Is inequality iniquitous?
So what's wrong with inequality? As today's National Equality Panel (NEP) report [3.7MB PDF] puts it:
"[S]ome might argue that inequalities... are inevitable in a modern economy, or are functional in creating incentives that promote overall economic growth."
But a look at the international comparisons suggests there is nothing inevitable about wide gaps between rich and poor in developed nations. Britain's inequality is well above the average for OECD nations, far greater than Sweden, Denmark, Holland, France or Germany.
And today's report derides the idea that inequality boosts economic performance.
"Comparisons... with other equally or more economically successful countries, but with lower inequality, undermine arguments about the inevitability or functionality of the extent of the inequalities in the UK that we document. Moreover, the view that greater equality would stifle diversity has to be set against the counter view that it is inequality that suppresses the ability of individuals to develop their talents."
All the political parties are signed up to the idea of "equality of opportunity" but there is less unanimity on the need to diminish the gap between rich and poor. The NEP argues, however, that you cannot have one without the other:
"Where only certain achievements are valued, and where large disparities in material rewards are used as the yardstick of success and failure, it is hard for those who fall behind to flourish.
"Wide inequalities erode the bonds of common citizenship and recognition of human dignity across economic divides. A number of analysts have pointed to the ways in which large inequalities in the kinds of economic outcome we look at are associated with societies having lower levels of happiness or well-being in other respects, and to the social problems and economic costs resulting from these."
Research by the University of Nottingham [748KB PDF] shows that greater inequality is linked to more kids dropping out of school; more violent crime; more people ending up in prison; more babies dying and more mental illness. There is also a strong correlation between greater inequality and less social mobility as well as less trust. It seems that the more equal a society, the happier it tends to be.
It is inevitable, I suppose, that people have been leaping to microphones to suggest that today's report is an indictment of the current government. Certainly, the evidence suggests that Labour has not delivered on Tony Blair's 1997 promise that "the new Britain is a meritocracy".
But social change takes at least a generation to achieve, far longer than the Parliamentary cycle. In that sense, it is too early to say whether the current government has made any meaningful progress.
Income (as opposed to social) inequality is arguably easier to address through the tax and welfare systems. If one looks at, say, full-time weekly incomes for men over the past forty years, one can see three distinct phases.
The 70s saw the income gap relatively stable and narrow. The 80s and 90s saw the gap between rich and poor widen significantly and the noughties saw stability return, albeit without any sign of the income chasm narrowing.
The problem for the politicians is that measures to reduce social or income inequality will always be controversial because they mean neutralising the advantages of wealth - a prospect that those with money and influence will fight hard against.
I'm 
© 2012~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~49~RS~)
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Not sure. Statistics are always misused to put a specific viewpoint. Perhaps the gap is growing because there are more well off and "median" people ? Perhaps the work-shy and the welfare dependent are growing because of political engineering to expect more entitlements ? Perhaps the lack of an ability to fail in the education system means that too many school leavers expect a gold plated job on day one without wanting to work for it ?
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Very convincing graph of health & social problems vs. income inequality. And the three stages on the second graph of full-time weekly earnings almost correlates with the Labour-Tory-Labour phases of government.
In the last few years, for families at least, income equality has already partially "been addressed through the tax and welfare system". The tax credits system means that a man with children would end up with an additional slice of money on top of his 10% centile wage.
The graphs don't give the full picture though. Surely a large proportion of the health and social problems come from the economically inactive and the 'underclass', who don't appear in the full-time earnings statistics.
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Oh, I get it, all these statistics mean:
US = Baaah, it stinks!
Sweden = Wow, it rocks!
Where would be Cuba, North Korea or the Soviet Union in the chart? All we have here is biased statistics used to make biased conclusions. An attempt to rationalise envy.
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What we have in the UK (and even more in USA)isn't really meritocracy but Machiavellianism. You can earn lots of money by hard work, whatever your starting point, but only in certain professions, and it helps if you're prepared to junk your morals along the way. Hard-working teachers, nurses and care workers earn far less than hard-working lawyers, bankers and directors, even where qualifications are the same. The countries with higher equality tend to have higher taxes, but the same thing adopted over here would cause outrage. This is because we are encouraged to grab what we can for ourselves, by whatever means, but heartily resent sharing it with those less fortunate or less lucky. Those who make it to the top - well done! But now stop to consider those who, for whatever reasons, earn less than you. Grabbing all you can and then jealously guarding it against deduction is not civilised behaviour. It is little different to the mugger or robber who points a gun at them out of poverty or resentment and relieves them of their loot! You are only creating a bad world for yourself and others.
A fairer system is to reduce the take-home income at the top end of the scale and use it to fund tax breaks for those working people in lower-paid jobs. After all, not everyone can be a company director, or who would do the 'toad work'? As the report points out, this is what happens in the more equal countries. It isn't stifling creativity or flair, but a fairer country is a better one for all of us.
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_dark_crystal_ wrote: "Where would be Cuba, North Korea or the Soviet Union in the chart? All we have here is biased statistics used to make biased conclusions."
The graph title clearly says it's limietd to OECD nations - countires that enjoy a broadly similar standard of living to the UK, unlike Cuba or North Korea.
Oh, and the Soviot Union doesn't exist.
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The only surprising thing about the figures is that anyone should be surprised by what is happening. We are in an era when anyone with financial power is increasing their income as much as they can - particularly the banks. All the bank's income is just fees from everyone else. Where do people suppose all the bonuses come from - just us? You can not distribute £5 - 10 billion to a just few thousand people and not expect the gap between rich and poor to get bigger. It's absolutely predictable. And it is surprising that politicians don't see that something needs to be done about it.
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And to resolve our problems, the government will reduce expenditure on state education and universities.
In this upside down world, does that mean vote Conservative for social equality?
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How are these statistics calculated? Do they use figures for all incomes from HMRC or, as I suspect, a small sample which is then extrapolated? Are the incomes compared before or after tax? All too often these sort of figures are bandied about with no real provenance and just accepted.
How does inequality 'suppress the ability of individuals to develop their talents'? It is of no interest to me that some people earn much more than I do, even bank employees. It shows that the opportunities are there.
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Even allowing a certain degree of social subjectivity in Easton's stance and the OECD table, there is no doubt widening inequality is not conducive to social mobility and detrimental to aspiration, especially post New Labour's ineffective measures but cacophonous lip service accompanying its meddling. First off: meritocracy is NOT elitism; in a social context the two are mutually exclusive. Secondly, the glass ceiling Milburn et al huffed and puffed to smash is, peculiar to UK, a self-perceived and imposed hurdle rather than limitations set by employers or professions. New Labour's meddlings have decimated UK's infrastructure, making it more difficult for Average Joe to compete with the already rich for a slice. It's an irony the meddling of Milburn's party consolidated a strata of sub-Average Joes, yet he chairs a panel looking into the problem....
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#3. _dark_crystal_
'An attempt to rationalise envy.'
Why should envy need rationalising here? It seems perfectly rational to object to someone else having a claim on 100 times more resources than I do, unless there is some as yet undemonstrated mechanism by which this is absolutely necessary for my well-being.
#8.AnotherEngineer
'It is of no interest to me that some people earn much more than I do, even bank employees. It shows that the opportunities are there.'
The opportunities are there for a few. It should concern you when it reaches these proportions; they are using up resources your children will need one day, and using them to ensuring the system keeps things just the way they are.
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#9. ShirleyWoo
'New Labour's meddlings have decimated UK's infrastructure, making it more difficult for Average Joe to compete with the already rich for a slice.'
Yet,as you say 'widening inequality is not conducive to social mobility and detrimental to aspiration' which would suggest that we're into positive feedback here. The rich have the power to stay rich, come what may, and to make sure their children are too.That's hardly meritocracy!
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tom_p_willis, the question was purely rhetorical and the fact that the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore is irrelevant. What I'm pointing out is that driving a country towards socialism doesn't make life better for everyone, on the contrary, it drives a country to the wall. And trying at all cost to remove income inequalities, which naturally occur since we're all different, is a drive towards socialism.
