paid himself a tax-free dividend of £1.2 bn in 2005. Money from their
tax-dodges could provide several hundred schools or hospitals. As Marx said
“all that is solid melts into air…”
Freedoms:
Amartya Sen article, based on Demos lecture 2010, in which he argues
that identifying freedoms and capabilities to exercise them is a good way of
dealing with inequalities and poverty – better than just focusing on poverty…
Quotes Steve Biko: ‘Powerlessness breeds a race of beggars who smile at the enemy
and swear at him in the sanctity of his (sic) toilet; who shout ‘Baas’
willingly during the day and call the white man a dog in their buses as they go
home.’
See also: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/18/idea-of-justice-amartya-sen?INTCMP=SRCH
– review of Idea of Justice –
See also
ppbooks part 2 (other recent thinkers –
pp24?)
Health: the Marmot Review, 2010 – see www.ucl.ac.uk/gheg/marmotreview/FairSocietyHealthyLives
- Marmot is president of the BMA – his report identifies how the gradient of
inequality affects health: not just the poorest who need their lives improving,
but also those in the middle stratum. Shocking stats (G supplement on
Healthcare, 230610): health inequalities have less to do with healthcare than
with social and economic inequalities; key determinants relate to a host of
issues: child development, housing, transport and employment; argues for a
measure of ‘healthy income’ i.e. minimum income for healthy living; double the
percentage of children in the top 10% of households get five or more A* to C
grades than those in the top 20% - 30%; children from richest backgrounds are
more likely to start school with higher personal, social and emotional
development and communication, language and literacy skills than the poorest;
on a measure of ‘school readiness at three’, children from wealthy families are
10% more ready than middle-ranking and 30% ahead of those at the bottom; if
everyone had the same mortality rate as those with a degree, 202,000 premature
deaths at age 30 upwards would be saved each year ( = 2.5 million life years
lost); Marmot is worried about proposals to speed up raising pension age: ¾ of
people at 68 could have a disability – even if there is money spent on
improving the lives of the poorest you would still have many reaching
retirement who become disabled.
Thatcher
government ‘suppressed’ the Black report because it disagreed with it and
didn’t want to spend money on removing inequality… www.sochealth.co.uk/history/black.htm
Homelessness: from Big Issue Nov 2-8 2015: campaign ‘Fill
‘Em Up’ (#FillEmUp) – to find ways of
using empty properties. ‘In parts of Britain there are TEN homes lying empty
for every ONE homeless family... NB Centrepoint says there are 136,000 young
homeless – government says 16,000. Not at al sure why the discrepancy...
2009 house prices – gap between north and south
of Britain:
Prices have
risen in 2009 by up to 7.1% in London, but fallen by 12.2% on average in
Other
increases: Brighton 5.9% and Southampton 4%
Other
losses: Newcastle and Manchester – double-digit losses
In London
average house price 434,923 (up 28k on a year ago)
Other
average values: South East 273,198, East 213,874, South West 239,938
East Midlands
172,000, Yorks/Humber 162,960, North East 151,199, Wales 176,097, West Midlands
176,132, North West 158,418, Scotland 148,122.
(From Times
26/12/09).
Compass report on housing market in Britain – “Don’t bet the house on it: No
turning back to housing boom and bust” by Toby Lloyd, www.compassonline.org.uk – proposes
land value tax to curb property speculation, replacing business rates and
council tax (regressive, and doesn’t distinguish enough between expensive and
poorer properties). NB (Ashley Seager G 100809): house price rises benefit
nobody – there is no net gain, just a shifting around of the property-values
among younger and old.
David
Cooper of Lib Dems Action for Land Taxation and Economic Reform agrees on land
tax.
Inequality
of property is much greater than of income – top 5% of wage earners earn 20%
more than next 5% - with property top 5% own 60% more than next 5%. Income is
taxed progressively, but wealth isn’t. Measuring land value is easy: take
market value of property and subtract rebuild value. (?)
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/19/inequality-threat-recovery-poverty-pay
Inequality – books by Wilkinson and Pickett:
2009: The
Spirit Level demonstrates the pernicious effects of economic inequality. In
more unequal countries, outcomes are worse for almost everyone in areas such as
public health, education, obesity and social mobility.
2018: The
Inner Level: how more equal societies reduce stress, restore sanity and improve
everyone’s well-being. In other words, the psychic level. Review by Steven
Poole, Guardian Review June 2018:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/20/the-inner-level-review
Note their solutions include the co-operative model for workers, and mandatory
employee representation on company boards rising over time to give them full
control. The market economy is blamed (even though, syas Poole, Finland and
Norway are market economies…). Economic growth should be halted as it does not
make people happy. Similar in approach to Naomi Klein in This Changes
Everything… See protecting10themovement.htm#NaomiKlein
Inequality and a possible slump. See Stewart Lansley, Observer, 5th
Feb 2012: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/feb/05/inequality-leads-to-economic-collapse
Inequality in
London: George
Eaton, New Statesman 27 April – 3 May 2018 has some staggering figures for
Kensington and Chelsea: the average house price is £2m and the average salary
is £123,000, yet 29% of children live in poverty and 5,761 people are homeless.
In Golborne ward 80% of households are classed as deprived, half the children
are impoverished, and life expectancy has flalen by six years since 2010. At the same time there are 1,200 long-term
empty homes in the borough and 9,300 second homes.
The rest of
the article shows how London is backing Jeremy Corbin…
Inequality and publicly funded facilities: Book: Palaces for the People:
how to build a more equal and united society, by Eric Klinenberg, reviewed by Rowan Moore,
Observer 07.10.18:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/08/palaces-for-people-how-build-more-equal-united-society-eric-klinenberg-review
- ‘the physical spaces and conditions that make communal life require investment
just as much as bridges, roads’, etc and other infrastructure. In the
background are other forces which make division, conflict and simple misery
more likely: the opioid epidemic (in USA), isolation, climate change and the
effects of the internet.
