Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Vast inequality at the global level is mirrored at the national level: in the UK the richest 1%
of households in the UK now holds more wealth than over half of the population making it
one of the developed worlds most unequal nations. The richest 1,000 people alone own
more wealth than 40% of the population, or 25.6 million peopleiii. Meanwhile, over a million
people are reliant on food banks, 22% of whom struggle with insecure work, low wages
and high living costs.iv
an exemplar of the free market model, is plagued by a Marxist inspired lethal insurgencyviii
that has grown as rapidly as its economy, one described by the former prime minister
Manmohan Singh as the countrys biggest internal security threat. The insurgency draws
strength from the deep sense of grievance and anger felt by many rural Indians who have
seen little benefit from Indias rapid economic growth. Some 42% of its 1.21 billion people
remain on less than $1.25 a day while Inequality has doubled in the last 20 yearsix . Caste
and other related factors also play a role in the conflict and it is clearly facile to assert that a
free market model can be left to get on with solving the problem of poverty without any
state intervention to both mediate conflict and ensure fair distribution of the benefits of
growth.
Right wing commentators often argue that inequality drives competitive individualism and
aspirational values that lead to material improvement for oneself and wider society. Yet the
findings of the inequality trust are the opposite: beyond a certain point inequality reduces
social mobility and opportunities for advancement in contrast to more equal societies such
as Norway, Sweden and Denmarkx.
The economy itself may also be subject to instability and financial collapse. Studies by two
senior research officers at the IMF found that once a country had entered a period of
growth, income distribution was by far the most important factor associated with how long
that growth lasted; the more equal the distribution the longer the growth period lastedxi. A
separate paper by the same authors concluded that extreme inequality not just shortened
periods of economic growth but could trigger financial collapse. As the authors put it The
recent global economic crisis, with its roots in U.S. financial markets, may have resulted, in part at
least, from the increase in inequalityxii.
Another major report Fair Society, Healthy Livesxiii by professor Marmot also brought
together a wealth of data linking inequality and health in the UK. The report highlighted the
social gradient in health - the lower a persons social position, the worse his or her health.
This proved to be the case at every grade, including middle and upper stratas of society,
not just those who were least well off. The report concluded that action should focus on
reducing the gradient in health and not just focus on poverty reduction experienced by the
bottom tenth of the population.
The report also highlighted the impact of inequality in illness on the economy: productivity
losses of 31-33 billion per year, lost taxes and higher welfare payments in the range of 2032 billion per year and additional NHS healthcare costs well in excess of 5.5 billion per year.
If no action is taken, the cost of treating the various illnesses that result from inequalities in
the level of obesity alone will rise from 2 billion per year to nearly 5 billion per year in
2025.
cover high rent, poor quality accommodation? The struggle, stress and insecurity of such a
lifestyle, inevitably affects all relationships but particularly those of family.
Childhood
The home learning environment has the strongest single effect on educational outcomes for
children at age 10. A poor HLE is associated with a low level of mothers education, larger
families and living in areas of higher deprivationxv. This further adds to the inheritability of
inequality. The effects of primary school are also much more important for disadvantaged
students than advantaged ones and later educational success is strongly influenced by your
level of attainment at 11, underlying the importance of primary schools to reduce
inequality.
Globalisation
Research highlighted by the Equality Trust suggests that global trade and immigration drive
economic inequality by causing a wage decrease for those with a low level of education
while causing a wage increase for others with a high level of education. However the effect
of global trade on the wage distribution is substantially larger than the influence of
immigration. Globalisation also increases the scope for tax avoidance which can increase
financial fragility and inequality.
In a separate report by the Tax Justice Network, the degree of expanding global inequality
through tax avoidance and evasion is far greater than any estimate captured by the Gini coefficientxvi and other measurements that necessarily rely on official government dataxvii . The
report conservatively estimates off shore wealth between $21 trillion and $32 trillion of
financial assets owned by High Net worth Individuals in tax havensxviii (compare this to UK
GDP for 2014 which was $3.06 trillion, for USA $17.42 trillionxix). These estimates do not
include the value of real estate, art or jewels. Assertions about the unaffordability of a
welfare state for the UK or indeed any government simply do not bear scrutiny when
compared to the staggering size of wealth extraction now taking place through tax evasion
and avoidance.
Technological advancement
Technological advancement is the explanation for income inequality proposed by orthodox
economic thinking. Rapid technological change automates work once done by skilled trade jobs as
well as low skilled workers, while increasing demand for high skilled new technology workers leads
to higher pay.. In effect technology hollows out the middle which leads to the observed increasesxx
in the number of high wage and low wage jobs as seen in the UK between 1975 and 1999. New
Technology also makes possible the creation of new businesses with low start-up costs, employing
few people but generating vast income. At the bottom end, technology has no effect on low skilled
workers who do non routine work such as cleaning, care work and other service industry
occupations.
This gross distortion of the economy is multiplied by the use to which such debt based money is put:
around 31% goes to residential property which pushes up money supply faster than wages, a further
20% goes to commercial real estate (office buildings and other business property) and around 32%
goes into financial products and services. Only 8% goes to the real economy of non-financial
businessesxxix.
At the heart of this dysfunctional system is a self-serving financial sector which is both a driver and
beneficiary of inequality. 60% of the rise in income share between 1998 and 2008 of the top decile
accrued to finance workers while pay for lower and middle income earners stalled, resulting in
increased household borrowing that encouraged the growth of the financial sectorxxx. Household
debt alone now stands at a record level of 1.4 trillion greater than the current national
debt - with nearly nine million Britons going into debt just to cover their bills xxxi.
A robust and progressive taxation system. The size of the challenge is set out in a report on
tax evasion by the tax expert Richard Murphy which estimated that in 2014 alone, the tax
gap of 120 Billionxxxii more than the total annual cost of the NHS.
Decrease the wage gap through introducing low pay ratios, a ceiling on top rates of pay and
a living wagexxxiii
Promote trade union and employment rights by extending industrial democracy and worker
representationxxxiv.
Fundamental monetary reform that removes the power to create money from banks and
instead, give this to Bank of England or a new committee that decides whether to create
money it must be accountable to Parliament and protected from abuse by vested
interests. Just as importantly money creation should be free from debt and spent in the real
economy to create jobs.xxxv
xxi
VICKI BIRCHFIELD & MARKUS M.L. CREPAZ: The impact of constitutional structures and collective and
competitive veto points on income inequality in industrialized democracies (referenced by the Equality Trust)
xxii
Larry Bartels: Economic Inequality and Political Representation
xxiii
Institute of Public Policy Research: Political inequality: Why British democracy must be reformed and
revitalised
xxiv
Rosset, Giger, Bernauer: More Money, Fewer Problems? Cross-Level Effects of Economic Deprivation on
Political Representation
xxv
See Positive Money website: How Banks Create Money
xxvi
Bank of England: Money Creation in the Modern Economy, quarterly bulleting 2014 Q1
xxvii
Positive Money: Fixing Our Broken Economy A Simple Guide for the Rest of Us
xxviii
Positive Money: Debt
xxix
Positive Money: Financial Crises and Recessions
xxx
New Economics Foundation: Mythbuster the City is vital to Britain
xxxi
Centre for Social Justice: Future Finance report June 2015
xxxii
Richard Murphy: The Tax Gap (2014), tax evasion in 2014 and what can be done about it
xxxiii
Centre for Labour and Social Studies (CLASS): Why Inequality Matters
xxxiv
xxxv
Centre for Labour and Social Studies (CLASS): Why Inequality Matters
Positive Money: What We Need