The one chart I find the most questionable is the second one, with the 'health and social problems' axis. Apparently this 'research' comes from the 'Equality Trust'. I don't see how you could measure 'health and social problems' in any accurate way. Simply put, the chart has been engineered to make a point. Take Spain and France for example. Spain has got an unemployment rate of nearly 20% (40% among young people) and still the chart considers that Spain has significantly less health and social problems than France. Take Portugal and the US. The US has a slightly longer life expectancy than Portugal, but the chart considers that the US is abysmal in terms of health and social problems and much worse than Portugal. The assertion in this same study that inequality means 'more babies dying' is particularly ludicrous.
I couldn't care less if my neighbour earned a million per year and I, only £10,000. If the next year he earned ten times more, that still wouldn't make me any worse. Now try to take his millions away, and he will simply move to a more friendly place, and his wealth won't trickle down to my neighbourhood, and his business will close and the jobs will go.
If you are burning with envy, sure you will pour scorn on the rich and find all kind of reasons why it's good to 'spread the wealth' (a la Obama).
I suppose WolfiePeters would rather have the country go completely bankrupt while inflating the pound to nothingness rather than accept any cuts in the public sector.
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Maybe we should substitute the word envy for inequality. What gives anyone the right to think that they are entitled to be better off than someone else without working for it? We all start off equal, those who choose not to take advantage of the education that this nation gives every child as a right do not deserve the rewards. Likewise those who choose not to work do not deserve any reward. There is no point in being envious of those people who came into this world with riches, usually that is because their parents worked hard to give their kids a good life. Those parents who fail to encourage their children to take advantage of the opportunities availiable fail as parents and have no grounds for complaint. Sadly this government has encouraged sloth and laziness by rewarding the lazy and uncaring through the benefits system and paid for this by taxing the diligent.
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Facts always conflict with our myths...we like myths better.
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There are a few points that are odd.
Almost 90 % of the UK male population make less than £ 50 k per year. When I was looked for my first mortgage, I was told that borrowing more than 3.5 times your salary was lunatic. I checked the logic and it made sense. On this basis, almost 90 % cannot afford a mortgage for an average price house. And if house prices return to the rate of climb of two years ago, as the agents suggest, no one can save up for one either. So who buys houses and how?
I've lived or spent a lot of time in some of the other countries listed and I know that truthfullness with tax returns is not at the same level as in the UK or US. It's treated as much more of a game because tax fraud is less well controlled and much more lightly punished. So I have some doubts about the first figure.
Crime, health and other accident statistics are often treated even more casually in some of those countries.
I am not saying things are wonderful in the UK, just that you should question comparisons. We are often, even now, a little more honest (well, less dishonest) in reporting numbers.
I don't have a problem about people making £ 50k per year. In fact, I'm surprised only a bit more than 10 % make it. I do have a problem with people who have £ 1 M bonuses and believe that they deserve them. Especially when there are so many living on the state pension or a similar income.
And the do the southern EU figures include the people I read about the other day? African fruit pickers living in conditions that are close to slavery?
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#12._dark_crystal_
'I couldn't care less if my neighbour earned a million per year and I, only £10,000. If the next year he earned ten times more, that still wouldn't make me any worse.'
Well, if that's really what you think, I guess you'd be getting the world you deserve.You're a banker's dream,mate!
#13.kaybraes
'We all start off equal...'
If you really believe that...
'Those parents who fail to encourage their children to take advantage of the opportunities availiable fail as parents and have no grounds for complaint.'
And the children...are they equally guilty?
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This country has come a long way but there is a long way to go too. Historically, in the UK we opted for the evolution of our economy and institutions to reach the certain levels and support the wealth distribution. Successive governments took different views and accelerated or stall the process. New Labour started well and put the foundation to accelerate the process but they seem to have lost interest. Nevertheless, distribution of wealth is happening – it is a quiet and long British (r)evolution!
I am worried about the aspirations of our young people. Confidence, aims and opportunities are simply not there - and that is the wealth that we in Britain find very difficult to distribute.
Social legacies of diminishing class system are still very much alive and used as pretext for discrimination in many places. This must be the only place in the world were still by the way someone speaks people can tell what schools he or she went to as well as what school his or her father went as well!
Investing in the children for the UK parents is still very much privilege and custom of wealthy while the people who come to live in the UK from abroad are prepared to invest in their children regardless of wealth and social status.
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The income gap is only relevent as far as social inequality is concerned, however what is in fact even more relevent is what proportion of the states finances are funded by each income group.
The rich finance the UK. Not the middle class and not the poor. In fact the top 1% of income earners pay more than half of the UK's Total Income Tax of (£147,856,000,000 in 2008-09, according to Revenue and Customs).
The full article explaining this is here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8417205.stm
In fact, the people who fund almost all benefits, tax breaks and various other concessions that endevour to alleviate the income gap are in fact the top 1% of income earners. To suggest they do more is not only insanely stupid, it reekes of greed and laziness.
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diarmidwp: "Well, if that's really what you think, I guess you'd be getting the world you deserve.You're a banker's dream,mate!"
So if other people are more successful than you, that makes you angry? Don't you know anyone that earns a lot more than you? What do you propose to do about it and what do you think the consequences will be? Don't you know there are in the world people who scrape by on much less than even the poorest in the UK, and still don't complain?
Taxing the bankers to death, it's like shooting yourself in the foot, you might as well ask all of them to go to Switzerland. I guess you don't understand that when they do, jobs will go away too. On the other hand, if we did cut taxes to the minimum, eventually there would be plenty of jobs for everyone, and wages would increase naturally through the law of supply and demand.
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"On this basis, almost 90 % cannot afford a mortgage for an average price house. And if house prices return to the rate of climb of two years ago, as the agents suggest, no one can save up for one either. So who buys houses and how?"
Simple, they buy with a partner.
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i feel there is nothing really wrong with inequality. this is life. what is wrong is those in authority, education, employment, health care etc saying that the offer equal opportunity, equal access to services, equal access to education etc when clearly this is not the case.
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Interesting, though I'd have a lot more faith in the inequality versus social problems graph if the sample of countries didn't appear so odd. It's not the OECD, the EU or the G20, or any other logical grouping of states that I can think of, though admittedly I can't get the report to open so I can't see if there is some logic to the sample. If not, it really does take away from the the significance of the research as it suggests results may have been cherry-picked to provide a clear finding.
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Something not mentioned in this article, but which I think is particularly pertinent to this discussion, is the apparent need for "a fairer tax system", which has been suggested by almost every colour of politician in the recent months. I do agree that any system of tax should be fundamentally fair, and that those who earn more pay more, and earn less pay less. Following this line of argument, isn't it suggesting (not that I necessarily am - before you start proclaiming how ludicrous and morally incomprehensible my suggestion is) that we have one flat rate of income tax for all earners? This would mean a drastic reduction in tax for higher earners and a larger tax contribution from lower earners. Sounds technically much fairer and, to my point, more equal.
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I have quite serious concerns on the political bias in the report which essentially starts with plenty of perhaps well placed righteous anger at the inequality but essentially offers no obvious reason for it being a bad thing (I'm not a big fan of relative poverty except in the case of limited resources like housing which of course is managed to provide it to the poorest in society - correctly in my opinion). If the "cake" were the same size as it was in the comparatives then a good case could be made for rich keeping it all to themselves. However the cake is always getting bigger when the economy grows and the talented,lucky,hard working or belligerent get more for themselves. Is there a solution to this? I suspect not this side of the command economy - the dross or quality will always rise to top on average and it's a fact.
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The charts appear to tell a tale - income inequality is the root of our social ills.
Although it would be really useful to know the basis for the inequality chart and the health and wealfare comparisons, its is not very useful to compare the growth of inequality in UK over time with the UK's position on the index of health and social problems (which compares countries)at some undefined point in time.
Its more than possible that the index of health and social problems has been moving upwards (getting worse) during the periods when the growth of income inequality has been flat, or vice versa.
Perhaps what is driving the index of health and social problems up has been the decline in social cohesion due to the increase in population and the failure of the governments social engineering strategies.
It would also be helpful to understand what is happening to gross (pre-tax) income inequality beyond the UK. As we move from a manufacturing based economy to a skill based economy the forces that hold down the value of lower skilled or unskilled work are due to globalisation and the rise of the emerging economies.
We should focus less on how much the top 1% are earning and focus more on making the bulk of working people more economically productive.
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Well, it's a couple of weeks since the Haiti earthquake - plenty of time to move from "those poor people have nothing - that's appalling" to "people are making more money than me - that's appalling".