Islington:
Has set up
a ‘fairness commission’ under Richard Wilkinson (of ‘Spirit Level’)
[SocietyGuardian 080611, Rachel Williams] – borough contains on one hand
Barnsbury/Thornhill Estate etc, where Blairs used to live (houses priced in six
figures) and on the other Bemerton Estate. Wealthiest fifth of households earn
60,000 +, and poorest 15,000 -. Almost half its young people live below the
breadline, and a third of its working-age population don’t work. Wilkinson
believes pay is the basic factor, and wants living London wage to be paid.
Council has reduced differentials (local authority = 1:11, NHS = 1:9, police
1:7) but private sector can be 100-fold.
Other parts
of the scheme are on lines of ‘big society’ – e.g. residents helping each other
with reading, books. Light Project leafleted asking for volunteers and/or
swaps, but only got response from Bemerton…
Labour’s record on child poverty:
See Mike
Brewer’s piece, Society Guardian 13.06.12: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jun/12/labours-effort-cut-child-poverty-exceptional?INTCMP=SRCH
– Labour’s record was exceptional, he says (professor of economics at the
Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex). Money spent
on tax credits and benefits was massively increased, and although critics say
it didn’t work, it can be seen that without these measures, child poverty would
have risen to around 4.3 million by 2010. Instead it fell from 3.4 million to
2.5 million, a reduction of 900,000 – ‘a remarkable achievement, certainly
without historical precedent in the UK, and impressive compared to other
countries”. Parental employment was a crucial factor in reducing poverty among
children (accounted for a quarter of the reduction).
Dec. 2018. Book: The New Enclosure: the appropriation of public
land in neoliberal Britain, Brett Christophers, Verso. (Reviewed by Will Self,
in G. New Review 8th Dec). An extract:
‘If their justification for the big sell‑off was to invoke
the “hidden hand” of the market as an agent of greater efficiency – both as an
exploiter of the land’s resources, and as a means of signalling optimal
investment opportunities – then the Thatcherites really didn’t know their Adam
Smith. Christophers, by contrast, quotes gleefully from The Wealth of Nations: “As soon as
the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like
all other men, love to reap where never they sowed, and demand a rent even for
its natural produce.” See also: Notes on
Adam Smith and liberalism
So
acute was Smith’s diagnosis of the problems associated with a market in land –
namely, monopoly practices, followed inevitability by price volatility – that
Christophers observes there could have been no Marx without him. (And it’s
worth recalling that the first demand made in The Communist Manifesto is for the
nationalisation of all land.) Far from private landowners utilising land more
efficiently, and thereby boosting the overall economy, Christophers
demonstrates that privatisation leads to the inversion of the so-called
“tragedy of the commons” (the idea that if a community shares the ownership of
something, nobody bothers to maintain it), because in their pursuit of the
highest possible rents they restrict everyone else’s opportunity to enjoy
social amenities. Taking the long view, it’s easy to see that the privatisation
of public land since 1979 has heralded the beginning of the end of public space
itself – if by that is meant the civic and rural spaces enjoyed by a notional
“public”.’
Will Self goes on:
‘Christophers isn’t the only one to have addressed these
troubling developments – more than a decade ago, Anna Minton’s Ground Controloffered a
prescient view of the impact of neoliberalism on urban space; and the sell-off
of Britain’s once enviable stock of public housing has been well catalogued by
James Meek in Private
Island. Christophers points out that the most valuable element of a
council property is usually the ground it stands on – as it is with many other
properties: and this is because permission to build remains extant. There were
measures in the past to ensure that the increased value of land zoned for
construction would be shared by all – the so-called “betterment” levy,
enshrined in the 1947 Planning Act – but the landlord interest soon saw to its
abolition. In its place we have instead the land-banking practised by the
so-called “big six” British house builders, as they drip-feed the market with a
view to maximising their shareholders’ profits.
A
rentier economy (Christophers uses the term unapologetically) is driven by
profits, which have increased in real terms as the poor have been denied social
housing and instead compelled to pay increased rates for ageing private stock.
Setting to one side the scandal involved in quite so much land being shed – and
often at prices well below market rates, given that if a seller is compelled,
they’re hardly in a position to haggle – this transformation of the national
wealth struck me as at once utterly bizarre, and strangely predictable. It’s a
rule of contemporary economics that the sort of annual growth rates historically
required to make Britain great were in the region of 6-7%; in the past we
managed these mostly by ripping off stuff belonging to poorer people in other
parts of the world, or by selling them stuff we’d made using equipment they
didn’t have. But nowadays such comparative “advantages” no longer obtain, while
the stock market has continued to decline, as have the bond yields of
chronically indebted western nations. So it seems that in order to maintain the
necessary returns on capital, we’ve resorted to a weird form of
auto-cannibalisation: forcing our least advantaged to pay rents that,
serendipitously, have increased by 6-7% per annum since 1979. Meanwhile, the
rentier class keep right on reaping where never they sowed.’
*******
2012:
See George
Monbiot’s piece, Guardian 05.06.12: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/04/wildlife-land-aristocracy?
From Observer Magazine 07.08.11: UK is 60m
acres in extent, and two-thirds of it is owned by 0.36% of the population, i.e.
158,000 families. See Kevin Cahill: Who Owns Britain… also Mervyn King on
British tax… 24m families live on the 3m acres of the nation’s ‘urban plot’ –
and feel overcrowded.
Similar
figures given in New Statesman editorial
(02.04.12): only 10% of England (and 6% of Britain) is developed (i.e. used
for housing/industry etc). Land is not scarce, but rather ‘landowners are paid
to keep it off the market through a system of agricultural subsidy’. There is a
shortage of land for housing – especially in the South-East, and as urban land
gets more congested, the price of land goes up. Of the UK’s 60 million acres:
41 million
acres (69%) are designated agricultural land – 158,000 families, or 0.6% of the
population
15 million:
forests, rivers, mountains etc (= ‘natural wastage’!) – owned by Forestry
Commission, Ministry of Defence etc (hmph!)
4 million =
urban plot – on which 62 million people (24 million families) live (over 99% of
population!!).
Moreover,
ownership of 30% of the land of England and Wales is not known, since there is
no legal obligation to register land ownership. If this land is agricultural,
the owners still receive subsidies (not sure how ‘owners’ are known for purpose
subsidies but not legally registered...)
