Does Inequality Matter: A UK View

A Too Much book review: November 22, 2004

Ben Jackson and Paul Segal, Why Inequality Matters. London: Catalyst, 2004. 64 p.

The United States and the UK have shared incredibly similar economic histories over recent decades. Both countries, a quarter century ago, elected as their top executives intense advocates of the unbridled "free market." Both countries, ever since then, have seen enormous quantities of wealth concentrate in the hands of their richest citizens.

And both countries, maybe worst of all, have two major political parties that refuse to even entertain the notion that letting wealth concentrate just might not be a good idea.

But there the similarities end. In the UK, unlike the United States, a serious political challenge is now emerging to the conventional wisdom that modern societies need not worry about the wealth that's concentrating at the top.

The Catalyst, a new London-based think tank, is helping lead this vigorous challenge, and two of its researchers, the political scientist Ben Jackson and the economist Paul Segal, have just authored a slim new work that sums up the case for paying attention when the rich become too rich.

Their joint effort, Why inequality matters, begins where most Anglo-American discussions about social justice start floundering, on the concept of "equal opportunity."

In the UK, as in the United States, all leading national politicians position themselves as against poverty and for equal opportunity. But equal opportunity, they add, doesn't require equality in income or wealth. Societies can have equal opportunity, they claim, without equality, or anything close to it.

Actually, they can't. Deeply unequal societies, Ben Jackson and the Paul Segal demonstrate ably, simply cannot and do not provide anything close to equal opportunity.

The "promotion of equal opportunity," Jackson and Segal point out, requires "greater material equality: for individuals to realise their potential, they will have to enjoy roughly similar economic and social starting points."

Those nations across the world that have fashioned societies where great numbers of people can and do regularly improve their lot in life, "have only done so," the authors add, "by
promoting greater material equality."

These same nations, the authors go on to show, nurture with their relative equality an ever-present sense of social cohesion and solidarity. Unequal societies never achieve this cohesion — and everyone in them, not just the poor, pays the price, in "lower levels of interpersonal trust" and "higher levels of violent crime."

"When the rich are very rich, and the poor are very poor, it is much harder for them to meet as equal citizens," Jackson and Segal add. "Indeed, it is hard for them to meet at all. Large inequalities lead to radically divergent consumotion patterns and lifestyles, and to mutual incomprehension and lack of sympathy between individuals who are nominally members of the same civic community."

We can, Jackson and Segal note hopefully, undo these inequalities and move once again to making our civic communities real communities.

"Governments are not powerless before inexorable anti-egalitarian forces," they advise. "Governments play a large role in the determination of economic inequality and can choose to reduce it or increase it."

Jackson and Segal build their case for caring about our common Anglo-American concentration of wealth with well-chosen nuggets of statistical and social evidence. Their emphasis throughout remains on the UK situation. But that shouldn't discourage any American from picking up Why Inequality Matters, since British and American defenders of inequality are essentially spouting the same mishegas.

Listen to British Prime Minister Tony Blair explain, as quoted by Jackson and Segal, why he opposes higher tax rates on the rich: "Every single piece of evidence that has ever been done indicates that large numbers of those taxpayers — probably the wealthiest — would simply hire a whole lot of new accountants to do this and that."

Now listen to U.S. President George W. Bush, on the 2004 campaign trail, explain why he opposes higher tax rates on the rich: "You know what happens with this 'tax the rich' deal. That's why they've got accountants and lawyers, so the rich figure out how not to pay, and you get stuck with the tab."

Both Tony Blair and George W. Bush are blowing smoke. Tony Blair, Jackson and Segal point out, has never produced any "evidence" to support his claim that the rich can always avoid taxes, "which is scarecely surprising, as none exists."

What does exist is a simple reality. Deeply unequal societies have always been — and will always be — deeply dysfunctional. Jackson and Senal, in Why Inequality Matters, make this case in a single easily readable gulp.

Sam Pizzigati, editor, Too Much