Speaking as a low earner, perhaps the anger people are expressing on here towards the undeserving millionaires is a way of assuaging their guilt at their own feather-bedded existences? I'm sure mine is.
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I believe there is a simple reason for our inequality in society between 'rich' or 'advantaged' and 'poor' or 'disadvantaged'.
It is the 'elephant in the room' that nobody notices but is there all the time - undermining all efforts of any government so far to begin to crack the problem. Education? Well - yes, but not as we do it in Britain. Its all been tried here - in state education - grammar and secondary modern - comprehensives - sponsored schools - directly funded schools - all too late in the process of learning anyway and at the other end Sure Start - worthy but not addressing the most pressing problem.
As children grow and develop they do it at a rate determined by a complex set of genetic factors which mean that there is a wide distribution in the age at which formal learning can effectively start FOR THAT CHILD.
By starting the formal learning process at age five and earlier, this exposes too great a portion of unready children to an activity in which they cannot succeed - so they are turned off for good! These will be the persistent learning-resistant brigade who are doomed to get little from the subsequent educational process. With this goes the persistent under-achievement that perpetuates through the generations with all the concomitant woes of ignorance and poverty - in wealth and aspiration.
The answer is obvious - raise the start of Primary schooling to six and not a month sooner. This will be an awesome task for our educational system but without starting from that very simple premise nothing radical will come in the way of progress to greater equality.
Nursery schooling will gain a further year for children to blossom socially and emotionally and the brighter children can still be nurtured by understanding parents until the school process 'catches up'. They'll succeed anyway!
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"12. At 7:52pm on 27 Jan 2010, _dark_crystal_ wrote:
I couldn't care less if my neighbour earned a million per year and I, only £10,000. If the next year he earned ten times more, that still wouldn't make me any worse. Now try to take his millions away, and he will simply move to a more friendly place, and his wealth won't trickle down to my neighbourhood, and his business will close and the jobs will go."
Would you care if your neighbour got his million by withholding money from you though? How do you think the very wealthy achieve it? They are not King Midas. They can't generate anything out of thin air. They achieve their wealth by controlling its distribution.
The very highest paid have been getting out of control in recent years, harvesting more and more for themselves. This is why some kind of control is required, as it is when any group of people act up to the detriment of others.
Before anyone wheels out the tired old politics of envy rhetoric could you perhaps explain why it's unacceptable for me to demand, say, a more progressive tax system but completely fine for a CEO to get a million pound pay rise by, in effect, informally taxing a thousand employees a thousand pounds each?
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The middle graph referenced to 'University of Nottingham' needs to be removed from this article.
It is the kind of graph that does not inform anything, and gives statistics a bad name - whoever generated it is either skewing data to meet their own ends, is a cretin or, to give them the benefit of the doubt, important accompanying information has been omitted when the graph was inserted.
Contrast your Figure 2.6a with that one, look at the labels on the axes, the data points, and the different data series plottedo n the same axes, so you can examine the data, and see if the conclusions reached are supported by that same data. Then look back at the terrible one and see how it has been labeled 'low' and 'high'. No sources are stated, no units are stated, or even the year from which the data was taken. You might as well as drawn it on a napkin.
I am very interested in seeing this debate happen, but misleading graphics do not add to anything, or present the facts in any way. Finally the source isn't the University of Nottingham, it is 'Wilkinson and Pickett' or even 'The Equality Trust'. Whether good or bad research, it should be attributed to the right source.
Finally an article on graphical representation might be a useful one - they appear constantly in news articles, yet are often badly drawn. Such an article can be based on any of the work by Tufte, particularly 'The Visual Display of Quantitive Information'.
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To leave aside the more frivolous (if not just plain silly) comments like those at #3, it is interesting to compare the conflict areas (those with big violence issues) of the countries at the extremities. It is also interesting to note the way "former" conflict zones do rather better when they emerge from their conflicts.
Or maybe it's just the climate....
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Sorry but the "hard work will be rewarded" argument simply does not apply in the UK. We have a vast array of salaried people working far in excess of the working time directive for no extra reward than keeping their jobs in a market where 100's would kill to work there. There are a few (very few) who are financially rewarded for working "smarter" and there are a majority who are rewarded for being feckless, either feckless and priviledged (in closed shop professions)or the feckless underclass (on the social). There's an old adage "don't be too good at your job, because if you're irreplaceable, you're unpromotable." Meanwhile the totally inept get "booted up the ladder" to keep them out of the way. Also why are hostile foreign takeovers given financial support from the Govt. yet employee buyouts/rescues are totally ignored?
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To _dark_crystal_ @12
I'm not opposed to reducing public sector expenditure. I advise everyone (especially present and future governments) to read two books written by Leslie Chapman. The titles are: ‘Your Disobedient Servant’ (1978) and ‘Waste Away’ (1982) both published by Chatto. Amongst other matters, the first book covers how the author reduced waste and, thereby, reduced expenditure by over one third in his section of the civil service.
However, from what I know of our best universities, they have pretty well cut their costs for several years. As for schools, I'd agree that a lot of present funding may very well be better used, but, the system is in such a state and the teaching profession so severely devalued that they need investment. On top of the present situation, we have to look to the future. We have a country that apparently survives, for now, on banking and financial services, shopping centres, and not a lot more. We need to strengthen education in order to find something else or in few years we'll be reduced to third worls status.
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Mark, this panders to the UK's obsession with income inequality as opposed to wealth inequality - not the same thing at all. Income iequality is actually needed if social mobility is to be achieved (how can anyone work their way up unless they are allowed to earn well?)
Every UK government though has shied away from tackling wealth inequality - even the bright red socialist Governments of the 1960s and 1970s, who levied income taxes of up to 97% (yes really, that is not a typo) never taxed the wealthy in any meaningful way. They taxed high income earners, who may or may not have been wealthy. So the rich kept their money largely unscathed, but even successful working people struggled to achieve the kind of living standards even then common in Continental Europe.
The Tory plan to cut inheritance tax shows that nothing has changed. A young person from a poor background will be taxed and taxed to reduce the national debt, while someone earning far less and contributing far less to the economy may just have the good fortune to receive a large inheritance, giving a good living standard, financial security - and the ability to buy a nice house (as mentioned in several posts).
Interesting anaylsis though, especially the dreadful ranking of the US against that of several prosperous European states.
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I can understand why people are cynical about the Nottingham University scatter graph but they should read 'The Spirit Level' written by the people who set up the Equality trust. They are highly qualified academic epidemiologists and the book does answer the reasonable questions that have been expressed here.
Personally, after reading the book, I believe that inequality is bad for the richest as well as the poorest. Even elements of the Conservative party now agree that society not only exists but that it matters as well.
If there were no society making being 'good' advantageous and punishing 'bad', the legal framework and the police would be completely unable to stop life disintegrating into anarchy.
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#33
"how can anyone work their way up unless they are allowed to earn well?"
So you make some assumptions in order to back up your case for "necessary" income inequality, firstly that the only way is "up" via "income enhancement", and secondly that it should be necessary for someone who cannot do better than they already are doing, having to try to do so anyway. You do not touch on "being better at what I do", "being a better human being", "making myself a success", "having contentment", "having peace of mind" and a whole host of others that have absolutely nothing to do with money.
There are couplings to many words that appear in wisdom of the past, a very important example being the words greed and envy, one driving the other. In order to make "greed" work (as an incentive) you have to make it moral for one person to rip another off. The person who is ripped off may or may not have been "envious"; if they were they learn a lesson but if they were not then they may have been exploited.
This article is an attempt to make plain the facts about having a huge gulf between the wealthiest and poorest people in one locale, and as to how that may "engineer" the behaviours at that place. It may suggest that people with means tend to isolate themselves from those without, or be very selective about the company they keep. It may suggest how a media interest may enhance the profile of the people with means way beyond their import to just about anybody with any sense.
All that adds up to throwing the mud back at the person stuck and sinking, a bit like those who cross over the road rather than help someone in distress. It started with "me, me" but what happens when "me, me" is all alone?
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The fact that the report shows that income is correlated with a number of other factors does not prove cause and effect. The inference is that wealthier people have better opportunities, including education, health and a whole host of other benefits. However, there is no proof for this. It is equally likely that more intelligent people hold better jobs and are hence wealthier, the intelligence being the cause and the wealth the effect, rather than vice versa. The greater intelligence also leads to healthier lifestyles, better performance in the education system etc.