Carol
Wilcox, secretary of Labour Land Campaign asks: why not impose an annual tax on
the productive value of land per acre (excluding occupied houses in the lower
tax bracket)?
Typical
‘old’ landowners (ownership derived from feudal times, or grace and favour, or
profits from slavery):
- Duke of
Buccluech: 240,000 acres
- Duke of
Northumberland: 131,000 acres
- Duke of
Westminster: 129,000 acres
- Richard
Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax – MP for South Dorset (known to Cameron as
Richard Drax) - has a wall which is the
longest continuous structure in England along its side.
In 1980
there was a 70% likelihood the owner/buyer would be from this category. But
typical owner is changing: foreign investors own 60% of London properties worth
over
- steel
magnate Vladimir Lisin: 3,300 Aberuchill Castle estate, Perthshire (6.8m)
- Boris
Berezovsky: 172-acre Hascombe Court (10m)
- Roman
Abramovic: Fyning Hill nr. Midhurst (12m)
- Leon Max
(Russian-born fashion retailer): 600 acre Easton Neaston, Northants
- Stefan Persson,
owner of H & M, 8,500 acres in Wiltshire and Linkenholt estate, Hants,
1,500-acres.
Also:
- Madonna
and Guy Ritchie: Ashcombe, Wilts (former home of Cecil Beaton) – they also
bought the local airfield to stop people flying over.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/30/posh-is-so-passe-todays-elite-prefers-the-myth-of-meritocracy quotes from Michael Young’s The Rise of Meritocracy,
a dystopia, whose satire is sadly taken for reality now, says Malik…
‘So
entrenched as a social aspiration has meritocracy become that we often forget
that the term was coined in mockery. In his 1958 satire, The Rise of Meritocracy, the
sociologist Michael Young told of a society in which classes were sorted not by
the hereditary principle but by the formula IQ + Effort = Merit.
In
this new society, “the eminent know that success is a just reward for their own
capacity”, while the lower orders deserve their fate. Having been tested again
and again and “labelled ‘dunce’ repeatedly”, they have no choice but “to
recognise that they have an inferior status”.
I’m not sure I agree with the next point, however: ‘As western
societies have become more technocratic, so there has developed, the political
scientist David Runciman observed, “a new class of experts, for whom
education is a prerequisite of entry into the elite” – bankers, lawyers,
doctors, civil servants, pundits, academics. Once knowledge has become “a
prerequisite of power, then it no longer speaks for itself” but “appears to
speak for the worldview of the people who possess it”.
Education,
in other words, has come to be a marker of the values one holds and the place
one possesses in society. One of the key signifiers of attitudes to Donald
Trump and to Brexit is education.’
It is an obvious point that many people look down on Trump
supporters or Brexiteers for their lack of education... I don’t feel
comfortable admitting it, but I share this view, except that I also believe
that class distinctions and economic deprivation is at the root of all this:
lack of education follows from economic deprivation, clearly. Still, there are
some striking examples of this belief that education (or lack of it) is the
problem:
‘Trump supporters, wrote David
Rothkopf, professor of international relations, former CEO of Foreign Policy magazine and a member of Bill Clinton’s administration,
are people “threatened by what they don’t understand and what they don’t
understand is almost everything”. They regard knowledge as “not a useful tool
but a cunning barrier elites have created to keep power from the average man
and woman”.’ And:
‘“It is unfair to thrust on to unqualified simpletons the
responsibility to take historic decisions of great complexity and
sophistication,” the biologist Richard Dawkins observed. The right to vote, many insist,
should be restricted to those with sufficient knowledge.
“Today,
we frankly recognise that democracy can be no more than aspiration,” Young
wrote in his 1958 satire, “and have rule not so much by the people as by the
cleverest people; not an aristocracy of birth, not a plutocracy of wealth, but a
true meritocracy of talent.” The trouble is, such a view is no longer seen as
satire.
“Class
distinctions,” as Richard Hoggart, the cultural studies pioneer,
once observed, “do not die; they merely learn new ways of expressing
themselves.” Posh like the upper classes we may no longer want to be.
Contemptuous of the lower orders too many remain.’
The conclusion here is weakly expressed in my view. The problem
is not simply that too many people are ‘contemptuous of the lower orders’, but
that too many people cannot see the existence of class.
OECD report shows that wealth gap is holding
Britain back: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/dec/09/revealed-wealth-gap-oecd-report
Article 20th
March 2012 quotes OECD report by Angel Gurria (secretary general) “Divided we
stand” – warning of dangers of widening inequality. If the OECD is worried,
when it traditionally supports the free market etc, then there must be a
problem! In UK and US the gap between top 10% and bottom 10% has multiplied by
14 in the last 25 years. Social mobility happens least where inequality is
greatest. We have, under the coalition’s austerity policies: women losing more
in cuts to public sector jobs, childcare, tax credits, benefits, blacks are
twice as likely to be unemployed – young black men 56% unemployed. And now
regional variations in public sector pay (worst-off regions’ workers suffering
reductions in pay!!!).
Poverty – role of business in addressing:
New Statesman supplement, ‘Should Business play a role in addressing poverty in
the UK?’ (23 – 29 Oct).
Note: of
the 13 million people in the UK in poverty, half are in work. That is, their
annual pay is less than £13,920. Of these 236,000 will be earning less than the
minimum wage, and 4.9 million earn less than the Living Wage (£9.15 an hour for
London, £7.85 for the rest of the UK).
Private schools: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/05/-sp-social-mobility-decline-elitist-education-david-kynaston
Deals with
the sociological literature on social mobility, and demonstrates that it is
declining. On what to do he argues that there can be no more upward mobility
without some downward movement as well. Do we prioritize negative liberty (not
to be interfered with) for the top 7% or positive liberty (to be given the same
chances in life as every other citizen) for the 97%?
Psychological effects of inequality:
Was an
article in British Medical Journal,
says Jenni Russell (G, 18.01.08) describing feelings of unemployed
working-class man when in company of well-dressed confident middle-class people
– “sweating… shuffling… you feel, I shouldn’t be there… they look at you like
they’re disgusted… It fucking stresses you… etc. Russell goes on to say that the middle
classes now feel similarly when comparing selves to better-off (e.g.
professionals, with high-flying City earners with half million bonuses). As
social beings we cannot avoid comparing ourselves with others.
Research by
Richard Wilkinson and Michael Marmot
shows connection between status and: health, life expectancy…
Scandinavian
research showed the middle classes are in favour of more equality of
opportunity only so long as the middle class is expanding… i.e. when their own
children’s social mobility not threatened. We have now reached a point when the
middle class will not expand any more, and upward mobility can only come at
someone else’s expense. Maybe the left (?! – surely the middle classes
generally) feels that it might suffer if something is done about inequality -
hence the appeal of Cameron’s plans to tax non-doms, but cut inheritance tax.
But we must tax the very wealthy to prevent them becoming the standard for
comparisons.
According
to Gary Younge, Guardian 30.03.09: two-thirds of Bangladeshis, and over half of
Pakistanis in Britain live in poverty. The unemployment rate for Bangladeshis
is more than five times higher than for whites, and for Pakistanis it is four
times higher. Among the youth it is worth.
In areas of
high Muslim concentration, whites are poor as well.
The gist of
this article was that the government is taking the wrong line by trying to
identify the ‘ideal Muslim’ – and it was wrong to put pressure on the MCB. He
quotes Amartya Sen on the dangers of this kind of ‘identity politics’: people
are never just ‘Muslim’ or ‘Christian’ but have a variety of ways in which they
link up with other people. To stress one part of an identity is to isolate
people and turn them against each other.
See also #america
See Michael Meacher’s piece, Guardian 31st May 2012, for astonishing
statistics on the way the better-off have benefited whilst the poor have fallen
even further behind since the 2008
collapse: the richest 1,000 own more than 3 times the budget deficit, the
richest 1% (some 300,000 people) own £1 trillion, and the top 10% control £4
trillion. The
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/31/how-to-kickstart-uk-economy
Public Sector managers’ salaries: G 210310, Jane Dudman: chief exec
of Birmingham city council earns £200,000. Is this too much? But she is
responsible for 35,000 employees, and a budget of £3.6 bn. There are many
private sector managers earning as much or more with nothing like his
responsibilities. Problem also is we don’t know much about private sector
managers’ pay. Cameron demand for not more than x20 salaries in public sector
would get rid of much inequality if applied in private sector!! Peter Smith,
head of Hay Group recently dispelled many myths about public sector pay –
sector is diverse, with different employment conditions. Biggest rises in NHS
are going to newly appointed chief execs. Question should be: why such a high
turnover in these posts?
Reminder:
Nicholas Ferguson in 2007 admitted something was wrong with the tax system when
a high earner like himself paid a lower rate of tax than his cleaners (Dan
Roberts, G 180510) [for rest of piece on tax see economics].
Salaries: Will Hutton (Obs 100110): “There are 10 million men and women in work
who earn less than 15,000 a year; nearly all their parents were in the same
position, as will be their children. There are 3 million people of working age
who do not make themselves available for work… – again reproducing itself
through the generations…” Meanwhile the middle and upper classes are
‘opportunity hoarding’ (the expression is from Charles Tilly).
“The good
luck of being born into the right family is profound. Two American researchers,
Betty Hart and Todd Risley, found that children from professional families hear
on average 2,153 words per hour compared with 616 for kids in welfare
families”. By age 3, there is a 30 million word gap (i.e. words heard?).
Welfare kids hear discouraging words twice as often as encouraging words, those
in professional families hear encouraging words 10 times more often.
There is
also a correlation between children’s maths performance and their father’s
earnings (!): ‘a boy whose father earns twice another’s will score 5% more in
maths.’
(see also
under social mobility)
The richest
10% of UK population spend 7 times as much as the poorest 10%. (Guardian
24/01/02) Per week: richest spend L849, poorest: L126.70. (UK Family
Expenditure Survey Jan 2002)
Salaries: Polly Toynbee, G 250809: Fabian Society research for Joseph
Rowntree Foundation (Understanding Attitudes to Tackling Economic Inequality ?
shows how little people know about earnings – people on £42,000 do not know
they are in the top 10% (= more than £946 gross per week – bottom 10% earn less
than £262, while the median is £479, but that is from £521 for men, and £412
for women, in 2008 according to http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=285).
Alan Duncan MP complained about how low his salary was, at £64,000 – he perhaps
does not know that over 95% of people earn less than this. Top rate tax is paid
by 3.7 million, according to Daily Mail, which is the top 12% acc to http://www.poverty.org.uk/09/index.shtml
- who contribute 60% of tax takings (in 2005 – a figure disputed by the
government, who put it at 55%).
The report
also points out that most people think about inequality in terms of the gap
between themselves and the richest, not the gap between the poorest and the
richest.
Note that
the income of the top 10% is greater than the combined incomes of all those
below average i.e. bottom 50% acc to http://www.poverty.org.uk/09/index.shtml
Salaries: John Hutton (G March 2008), the business and enterprise
secretary, defends high salaries: “aspiration and ambition are natural human
emotions” – “we should celebrate the fact that people can be enormously
successful in this country” - “any progressive party worth its name must
enthusiastically advocate empowering people to climb without limits, free from
any barrier holding them back”. Apparently he approves of the fact that we are
now an individualistic society and we no longer have “blind faith” in
institutions.
Iain McKay
(Freedom 1500809): despite the Mail giving the impression that if you earn (G March
2008). £50,000 (*) you are middle class, the facts are:
- over
£50,000 puts you in top 5%
- along
with 1,680,000 others
- below
this are 28,590,000 – 64% of taxpayers!
Median (50th
percentile point) of taxed income is £16,400 – at the 90th percentile
point it is £39,000, and at 95th it is £52,400.
Median
earnings in 2007 were £19,943 per annum, and mean earnings £24,908. the 90th
percentile earned £42,902.