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Angel_in_Transit @ 35
Oh dear, you seem to have a problem with the whole concept of risk and reward. In effect, you are advocating some kind of "each according to their ability to each according to their need" society - Marxism.
A number of countries tried that in the last century and the results were uniformly disasterous. Only North Korea is left, and half their population are starving as a result. And every one of those countries had to close their borders and turn themselves into prisons just to stop the flow of the talented and hard-working looking for a better life elsewhere.
Get real.
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What underpins a society is what the people in that society think it is there for. This is much a case of history, cultural attitudes and beliefs.
I was born in the years just after the Second World War. What became apparent to me in later years was the intense social solidarity of that period. Some people had enough, some just enough and many had just a little, yet the rehousing after the Blitz left them all in the same street. So there was a common identity of current circumstances and a clear memory of the hard times experienced by most in the war. It wasn't an equal society by any means but it was a society outwardly content.
However it became apparent to me as an older child that by the mid-Fifties this solidarity was breaking down and the previous class-based attitudes began to play more in the popular perceptions. I never understood why but all of a sudden you had to have money and show that you had money. As a country we have seemed to become trapped in this myth that somehow having money is good.
I agree money is useful but after you have a place to live with your own front door, enough food to eat, clothes on your back, you are warm and washed what else do you need? After that it is what you like and enjoy but even then you have to know what is enough.
I fear we have lost our moral and intellectual compass and these graphs show it all too well. I would suggest that a good place to start would be defining a common history in which we could all share.
I would also suggest that we remove ourselves from an economy based on debt: now that is scary and has just not worked.
Equality derives from a common contentment and fulfilment. It is hard to picture that in modern Britain. We have had such before and we could have it again. Are we up to the transformation?
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#37
I would respectfully suggest that you brush up your comprehension skills, and, at the same time learn a few lessons about life.
The road from any "A" to any "B" involves many choices and decisions, most of which will be entirely out of your control. For example, if you are on foot, you may find your passage blocked, and your timetable screwed. Nothing to do with Marxism or any other political -ism, just pure and chaotic fortune. Similarly, if you are in a car, you hit, or are hit by, another vehicle. Chaos and even, perhaps, fatality. You are in a train, or plane, or ship and you are at the mercy of the weather, delays etc; need I go on.
So we concentrate on things that involve learning. You go to a duff school but you find an interest and a teacher who is interested in helping you. You show potential talent but your fortune is short lived as prestigious universities scoff at your background, and have others of proven talent.
You get a job and are asked to perform tasks which you believe to be immoral; you complain and are fired.
Your life, in all these cases, depends on others. No -isms in sight.
You work at getting to know how human beings relate, so that you may find a partner. You fall in love and, for a time, all is bliss. You hit rock bottom when the relationship founders and breaks.
At the end of all this you suddenly realise you are not alone at all, as long as you have yourself, but for your entire life you have depended on others. Too late, you are dead.
There are some elementary lesson that need to be learned by every human being. It saddens me to know they have passed you by.
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There really is nothing new in this. There has been well established research evidence for years that wealth inequality is related to poor health; lower life expectancy and social problems. There has been well established research evidence for years that the "trickle down" theory of the effect of inequality on economic performance is pure bunk.
But we lie to ourselves. We blame the poor for being poor - they're feckless, they're unambitious, they smoke and drink and eat the wrong things. We invent stories to justify inequality.
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Andrew Morton (post no 40), I should be grateful if you would refer me to this research. As a scientist, I have been looking for it for a long time, but never found it. The research I believe you are referring to merely points to a correlation between weath and all of the other indicators. It DOES NOT prove that wealth is the cause and all the other indicators are the effect. I contend that natural intelligence is more likely the cause (i.e. should be on the abscissa in the graphs) and that wealth, along with the other indicators such as health, opportunuties for one's children etc, stem from that and are thus the effects. (see my post no 36).
It is only peoples' obsession with money and its political connotations and the seemingly simple solution of re-distribution of wealth (try re-distribution of intelligence) that lead people to believe the false conclusion of all this so called research.
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#40 and #41
I remember a very profound survey of the Civil Service, perhaps pre-New Labour, which found that heart attacks, strokes and premature deaths, depression, tension related illnesses and so on were found in low level staff but not in those at the higher levels. This was, if my memory is not failing me, reported quite widely at the time.
I am also aware of research carried out in Scandinavia on factory workers in an attempt to discover why there were high levels of mental health issues. It was found that repetition of menial tasks without adequate breaks, adequate personal control of their situation, and adequate leisure time, render workers to pernicious illnesses. Again this was reported widely at the time (1960's?).
The Health & Safety Executive have also published data on the effects of having too little control within the workplace which strongly point to demoralisation and deterioration of health.
My personal view is that all this should be common sense. I have worked in a call centre (it was one year and that is more than enough) where the goal posts were regularly shifted and computer monitoring of "output" enforced 100% of the time. I had a visual on my monitor showing me how "adequately" I was performing! Go into the "red" zone and you were escorted off the premises immediately. Such a clever way to influence a drone!
Trust human beings to find ways for others to have a less enjoyable time on the planet....
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#41
"It is only peoples' obsession with money and its political connotations and the seemingly simple solution of re-distribution of wealth (try re-distribution of intelligence) that lead people to believe the false conclusion of all this so called research."
In a roundabout way there may be some truth in this. Henry Ford ran his empire in the belief that consumerism would bring peace. He never hired accountants, and not once was his company audited.
He introduced modern machinery, higher pay, shorter hours, longer holidays, and bespoke accommodation for his workforce. A "money" person may have suggested he was committing commercial suicide but it was his competitors who had to change not Ford.
Ford treated people as human beings with the same feelings and aspirations as he had, if not quite to the same extremes. He wanted a "healthy" work force and he got it. No union necessary, Ford Motors was the union.
These days we look at money as if it rules us, gives us opportunity we may otherwise miss. But what do we spend it on? A mobile phone that enables to send inane messages and texts and becomes an addiction? A holiday in a country as far away as possible so that after fifteen days in the sun we can pretend our mind is broadened! We do not seem to know how to enjoy life without some gadget or other to fill the vacuum that our inadequacies will exploit.
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"Money it's a crime
Share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie
Money so they say
Is the root of all evil today
But if you ask for a rise it's no surprise that they're
giving none away"
Pink Floyd
The second line of this verse sums up the situation perfectly, many of us want to see a fairer distribution of wealth, but only if it is other people that you take the money off in order to give it to the poor.
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we teach equality... to everyone... and live in inequality..
We teach our children to aspire to greatness only to be disappointed and disillusioned when their time comes to make themselves equal within this world.
Everyone that has equality strives to keep someone else in inequality through labels and policies.
It also depends on what you define as equal does it not. If wealth of money and material belongings are a measure of equality then its an equality I gratefully choose to opt out of. If its a equality in human life and living of life then sign me up..
As a good man once said or sung..
We refuse to be
What you wanted us to be;
We are what we are:
That's the way (way) it's going to be. If you don't know!
You can't educate I
For no equal opportunity:
GJR must have been a good rant there 44# :D
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CommunityCriminal
I think they've pulled my comment at #44 because I quoted Pink Floyd's Money as I can't think of another reason for it to be pulled.
I was trying to make the point that we all want to see a fairer distribution of wealth but only as long as it's not our wealth being redistributed !
I thought just quoting one verse, putting it into quotation marks and crediting the band would be sufficient to cover the reproduction of copyrighted material but obviously the moderators think differently.
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So many people have criticized this article for it's use of statistics to back up it's main statement/argument. I doubt such an observation would be made if the argument in point was something they agreed with, nor do I think anyone is "above" using statistics to back up an argument. It would be an interesting world if these essays had no form of source information and were simply rants by the journalist on what they simply perceived to be true. Actually I think that type of journalism does exist but I'm glad to not see it here on the BBC.
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Um guess there's no copyright's on Bob then GJR still its a damn fine example
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Might I point out to LippyLippo that applying ambition and hard work to earn more money does not reflect the attitude of a mugger or other criminal? In a properly functioning job market you get a good salary or wage (or a low one for that matter) because your employer thinks the work you do is worth it. That's not grabbing all you can, it's taking what you're entitled to. It's also not Machiavellian, which implies cunning and duplicity. Has LippyLippo even read "The Prince"? Being forced to share your well-gotten gains with other people whom you don't know, and perhaps would not even like if you did, is just as conducive to resentment as the poverty that LippyLippo cites. What LippyLippo calls "fair" is merely what LippyLippo would like to see, most likely to his own advantage. And let us not forget that after all's said and done muggers and robbers are thieves, which people earning an honest living are not.
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Who pays the National Equality Panel,tax payers i assume,how about we fire all the people at NEP,CPS,safety board,minority advisors,gay an lesbian spokes people,NHS accountants,sports minister and ministry,pull out the EU and maybe we could get back to making England a free country once more.
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Well I think that the first graph could represent the question
'How un-representative of the people is my government ?'
Inequality in all factors of life stem from that.
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The key factor that is being ignored is immigration. A country can either operate a free maerket and have open doors OR have a high welfare culture and keep its doors shut. The USA generates huge wealth but has desperate poverty too - Japan is more equal but is populated by Japanese. Which approach do we want?
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"The problem for the politicians is that measures to reduce social or income inequality will always be controversial because they mean neutralising the advantages of wealth - a prospect that those with money and influence will fight hard against."
This problem is made worse by the fact that money plays such an important part in elections. Parties feel they have to rely on rich donors to finance their election campaigns The support of the wealthy owners of most of our media is also regarded as crucial.
The steady drip drip of stories in the tabloids depicting the poor as feckless, and the spread of the self fulfilling prophecy that voting makes no difference, causing the poor to disenfranchise themselves, also adds to the problem.
It may not be a coincidence that these factors operate even more strongly in the USA, where the gap between rich and poor is even greater.
IMHO a prerequisite for progress to narrow the gap is reform of party financing and an effective press complaints commision, which will at least insist that false press reports are corrected.
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Whats interesting is from that graph is that UK weekly earnings have been basicaly FLAT since 2002!
IE we have had 8years where the bottom 10% have earned just under 300 a week, the average earner just over 500 and the top 10% just under 1100.
Yet in those 8 years TAXes have gone UP, fuel duty has gone up 25p per ltr, council tax is more than doubled, tv licence has gone up over £30, and house prices have gone up so much that kids can not afford to buy.
About the only thing that has gone down is expected pensions for those of us not working in the civil service. My expected pension is 50% down on the 2002 predictions despite paying double (nearly 28% of my income this year) what i was paying then.
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As the income graph is flat for the last 8 years, can you post a graph showing council tax, average income tax, average benefits/tax credits, average car running costs and travel to work costs for the last 8 years.
IE if equality gap is increasing and income is NOT changing the only other side of the equation is cost of living which your graph does not show.
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#53
You cannot disenfranchise yourself, as would be demonstrated if we are forced to vote. The "poor" simply do not have a vote because the party machines changed the rules to prevent frivolous nominations for candidates. This means you have to have income, capital, and a "machine" to get your message across; look at the number of "ordinary" people who stand and I think you will find it is zero.
Until the party machines shift back to something resembling representation of all sectors of society we are stuck with a system that stinks.
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Nature has a way of dealing with inequality which we call natural selection - or the survival of the fittest. The sooner we stop trying to make everyone equal and accept that inequality is the very thing that makes people strive for improvement, the sooner we will return to being a more dynamic society and see it begin moving forward once again.
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#57
"Nature has a way of dealing with inequality which we call natural selection - or the survival of the fittest."
These are man made theories, over simplifications of scientific observations, and do not deal with a much greater probability that nature is somewhat more chaotic than selecting out the fittest. If you watch a predator stalk its prey you begin to realise that nature actually holds things in a very special balance, nothing to do with selection, more to do with "wrong place, wrong time" or "right place, right time" depending on whether you are being eaten or doing the eating.
Inequality is an especial human condition since it is not natural. It depends on who your parents are and where you are born, rather than giving you an equal chance from the off. We are at the infancy of genetic exploration and it may be that we have much to learn about "natural" competition. But for the moment it appears we have a big issue about why some people need a lot and some very little.
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38. At 5:52pm on 28 Jan 2010, stanilic
If you think the UK is bound up in "having money is good" (and is the only measure of success) you should come and live in the US. Here money, openly flaunting that you have money, is the only criteria of success. If you do not have money you are a nobody.
I do not hold these views
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I do not want an equal society.
I want to work and get ahead. I want my company to grow so I can employ people. I want to get some money behind me so that I am not dependant on the state when I want to retire.
I want my kids to go to the best schools. I do not understand people who do not. The interests of my children trancends politics (As many Labour politians discover when they themselves have children).
I want to own my own house.
For the astonishing amounts of tax I pay I demand service from the public services that is all too sadly lacking. I want to be able to sack public sector managers/leaders if we find the work to be poor or inadaquate. I do not understand why that is not already the case.
The health service alarms me. I notice a dramatic decline despite all the money that has been spent.
I am grateful for the free education that I received. I think I have made the most of it.
There is nothing special about me. I just work hard.I think everybody should work hard.
I don't understand the attitude of the socialist argument about redistribution of wealth. If you want wealth, the best and by far easiest way to find it is to work hard. Why believe that the state owes you a living. It clearly does not.
I do not understand why the government attacks what they call "The Rich" or "The Few". The rich and the few are those to whom we should aspire. The rich and the few are there because the work hard, create business and wealth for our country, and jobs for our workers.
I see no glory in becoming mediocre or average. How has this became the governments clarion call. We should all aspire to be Roger Federa or Andy Murray or Richard Branson or David Beckham. Be as good as we can be.
The gap between rich and poor seems to be the gap between the do's and the dont's.
I dont think pandering to those who have little aspiration in life to be "fair". Quite the oposite. Quite the opposite. Ok we cannot all be at the top. But we can try. And we owe it to our communities and families to do so.
The people at the bottom of our sociatorial ladder seem to be there by there own doing (or not doing). I do not accept that people are trapped in poverty. Nothing a train ticket cannot fix.
I find it difficult to know who to vote for.
We need some new voices in politics.
A
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#60
"I do not want an equal society." You do not have one so what are you complaining about?
"The interests of my children trancends [sic] politics" They transcend YOUR politics? Really?
"I want to own my own house." Is that a sub-prime or prime "house"?
"I am grateful for the free education that I received." Which kind of screws your whole argument doesn't it? You didn't make the most of it did you?
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tacrepus wrote:
"Nature has a way of dealing with inequality which we call natural selection - or the survival of the fittest."
An often misquoted line tacrepus.
Evolution does not result in the survival of the fittest; it results in the survival of those individuals who are best adapted to survive any given environment.
You could therefore make the argument that those people who sit at home all day watching TV and contributing nothing to our society are perfectly adapted for life in some parts of the UK as this lifestyle provides them with the greatest possible return for the least possible effort.
You can also use this argument to promote Eugenics and ethnic cleansing, just as the Nazi's did (not that I think this is what you're suggesting, or that you're in any way like a Nazi).
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Umm, Not sure what you mean there.
"You can also use this argument to promote Eugenics and ethnic cleansing, just as the Nazi's did (not that I think this is what you're suggesting, or that you're in any way like a Nazi)."
I really don't think so. Quite the opposite infact. Communism is the polar opposite to "survival of the fittest" but Stalin regarded human life of little consequence to what he regarded as a "higher socialist ideal". Everyone ultimately ended up in poverty as the system inevitable collapsed, as is the case with every run of a socialist government. Atrocities have been committed by every colour of politician. I don't think that remark is relevant in any way.
As an after thought. When socialism fails as it always does, you always hear people follow up by saying "...ah, but that wasn't really socialism!". Until the next cycle comes around and we go through that nonsense all over again.
As for Survival of the fittest, I am really not sure what is wrong with that. I really do not think that it is OK that Britain is a declining power in the world. I am NOT OK with that. That however is where we are.
Mediocrity is taught in our schools.
Competition is frowned upon
We pour scorn on successful people. The Government derides them by calling the "Rich" or "the few".
How in any ones perception can anything good come of that!
It is little wonder that Britain has produced so few winners in sport for example. Perhaps it has become politically unacceptable to win!
How did it ever come to this!
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Andy wrote:
"Umm, Not sure what you mean there."