Top 25% of
wealth holders has 72% of our wealth, top 5% has 53%, top 1% has 21%.
(*) Cameron
apparently suggested withdrawing tax credit on households earning above this
figure. The Mail was not amused!
Salaries: Guardian 24/01/02:
The richest
10% of UK population spend 7 times as much as the poorest 10%. Per week: richest spend L849, poorest: L126.70.
(UK Family Expenditure Survey Jan 2002)
Savings – rich vs poor: 29th May 2014 Post
Office report says rich are saving more while poor are spending more than they
earn...
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/may/29/richest-uk-save-poorest-spend-crisis-post-office-data
Sennett, Richard: The Corrosion of Character, 1998: our society has become ‘short-term’: ‘how can long-term
policies be pursued in a short-term
society… how can a human being develop
narrative of identity and life history in a society composed of episodes
and fragments?’ Quoted by Ed Howker and Shiv Malik: Jilted Generation: how
Britain has bankrupted its youth – though this blames the ‘baby-boomer’
generation. Not so, says Madeleine Bunting: it is more a question of inequality and the effects of
globalisation. What hit the industrial working class hard in the ‘80s and
‘90s – no jobs for life, constant re-skilling, insecurity generated by
globalisation – has now percolated to privileged, high-status elements of the
middle class. (G 230810)
Social Class and
Social Mobility:
Book, and review by Lyndsey Hanley: Social
Class in the 21st Century by Mike Savage http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/13/social-class-21st-century-mike-savage-review
- we need new words to describe the fracturing of class... borrows Bourdieu’s
idea of ‘symbolic violence’ to describe the way the traditional working class
and the ‘precariat’ are treated by those who refuse to shoulder their share of
the ‘burden of the world’ (Bourdieu again). A new level of snobbery has developed
as inequality has increased, says Hanley – including from working class people
towards ‘scroungers’ etc.
The Class Ceiling – an article in Guardian Review Sat 24th
Oct 2015 by Mike Savage, author of Social Class in the 21st Century
(to be published Nov by Penguin) says that inequality is perhaps the defining
issue of our age... (see http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/22/new-class-war-politics-class-just-beginning)
The ‘middle class’?:
Letter in
Guardian Mon 21st Dec 2013 from Prof David Byrne and Dr Sally Ruane
- http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/dec/22/middle-class-on-top
-
notes how
the income of the different tenths of the population declines from the top
(figures from the Office for national Statistics data for 2011 - 2012):
Top 10th
received 27% of all income (both gross and after tax)
Next tenth
down: 16%
Next: 13%
Remainder
show gradual decline in proportion of income.
Note, then,
that (i) the gap between the top two is a rise of nearly 70% - whereas the rest
are closer together; and that (ii) ‘We have an upper class of plutocrats who do
not really appear in the relevant data set and who pay very little tax because
of their systematic use of tax avoidance; a middle class of those in the top
decile of households... and the rest of us below them.’ This is a return to the
19th century view of a middle class as between the very top and the
rest. The writers also point out that this middle class manages the rest of us
on behalf of the plutocrats, by keeping us on low pay and benefits!!
Online representation:
Study by
Jen Schradie of Univ of California, Berkeley shows that those most ‘online’ are
mainly those who have a college degree, and this is a stronger predictor than
whether they are young or old (from Freedom 180611). The internet is not
leveling the playing field or broadening the range of voices being heard, but
reinforcing socio-economic divisions that already exist, and may be heightening
them.
Broken Britain? Crime in Britain has fallen 45% since 1995,
according to The Economist (!) – ‘less killing, fewer teenage mums, far fewer fags,
perhaps a bit less drink and drugs’. OECD finds Britain most class-bound of
developed nations and least social
mobility (*). 75% of voters say gap rich and poor too big. ‘Death tax’
slogan was unfair as Tories propose voluntary 8,000 charge on retiring which
won’t cover residential care, and leaves paying for care at home to local
authorities. (Polly Toynbee G 130210).
(*) G120210
(Randeep Ramesh) OECD report shows that in UK father’s income determines son’s
to greater extent than in any other wealthy nation – half of a high earner’s
advantage is passed on (which 3 times more influence than in Australia, Norway,
Denmark). ‘Education is not as important for social mobility... as for other
countries.’ (Romain Duval, head of economics dept of OECD). Only Italy and
America are more unequal (i.e. distribution not only opportunity). Different
classes are brought up to follow different rules about how to think, talk and
behave… Middle classes ‘hoard’
opportunities and this kicks away the ladder for the poor (Richard
Reeves of Demos). Middle class women (says David Willetts, Tory shadow
universities spokesman) have taken advantage of educational opportunities – but
inequality based on class persists.
Will Hutton (Obs 100110):
Alan
Milburn’s report on social mobility showed that while only 7% of children are
privately educated, 75% of judges, 70% of finance directors, 45% of top civil
servants and 32% of MPs were privately educated.
‘Class’: Alexander Chancellor, G 220110, comments on
Harriet Harman’s speech introducing the Hills report on social inequality –
‘persistent inequality of socio-economic status – of class – overarches the
discrimination or disadvantage that can come from your gender, race or
disability…’ (whilst Cameron says that ‘warmth not wealth’ is the key to a
child’s wellbeing and prospects). Hills report underlines differences in
prospects and life-span from inequality. Chancellor says it was Prescott who
said ‘we’re all middle class now’ (before 1997 election). Surveys show we are
confused about class:
Future
Foundation a few years ago: 29% of bank managers believe they are
working-class… and 36% of builders thought they were middle-class. Younger more
likely to think they are w.c. (56% of 25 – 34 yr olds), and only 48% of 55 – 64
yr olds did. Guardian poll showed a quarter of C2s (skilled w.c.) considered
themselves middle class; of Ds and Es, 1% thought they were upper class…
Ditto: Ruth Lister, Prof of Social Policy,
Loughborough: meritocracy and social mobility do not equate with social justice
– not everyone wants to or can ‘climb the ladder’ – ought to ‘shorten the
ladder, narrow the gaps between the rungs, improve rewards at the bottom’.