I know it's only Wiki but it's a good starting point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_eugenics
How survival of the fittest idea fuelled Nazi ideology:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sciencetoday/2009/0219/1224241406772.html
Darwinism and the Nazi race Holocaust:
http://creation.com/darwinism-and-the-nazi-race-holocaust
I reckon that should be enough to let you know what I mean.
"It is little wonder that Britain has produced so few winners in sport for example."
Are you joking ?
Current & Previous F1 World Champions are both British
England & Wales currently hold the Ashes
Diving World Champion is British
Tennis world number 2 is British
WBA World Heavyweight Champion is British
Team GB got their best medals result in years at the last Athletics World Championship and got one of our best medal results ever at the last Olympics
Britain dominates the world of track cycling, darts, snooker and many other sports too
British teams dominate the EUFA Champions League & the Premier League is the most watched league in the world
And this could really go on for a long time here so I'm not really sure where you get the idea that Britain doesn't produce winners in sport.
If anything we should be asking why we produce so many winners given our relatively small geographical size and population compared to most other nations.
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#63
Isn't there a lot of confusion about what inequality is? According to my dictionary it is social or economic disparity, and lack of equal treatment. In sport, if all the competitors turn up and have to do the same thing then they are equal. The placings are a result of the competition not of their inequality. And how much does luck, cheating, gamesmanship, environment, conditions etc play in the result?
Here we are talking about human manufactured "differences", needlessly introduced so that someone sits in the top bunk and someone else in the bottom bunk. Huge amounts of money are being spent on UK competitors for 2012 - does that not suggest that equal opportunity depends on income and is that not a direct contradiction of the Olympian spirit?
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can we have the correlation plot with the error bars shown for each point and numbers on the graph axes please?
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Re:13.
Sadly this government has encouraged sloth and laziness by rewarding the lazy and uncaring through the benefits system and paid for this by taxing the diligent.
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While it may be true that there are some in Society whom are quite happy to sit around living off of the State, it is completely false to suggest that this same rule applies to the many whom are for various reasons either Unemployed and living in an Unemployment Black-Spot, or suffer from a Disability that prevents them from completing on the ladder of success to achieve any diligency of standing in Society.
These debates Always get around to the ideas that somehow the Working Classes are lazy, or that these same lazy Working Class are not looking hard enought to find gainful Employment.
This is a very simple thing to say if anyone is currently in a High Paid Job and is already resenting the very little that they pay in Taxes, against the lowly amounts paid in State Benefits which they always discribe as being too much, and given the fact that the UK pays what can only be also discribed as the worse State Benefits in the EEC, then I wonder how we ever get to a view that being on State Benefits are so wonderful, and a must have Luxury.
If being upon State Benefits is so good for some, then WHY are not those that are moaning about it, not also enjoying the same luxury of not Working, by joining in and Claiming like those that they are telling everybody, that these Claimants are so well off?
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Re: 60 Andy.
I am grateful for the free education that I received.
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There is no such thing as "Free Education", for along this line the Tax -Payer paid for your State Education, and to this end it keep Teachers employed teaching in State funded Schools, again paid for by a redistrubution of Wealth through Taxation.
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General_Jack_Ripper
Hi,
I can only repeat myself on first part of your response. So I will leave it at that.
Regarding sport! I'm shocked.
FOR A START.
Cricket - darts - snooker ARE NOT SPORTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Regarding motor sport. OK- I go along with that.
Regarding Andy Murray. (Currently living Melbourne, it was all very exciting). Andy is Scottish and very much an anomaly. Tennis is an example of how pitiful we rank in the world of sport. He is the ONLY player in the top 100 from GB. It has been 74 years since we last had a male Grand Slam winner. Henman was a shocker.
Regarding the Olympics. Even the USA, China and Russia have got bored with throwing money at the Olympics. We only have winners there because we throw so much money at it (Cycling need very expensive vellodromes, no use for any other purpose, Tour -de-France, we are nowhere, one player ranked 12th). We effectively "buy" the medals.
Soccer. Onto a total loser there. As a Chelsea fan at least we have a few English players in the squad. (Have you seen the squad at Arsenal!!) The percentage of British born players in any premiership club is embarrassingly low. There is so much money in the game, foreign players dream of coming to play in the UK - if only for a few years. If setting down to the pub to watching the TV were a sport, you might be right. We would be world champions.
Surprised that you’re trying to talk that one up! This government has destroyed sport in schools. Any kind of competition is politically incorrect and outlawed.
We we are holding the Olympics when elitism is being sold as a dirty word is beyond me. Total waste of money from beginning to end.
The IOC are a disgrace. They trying to pedal the Olympics to Brazil. BRAZIL!!! As if they don't have any other uses for the money. If they get it, you can say goodbye to the rainforests. They will be selling them off in double quick time.
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London Harris
I don't believe I ever complained about paying Tax?
Income tax is not redistribution of wealth as everybody mostly pays the same percentage.
I don't care about employing teachers!!! Employing teachers is not the purpose of the school system.
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Dear, dear Andy, you really didn't learn much at school did you? And, whatever your job is, you see somewhat overrated.
Income tax is progressive which is why it uses percentages to calculate the payments and fixed amounts to calculate the allowances. The exception is tax credits which are so complex no one actually knows what they do do.
And why on earth, in this elitist heaven you wish upon us, should we need a government, or education, or health services, or police, or an army, or sport, at all? After all who is the most elitist and most gifted if it isn't you?
Can you really do everything....?
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Andy wrote:
"This government has destroyed sport in schools. Any kind of competition is politically incorrect and outlawed."
I think your view from Melbourne has been obscured, this is a total load of BS !
I'm not a Labour supporter but even I can see how much money the government has invested in youth sport in the past decade. In our area we have had three high schools upgraded into new sports academies with world class equipment and facilities as well as long term funding for coaching staff.
Our local sports clubs have also received funding to improve their facilities as well as funding to help them encourage more people to take up sport.
I'd suggest you try looking at the reality instead of focusing on the usual tabloid drivel regarding Labour's dislike for anything competitive, the reality is that this government has invested over a £billion in school, youth and community sports programs over the last decade, not including the Olympics.
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Angel_in_Transit
Pretty much!
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General_Jack_Ripper
AHHHHHH!
Sport is a cultural thing!!!!!
You can spend all the money you like!!!!!!!!
To what end?
The contrast between UK and Australia is stark.
Sport here is culturally ingrained, and political correctness is not thank god.
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I don't doubt that inequality has many undesirable effects, and these graphs are a compelling suggestion that this is something worth investigating.
However, it's frustrating that although there are dozens of rigorous empirical studies in the Economics literature that investigate the effects of inequality, all we get presented with in the media are simple correlations.
The first thing you learn as a researcher is that correlation does not imply causation. The classic example is that areas with high crime tend to have a high police presence. Does this mean that police cause crime?
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#73
So why are you on here at all, dear Andy?
Get on and sort all the problems out and pronto, YOU caused them after all.
Or are you just a wind up?
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#74
So sport "isn't worth it" unless you win? No matter who you are?
The reason why Britain doesn't do particularly well in sport (by your standards) is because you confuse the social elements with the professional or business elements.
In football (to give it the correct name) the Premier League has damaged the lower leagues and even some precariously lodged Premier League teams. Without the TV revenue there would be no Premier League, and, quite likely, football would be an entertaining, professional, but "working class" output for pent-up tribal feelings just as it was in my youth. I played and watched. Nowadays people just go for instant gratification of their need to claim they watch "the best". That isn't football, that IS elitism.
The professional game was created by local talent playing for local teams, watched by the local community. Not a game for someone who has never lived in a place supporting a team just because they have a habit of winning and providing gratification.
I grant you that Tennis has a lot to answer for in the UK, saddled as it is by a poor administrative arm that doesn't ever deal with the problem of getting kids interested at an early enough age and with suitable coaching at no cost to them. But that is beginning to happen to all sports simply because there are too many other choices available, including no sport at all.
Elitism has never worked in the past (even in the 1930s) and doesn't work now. Give every one their own cultural choices and let them decide what feels and is best.
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Mark Easton says
"The problem for the politicians is that measures to reduce social or income inequality will always be controversial because they mean neutralising the advantages of wealth - a prospect that those with money and influence will fight hard against. "
There are a number of problems with that last statement.