(Letter, G)
Same issue
of G: five giants we must remove: ‘want, ignorance, disease, squalor, and idleness’
need replacing with ‘inequality, greed, self-interest, unemployment,
indifference.’
Book: Mind the Gap: The new class divide in Britain,
Ferdinand Mount, Short Books, 8.99. Similar solutions to current Tory policy…
Guardian Dec 13 2007 (Polly Curtis):
Study by
Sutton Trust (Chair Sir Peter Lampl): social class is still the biggest
predictor of school achievement, the likelihood of getting a degree, and even
of a child’s behaviour. Advantages of being born in privileged home have not
changed in 30 years.
44% of
people from richest fifth of thee population. Have a degree – 10% from poorest
fifth.
Children
born in 2000 to the lowest income households, and who had scored best in test
results aged three, had fallen behind by age five. By seven they will be
overtaken by those from wealthier backgrounds who had come bottom in tests aged
three.
Previous
research suggested decline in social mobility between 1958 and 1970. Now it’s
at a standstill.
Letter in
Guardian 16/6/2016 from Peter Holbrook, Chief Executive, Social Enterprise UK:
‘We must
stop idolizing business owners who are relying on taxpayers, driving down
wages, pushing people and families into poverty. The real business superheroes
are those leading the 70,000 social enterprises across the UK. Research shows
that 74% of social enterprises pay the living wage, as accredited by the Living
Wage Foundation – not the lower ‘national living wage’ recently introduced by
the government. Social enterprises reduce the need for wages to be topped up by
the public purse. They also pay their taxes and reinvest their profits. Last
week Welsh Water announced that it will offer a £32m windfall to its customers,
reducing bills. This is what is possible when companies are free of the
shackles of shareholders.
These
businesses have the promise to make capitalism great again, and to reduce the
gulf between rich and poor. Britain’s future business leaders are choosing
social enterprise, which has three times the startup rate of mainstream SMEs.
But their entrepreneurial efforts will be stifled unless policymakers take
great strides to support them.’
Another
letter, from Michael Bassey, quotes the Companies Act of 2006 – paragraph 172 (1):
‘A director of a company must act in the way he considers, in good faith, would
be most likely to promote the success of the company for the benefit of its
members as a whole.’ The paragraph goes on specifically to mention employees
and ‘the need to act fairly as between members of the company.’ Surely, then,
excessive pay for managers/owners, and excessive bonuses to shareholders,
infringe this Act?
These are
now (post 2012) very popular, it seems!
Big Issue founder John Bird
is associated with www.socialsaturday.org.uk
(13th Sep 2014) – organised by:
Social Enterprise UK
0203 589 4950
socialsaturday@socialenterprise.org.uk
139 Tooley Street
London SE1 2HZ
Head of policy at Social
Enterprise UK is Dan Gregory (Big Issue New Year 2016) @CommonCapital
There are
also new enterprises of a ‘radical” kind:
Observer, New Review 19.02.12 has a list of 50 ‘New Radicals’: organisations that set out to ‘make Britain a
better place.’ They were judged and ranked – top in the article was: My Bnk, in
east London; The Liverpool Project – training young people in cardiopulmonary
resuscitation; Incredible Edible – started in Todmordon Yorkshire, growing food
in public open spaces; etc.
My only
reservation is they are a bit like ‘the big society’ (in fact DC is a keen
supporter!):
http://www.nesta.org.uk/news_and_features/britains_new_radicals/3space
Social Impact Bonds (SocietyGuardian 06.10.10,
Alan Travis): to
attract investment from outside government for a range of hard-to-fund
preventive schemes, (such as Peterborough prison’s use of a voluntary organisation
to reduce re-offending rates) to tackle social problems. Money also coming from
Big Lottery fund (5m). Social Finance is the organisation behind the scheme.
Private banking networks said to be interested in investing in social progress.
In the Peterborough scheme, the organisations involved, if successful, will get
payments from Ministry of Justice (i.e. payment-by-results). A 10% reduction
for the first 1,000 prisoners through the scheme will bring payouts for
investors. A sustained reduction of 10% would bring a return to investors of
7.5% per annum compound over an eight-year period… If they fail, the investors
get nothing back. Crucial is upfront contributions from large charities, but
they see it as better than giving grants, because they can get returns.
But are
these just the latest vehicle for city slickers to make a fast buck?
Social Enterprises: acc. to Randeep Ramesh, SocG 210710,
a third of local authority leisure services are run by soc ents. In the last 20
yrs more than 30,000 new charities have been formed. So ‘big society’ idea is
not new.
1.
SocietyGuardian 09.01.08
(Lord)
Andrew Mawson has written a book on social enterprises: The Social
Entrepreneur: Making Communities Work, pub. Atlantic Books Jan 15th
2008.
Extract in
SocietyGuardian 090.01.08 describes his work in Bromley-by-Bow. He had been
involved with the Kingsley Hall community centre, but felt it had “forgotten
who it was there to serve” (members were hostile to police, churches, anyone
not in Labour Party, and to “anything that reeked of enterprise and
entrepreneurship”; talk there was of “rights” and rarely of “responsibilities”
– which Mawson describes as “liberal ideology… running amok”. Its “logic was
built on theories about equality and race… It had no real understanding of what
it means to be a human being”. [Wow!]
Because of
his experience with a single mother with terminal cancer, who had slipped
through the net and was not getting any support – and especially after a
meeting of the professionals involved which became an “exercise in face-saving”
– he argues that the (NHS and other) staff though “incredibly well-meaning” had
”forgotten the realities of the people with whom they were dealing… in the
scramble to demonstrate equality of opportunity, or efficiency of delivery, or
equitable use of public money”.
He set up,
with others, the Bromley-by-Bow Centre, which would not be hostile to
entrepreneurial approaches. The plan, to build a health centre which would put
more control into the hands of the users, was blocked by the NHS on the grounds
that it would be “inequitable” … The then Tory Health Minister, Brian Mawhinney
took up the case and instructed the chief executive of the health authority to
provide money to set up the centre. This was done by 1997, when New Labour came
to power, and it was thought that the new government would welcome such
initiatives. The Bromley-by-Bow centre was a prototype of the kind of health
centre New Labour promised, that would “belong to the community”. Its key concepts
were “to set health in an integrated social context” with a “holistic attitude
to clinical services”. Tessa Jowell
opened the centre in 19998. Then a £300m Lottery fund was established by the
government, and a committee of 12 (with no experience of setting up such
centres) would establish 257 healthy living centres across the country. Many
failed, because they were not sustainable and ran out of money. Mawson also
blames “confused ideas about fairness”….
The
Bromley-by-Bow centre is, he says, still flourishing but it “has to administer
77 different funding sources, from a range of different government departments,
all demanding their outputs, evaluation procedures and audit trails”. Although
Hilary Armstrong, cabinet minister, was told about this, she could do nothing
it seems and so: “very little changed during the Blair years”.
Mawson’s
summary of the Blair ”vision for communities” is interesting: “it sought to
systemize the most dynamic, fluid and intangible qualities of successful;
community organisations, and to link them to the most general objectives of a
government for society – dignity, activity, wealth and progress. On top of
that, it challenged some highly-cherished principles about equity,
risk-management and democratic accountability that are strongly defended by
many politicians and public sector officials – often in the face of evidence
that they simply do not deliver for the poorest communities in the country”.
Mawson feels that “academics and civil servants” should be kept at a distance
from neighbourhood renewal.
Comment:
very revealing! Codes here for values
that I would call liberal (dignity, activity, wealth, progress), rather than
socialist… and the hostility to notions
of equity/fairness, safety/security and democracy/accountability is astounding…
2.
SocietyGuardian 16.01.08
Good to
read a response by Lynsey Hanley, author of Estates: an Intimate History
(Granta). The Bromley-by-Bow centre is “yards from” where she used to live for
13 years… “many of his claims for its success
bear little resemblance to my experience of life in the area.” The
centre created “as much resentment as good will” – it was seen as a “club”,
with all that implies about exclusivity and “I’m-all-right-Jack-ness” etc. She
adds that “The living conditions of many within reach of the centre remain
broadly unchanged”.
Whilst
agreeing that the work of the centre has made a huge difference to the lives of
the people who became involved in it, and that Mawson deserves credit for
setting up the centre, which employs 100 local people, “there are thousands
[within a few steps of the centre] who are stuck with very little prospect of
change without massive intervention, which… would have to come from the state”.
The social
enterprise approach is piecemeal. Not everyone wants to set up a pottery, so
why use this as a model for social change? These organisations must not be
presented as the only way to do things, and they must admit they can only do so
much – otherwise they are in danger of perpetuating the “blame the victim”
approach to those who do not escape from their poverty.
Social geography: Danny Dorling: Injustice: Why Social Inequality Persists, and Carl Lee:
Home: A Personal Geography of Sheffield. Mentioned in Guardian article by Dorling,
(social geographer) 261010, where he describes taking several short films about
inequality around the country to various educational establishments, and the
different responses he got. ‘… as our education system has become more divided,
as people further segregate by area, and hence by school, divide further still
where selective entrance is allowed and further still where school fees are
soaring, it become harder for students to know what is normal, and easier to
feel aggrieved’ [unjustifiably in many cases] He could see how adults end up
with such different views from each other if their backgrounds are so
different. ‘We teach young people in separate institutions how to fit into an
unjust society. Those most likely to get to the top are the ones most likely to
think it fair that they got there.’
Socialism: Sunder Katwala points out that socialists have never sought complete
equality, rather equality of life chances – or as Amartya Sen puts it, equality of autonomy. (G Response,
21/10/10)
G has
published research on tax evasion –
In 2009
budget govt announced repeal of section 765 of Corporation Tax Act, which makes
companies seek permission from Revenue before moving cash offshore, and allows
tax investigator to ask if moving the cash is detrimental to UK Treasury. Tax
avoidance costs ca. £13bn a year
Corporate
sector has lobbied for repeal, Lib Dems will move an amendment.
Govt plan
is for companies to report cash movements after the event. Previously failure
to report could lead to prison, new proposals: £300 fine plus £60 a day for
each day of non-reporting (!!)
Budget
supposedly had £4bn crackdown on corporate tax avoidance schemes… Govt has
increased powers of Revenue inspectors, and put new duties on senior execs to
ensure accurate tax returns (!) (Nick
Mathiason).
Third World:
22nd
May 2013: letter in Guardian (20th May) from Prof Kate Pickett and
Richard Wilkinson, saying that Cameron is blocking efforts to focus on
inequality in the UN high level panel on post-2015 development. Smaller income
differentials lead to more sustained economic growth. Text of letter from 50
academics to UN on this issue at: http://tinyurl.com/bsdqpm2
World Bank president says world poverty can be
ended but it will tale a long time. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/apr/04/world-bank-chief-poverty-hiv
There are
1.2 billion people living on less than $1.25 a day. This is harder to tackle
than Aids, he says (he previously launched a global campaign to provide blanket
treatment for Aids).
Health:
Emigration
of doctors etc from African countries is worsening healthcare there: Africa has
11% of world’s population, 24% of world’s disease, only 3% of world’s health
workers. 65,000 people left Africa in 2000, (92.4% of all who left), going to 9
countries (US, France, South Africa, Belgium, Canada, Spain, Australia,
Portugal). Britain has recruited 51% of the healthcare workers who have left
Kenya. Around 5% of South African healthcare workers leave the country. Uganda has 1 doctor for every 15,000
patients, and a shortfall of 2,290 nurses out of required 5,568 in government funded
hospitals. (Freedom 150308)
Population:
In the next
25 years the world population may grow by 2 billion. Of these, 1.95 billion
will be in poor countries and 50 million (.05 billion!) in rich countries. A
ratio of 400:1.
Women:
ActionAid
report (G 0703008) says women and children are discriminated against in such a
way that UN poverty-reduction targets will not be met. They are more likely to
be poor, sick, illiterate, hungry than men. 75% of all young people in Africa
with HIV/Aids are women. Women in Africa together spend 40 bn hours a year
fetching water ( = a year’s labour by whole workforce in France).