Firstly, it's a value judgement. The BBC is supposed to be impartial.
Secondly, it's a bit rich coming from a no doubt very well-paid BBC employee.
Thirdly, it's not entirely correct. It is based on the middle class liberal assumption that it's only the rich who resent moves towards greater equality. It ignores the fact that many people on not very high wages resent effort and money being spent on people in their neighbourhoods who choose not to work, but live on benefits.
As an impeccably middle class BBC type, Mr Easton probably can't imagine the resentment felt by people working long hours in relatively menial employment, paying their taxes and watching the money being spent on benefits for teenage mums, for example, and others who choose not to work.
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52 Peter
"The key factor that is being ignored is immigration. A country can either operate a free maerket and have open doors OR have a high welfare culture and keep its doors shut. The USA generates huge wealth but has desperate poverty too - Japan is more equal but is populated by Japanese. Which approach do we want?"
Very good point. It is interesting that inequality seems to have got worse at a time of massively increased immigration.
The BBC won't want to admit it, but the simple fact is, it's the poorest who've been hit hardest by immigration.
The middle class pro-immigration mantra has been that immigrants do the jobs the people here won't do. The reality is, the immigrants do the jobs people at the bottom of the payscale used to do. So they take the jobs away, and cause lower wages for such jobs as remain.
To make things even worse, they also compete for housing, private or rented, and school places, which their taxes don't pay for (ours do).
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You can not compare countries without looking at a full range of statistics, and even then the history may well be more important in shaping attitudes. For example in Britain since the Fifties spending power has probably been a more important indicator than actual income. It was as Britain came out of post-war rationing and became accustomed to the existence of the Welfare State that two things happened (a) the Welfare State meant that it was less necessary for people to save in order to be able to afford emergency spending to cover the "rainy day" problesm that were now covered by the State: and (b) as the post-war governments operated macro-economic policies of full-employment many parts of the country were lifted out of the fear of unemployment. As a result shops were prepared to advance credit, and British people were increasingly prepared to accept it on a "live now pay later" basis.
Both of these factors in rather different form have operated under New Labour. In fact the thing that has saved the British economy since 9/11 at least has been the willingness of the British consumer to spend, spend , spend using credit cards and loans.
These factors are not unrelated to the class particularity of British soiety. I suspect that inverted snobbery is much less prevalent in other countries. The study "Education and the Working Class" in the Sixties that looked at the experience of "working class" children who went to the grammar schools of Huddersfield discovered that the boys especially tended to drop out of school at 15. They did not see any need to get a "middle class" education and leave their roots. This seems to be associated with English ideas that any freeborn Englishman is as good as any other. We are all entitled to our say, our opinion and our vote. And this tendency has been accentuated by the crisis in educational and intellectual standards that came with the anti-establishment revolt of the Sixties and the subsequent dumbing down of both education and public discourse.
Until recently the situation in French society that I married into in 1968 has been markedly different in all these respects; and it is quite possible that Britain/England is as strange and unusual place as it has been reckoned to be. One where traditionally people have taken pride in being themselves- different but equal.
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Angel_in_Transit
I agree with you about football being better when it was made up from local teams. But then again I don't. I look back to when Chelsea beat Leads in the FA cup final with great affection. It ws when I started sypporting chelsea when I was a kid. However, when you watch the game. It was rubbish. Compared to the standard of player today. Simply no comparison. Chopper Harris was a brutal thug! Nostalgia I am afraid.
As for your argument against elitism. I am at a polar opositise to uyou opinion. And I for one aim to fight back. Elitism is what made our country great. And a lack of it, (discouraged by our political masters) is why our nation is in rapid terminal decline. Why? Well lets look at the product of elitism.
1. Alan Turing: A product of Kings College , Cambridge. Broke the Inigma Code during the Wecond World War. Resulted in the end of wolf pack raids on Alied shipping which ultimately lead to D-Day and a successful conclusion th the war.
ALSO credited with first design of stored-program computer. (A PC od MAC to you)
2. Isambard Kingdom Brunel. One of the greatest industrialist of the modern age who's achievments include:
The Rotherhithe Tunnel
Clifton Suspension Bridge
The Great Western Railway
London Paddington Station.
The Great Western, the longest ship in the world.
The Royall Albert Bridge
And many more.
3. Charles Darwin: A product of Cambridge University.
Proposed the theory of evolution in his work. The Orgigin Of Species.
4. Sir James Paul McCartne MBE An English singer-songwriter, poet, composer, multi-instrumentalist, entrepreneur, record and film producer, painter, and animal rights and peace activist. Gained worldwide fame as a member of The Beatles.
5. John Logie Baird. Inventer of the television.
6. Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee. A product of Queens College Oxford. Inventor(?) of the internet.
7. Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle. Inventor of the jet engine.
8. Sorry I'm bored now.
My world with all these outsttanding elitists id better than your world without them.
How we ever ended up with a government that promotes mediocrity and downgrades academic achievment to make the figures look better is quite beyond me.
How anybody can have an opinion like yours is beyond understanding.
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#81
Yeah, Andy, you bored the pants off of me too.
I am afraid that selecting out a few people whose "inventiveness" was actually the product of a lot of things that depended on many others for their eventual success, is not a great advert for elitism at all.
And if these people hadn't been around are you seriously doubting that the things "they" did would not have been done by others, even in slightly different ways.... Come off it.
All I am saying is that the world has lots of potential paths to tread down and it is time it gone on to the road marked "equality", "money is an evil". You may actually enjoy what it produces.
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Angel_in_Transit
""So sport "isn't worth it" unless you win? No matter who you are?""
WHATTTTTTTT
I tell you what. Why don't you go and tell that to Alex Ferguson. I recommend that you take some ear muffs with you!!
Why don't you tell that to the British Olympic Committee in regards to the upcoming Olympic games that we just spent 12 billion on.
You aren't running British Tennis are you?
OMG
Is this the latest politically correct trend?
Is this a Labour Party Dictate.
HOW DID IT EVER COME TO THIS!!!!!!!!!!
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#83
For pity sake Andy. Let's look at your beloved Chelsea against Barcelona at Stamford Bridge. Was that really sport? Was there any "sportsmanship" on display by anybody - or was that an example of "win at any cost" even against sport itself?
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Andy - I'm all for élitism. It seems incredible that anyone could be against it. It's obvious that people should strive to achieve high standards, and be rewarded for it.
The current mantra, that we're all equal, and there are no losers, is nonsense.
That being said, I'm very strongly against the idea of a winner-takes-all society. Some people - notably Angel - like to argue that the problems of the third and muslim world are all the west's fault. Their real problem is the fact that they have small, super rich élites, and everyone else has to get by as best they can. That's why, for example, Egypt is in a mess, and Sweden isn't.
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Refereeing is the Referees job.
Chelsea against Barcelona is one of the best fixtures in the footballing calendar. There have been some astonishing games.
I am sure that Frank Lampards attitude is, "win at all costs". As a fan I concur. If it wasn't, he would not be in the squad.
What has sportsmanship got do with anything!
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Apple-Eater
Hi Big Apple.
I keep hearing this Sweden thing.
Britain until recently (pre-Labour) was the 4th largest economy in the world. People keep saying we should be more like Sweden.
That is bizarre.
I think we should be more like Britain. Pre-1998 Britain was a super power and rightly so. We shaped the modern world.
Sweden?
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#85
And you like to pretend that the world is a great place with all the elitism... I suppose. In your dreams Apple dear.
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#85
"The current mantra, that we're all equal, and there are no losers, is nonsense."
It is nonsense because a) there is no such mantra, and b) equality doesn't exist.
So I would suggest you brush up on your understanding of the differences between equality and losing.
#86
"What has sportsmanship got to do with it?"
Everything dear boy; unless, of course, you believe breaking the rules by taking drugs to win a medal, a championship, a promotion (if you understand the connotation) etc are not immoral.
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Inequality is not that easy to measure. This is illustrated by the first two charts in the blog. The first chart is explicit in identifying the Gini coefficient as the particular measure of inequality used. The second chart is not explicit, but when you look at the underlying paper from the University of Nottingham you see that income inequality is
measured by the ratio of incomes among the richest compared with the poorest 20% in each country. Both measures may seem fine in themselves, but they are clearly rather different. For example, in chart 1 Japan is recorded as having more inequality than the average OECD country, while in chart 2 Japan is shown as having the lowest inequality of all the countries included (not all OECD countries are included). The relative rankings of many countries are very different on the two measures. One suspects that the correlation between inequality and the index of health and social problems would not be quite so striking if the Gini coefficient data were used as the measure of inequality.