Around the
world, women workers are paid 16% less than men – and the gap for better
educated is greater… (ITUC research).
Top 1% in Britain – article by Danny Dorling: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/sep/15/how-super-rich-got-richer-10-shocking-facts-inequality
15th Sep 2014:
To be in the top 1% of earners in
Per head, there are more so-called ultra-high
net-worth individuals (UHNWI) in
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/20/charity-cant-justify-inequality
includes the following:
Figures from the Charities
Aid Foundation https://www.cafonline.org/PDF/UKGiving2012Full.pdf
- show ‘£9.3bn [was] donated [to charities] in 2012 – a goodly sum, but a flea
bite beside the state’s £700bn spending. If good works replaced social security
and public services, we’d be back with Victorian destitution. The better-off
give most cash because they have the most – but they make a far smaller
sacrifice. Surveys always show the poorest 20% give considerably more of their
incomes – 3.2% – while the richest 20% donate a meagre 0.9%. That
is remarkable when you consider how much harder it is for those living near
the poverty line to give anything, while the top 1% takes an enormous 14% of
national incomes. Those closest to needing help seem the most understanding
about the difference small sums make to those on the edge. After the crash, the
professional classes dropped their giving by more than those who earn less. But
in the world charts, Britain does well, as sixth
largest giver (pdf).
What’s best about charity
is also what’s worst about it: it is paid out by the whim of the giver and among
the rich often with strings attached. Women give more than men, the older more
than the young. Charities that top the giving register are not purely
altruistic, but causes that might one day benefit the giver – medical research,
hospitals then hospices.
Only after them come
children and young people. Religion draws most cash – and you wonder why that’s
a charitable cause at all.’
*******************
Property and inequality: the day after the election the
luxury flat market rocketed G 30/5/15: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/may/30/london-property-market-boom-housing-tower-hamlets
In Tower Hamlets, 23% of families live on less that 15k a year, and 53% of
children come from families living on unemployment benefits.
Canary
Warf, next door has an economy worth 6bn a year – greater than that of
Monaco...
There is a
waiting list of 20,000 people (for social housing) in Tower Hamlets.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/19/george-osborne-budget-inequality
Travellers: Review by Fran Abrams of ‘No Place
to Call Home’ by Katharine Quarmby (Oneworld) in New Statesman 23 – 29 Aug
2013, covers Dale Farm and other conflicts, and suggests that when the
environment is hostile then ‘outside’ groups find family and tradition more
important (Dale Farm Travellers didn’t move away from the area when offered
alternative housing or other traveller sites).
Voluntary sector - or “third sector” (see csr 1
and 2 [Carnegie])
LSE
estimates: half-a-million third sector bodies, with a workforce of 1.5 million
staff and a volunteer workforce of 6 million.
This
includes some 55,000 social enterprises [see above], also Registered Social
Landlords (many are registered charities) – combined turnover of RSLs = £9 bn
and workforce 125,000.
Article on
need for professionalisation of third sector, Stephen Bubb, Guardian 7.11.07
Wealth and inequality:
18th
May 2018: https://leftfootforward.org/2018/05/the-times-rich-list-despicable-evidence-of-britains-inequality/
Shocking statistics from Oxfam (quoted by Larry Elliott in
today’s Guardian): the richest 85 people in the world have as much wealth as
the bottom half of the world’s population – i.e. as 3.5 billion people. In
Owen Jones,
23rd March 2018: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/23/labour-wealth-tax-economy
Polly
Toynbee’s articles are very good on this. For example, 12th March
2013: Labour is backing a tax on mansions worth over £2 million – but the motion
is unlikely to get passed. If it were brought in, it would bring £2 billion –
yet there is property worth £10,300 billion in private hands.
Currently
wealth tax (mostly council tax) only delivers 5.9% of all revenues. Inheritance
tax brings in only 0.5% and is only paid by 3% of estates.
Council tax
is actually regressive: a house valued at £3 million in 1991 (prices for
council tax purposes are tied to this year still) pays only 0.3% of its worth,
while one worth £40,000 pays 2.4% (8 times more)
From the
1920s to the 1970s wealth spread out more equally each year – since then it has
gone into reverse, and the top 10th now own 44% of everything.
Welfare:
See ‘Why hard times became harsher’ by Tom Clark NS 25 July – 7 August 2014.
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/07/life-after-crash-why-have-hard-times-made-us-harsher
- how the poor get clobbered more hard than the middle/comfortable, and how the
latter can easily be persuaded there is no welfare problem.
Tom Clark
is author of: Hard Times: the divisive toll of the economic slump (Yale UP).
The People:
The rise and fall of the Working Class 1910 – 2010, by Selina Todd, John Murray
£25 – looks like an excellent book... Reviewed by Suzanne Moore:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/11/people-rise-fall-working-class-review
And see: A
Precariat Charter: from denizens to citizens, by Guy Standing, Bloomsbury
£16.99 reviewed by John Harris: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/09/precariat-charter-denizens-citizens-review
- Standing’s 2011 book The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class set out its story:
the term was originally used in 1980s France to denote temporary and seasonal
workers, but now, with labour insecurity a feature of most western economies,
it is the perfect word for a great mass of people, "flanked by an
army of unemployed and a detached group of socially ill misfits", who
enjoy almost none of the benefits won by organised labour during the 20th
century. In Standing's view, they increasingly resemble denizens rather than
citizens: people with restricted rights, largely living towards the bottom of a
"tiered membership" model of society, in which a plutocratic elite
takes the single biggest share, while other classes – the salariat,
free-ranging "proficians", and what remains of the old working class
– divide up most of what remains.
New Zeeland
has passed a bill to abolish them, with unanimous support in parliament.
Meanwhile in Britain, Sports Direct has thousands of employees on them. Average
weekly earnings for employees on zero hours contracts are £188, compared to
£479 for permanent workers. (Guardian Sat 12th March 2016, Eleanor
Ainge Roy).
Links: Imagining Other contents page
Notes on Socialism before Marx
Notes on socialism (since Marx)
'Alternatives' - in notes on Imagining Other