Of course, there is also the problem of exactly how you construct the index of health and social problems - which could be done in a wide variety of ways producing quite different results.
This is not to suggest that there is no correlation between different measures of income inequality or between inequality (however measured) and health and social problems - it is just that one might want to be rather more careful in qualifying rather simple claims of the type made here.
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I don't find the graph of health & social problems vs. income inequality convincing in the least. It has wooly 'low' and 'better' labels on its axes, and directly contradicts the previous chart. e.g. Japan is shown as having the 'lowest' income inequality, but ranks as middling on the Gini chart. Whatever indexes they've come up with to generate that chart, I'd imagine some serious massaging has gone on to produce the correlation they're attempting to show.
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Andy
" keep hearing this Sweden thing.
Britain until recently (pre-Labour) was the 4th largest economy in the world. People keep saying we should be more like Sweden.
That is bizarre."
Actually, there's nothing bizarre about it at all. Sweden, like the other Nordic countries, is a pretty amazing place. High standards of living, public sector services, infrastructure, health and education. Also, for a country of its size, quite a profile. OK, it's lost some of its lustre recently, but still, it produced world-known brands, such as Ikea, Saab, Volvo, Scania etc.
It's a very well run place.
"I think we should be more like Britain. Pre-1998 Britain was a super power and rightly so. We shaped the modern world."
Good point, in many ways. The way Britain recovered from the Labour disaster of the 70s was quite a story. The way Labour squandered its legacy was grimly predictable.
That being said, I'd like the good things about the Nordic countries, and what we had before Labour made a complete mess of things. The problem with Major's Britain was that the figures looked good, but the outcomes, in terms of, say, education, health care, infrastructure etc, didn't match the Nordic countries.
Labour, however, seems to have managed to have managed to get pretty much everything wrong. At least they're consistent.
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#92
More sweeping generalisations from Apple who gave us insight about US policy in the Middle East "to give women rights"! Nothing to do with "oil", just good old fashioned colonialism. Of course he believes the history of Zionism in influencing the displacement of Palestinians and the "repatriation" of Jews to "Israel" (in name only at the time) by any means possible, to be poor reporting.
It is actually a great example of migration in operation, starting as it did well before the turning of the twentieth century. It also contains several examples of disputed facts and figures, and events that do not show some Jewish people in good light. The Holocaust was undeniably one of the most evil events in history, but it is not an isolated example of mass, or attempted mass, genocide since 1900.
It would seem that some races are more equal than others. That word again "inequality" - cannot escape it no matter where you go in time or space.
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I've enjoyed the exchange here between Angel in Transit and Andy! Very lively reading... two very different points of view on... everything, perhaps. I think it is good that people do well and succeed, there is nothing wrong with that. But I also think that with that success a little wisdom should accrue, a little bit of compassion, a little bit of humanity and perhaps a little bit of humility. I imagine Andy would say WHY, why SHOULD I care about anyone else? Well, tell us what damage has been done on to you? For it is obvious you have been on the receiving end...
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The graph showing weekly earnings for men does not give a good picture of wealth distribution. We do after all have progressive taxation and this makes a big difference to take home pay.
A quick guide would be to reduce the earnings of the top 10% by 40% and the median by 20%. For those on NMW tax credits can often exceed their tax and NI contributions. Taking account of tax and NIC the three lines get much closer together.
In the 1970s "surtax" was 19s-6p in the pound (95%). At this rate £20 per week of extra income is reduced to 50p per week. We coined a phrase for the exodus of surtax payers, "brain drain". Labour did not wish to repeat the brain drain post 1997 so higher income tax receipts had to come from middle income earners and not the top 10%. We haven't coined a term for the exodus of middle income earners but it was running at 200,000 per annum (including their families) until the recession hit. Had we coined a term for this exodus it would have introduced rhetoric and brought this "skills drain" to our attention.
It is the case that for middle income earners 75% of mothers work and the second income helps to pay the bills rather than paying for luxuries. It has almost become the case that you need two incomes to raise a family today. We have moved from 48% of the population working in the 1960s to 48% of the population working in the noughties. But the difference is it was mainly men working full-time in the 1960s but a good proportion are part-time female workers today. The skills we need in the future will accelerate this trend.
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#80
Although I like some of the things you say, I am convinced you are wrong about the Welfare State. The main planks of the legislation were education, health, and national insurance led "protection" from "cradle to grave". The latter is crucial since it is what most working class people were already used to doing but via friendly societies and insurance policies.
My parents relied mainly on my father's income in my and my siblings infancy, but my mother took jobs where I (the youngest) could be taken along. They were mainly domestic duties and paid poorly but it was money essential to protecting the family budget. As soon as I was receiving pocket money and not spending all of it, I had a friendly society "book" too.
I was a bright child and had several job offers on leaving school. My parents would have wished me to go to university but it was simply not viable.
I have very strong reservations about what has happened to education over the years, and believe that we have dumbed down "attainment" to a level where it has become unacceptable. Universities are now peddling education instead of being seats of learning. Talent and brains always survive whatever education throws at them, so it is not the top few percentiles that suffer. It is the huge mass in the middle, some of whom will never recover from knowing that they really were never as good as they thought they were. The evidence is all around us now, and it will stifle our behaviour, our thinking, our integrity and our courage for generations to come.
Education must never be used for its own sake, and equality must be based on the value an individual has to the whole, not based on a pecking order suggested by his or her mental age.
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ANGEL 93
"#92
More sweeping generalisations from Apple who gave us insight about US policy in the Middle East "to give women rights"
Really? Where did I say that?
"Nothing to do with "oil","
or that?
"just good old fashioned colonialism. Of course he believes the history of Zionism in influencing the displacement of Palestinians and the "repatriation" of Jews to "Israel" (in name only at the time) by any means possible, to be poor reporting."
or that?
What I do believe is that the tendency to blame the jews and white people for the muslim world's ills is a bit dodgy, to put it mildly.
"It is actually a great example of migration in operation, starting as it did well before the turning of the twentieth century. It also contains several examples of disputed facts and figures, and events that do not show some Jewish people in good light. The Holocaust was undeniably one of the most evil events in history, but it is not an isolated example of mass, or attempted mass, genocide since 1900."
There, I'd agree with you. I'm not particularly pro- or anti-Israel, but I fully understand the Palestinian point of view, that their lives have been ruined by mass immigration. In fact, mass immigration tends to be a disaster for most people on the receiving end of it. There's a policy lesson for our political class, if they choose to learn it.
However, it's not Israel's existence that makes other muslim countries, be it Pakistan, Egypt or Ageria, the corrupt, dictatorial mess that they are. Palestine is a long way from the Maghreb, yet oil-rich Algeria has had civil war, and Moroccans have been involved in terrorism.
The real problem of the muslim world is its own culture - blaming Israel is just a way of using jews as a scapegoat. You say you're bright - think of a time in relatively recent history when that was done before...
"It would seem that some races are more equal than others."
If you say so - I'm hideously white, what would I know?
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Do grow up Apple.
My response to your silly entry at #85, was to paraphrase what you have said and implied in your postings which can be found by referring to other blogs. I am glad you now seem to have learned a little history, but sadly it is not enough. Was Pakistan a natural development or a partition?
And let's look at other countries that have suffered from their colonial past, but blame them for having been "invaded" in the first place - is that what you are saying?
You have a fixation about the Muslim world without the least idea of what you are talking about, especially in terms of the more peaceful and accepting side of the faith, which history embellishes rather than distorts. It is current politics to believe that the Muslim world is a threat and yet there is little or no evidence of Muslim countries overrunning non-Muslim countries, unlike the evidence of what happened in the Middle East throughout the approximate period 1800 onwards.
The distortion of events since 2000 has been manipulative, exploiting a far from clear cut episode in NYC, and putting it through an "advertising machine" to gain maximum impact. It was a tactic that would have worked wonders on the Soviet Union too, except, because they were big if not bigger, the offences were kept to words and undercover skirmishes.
The politics of freedom (which lead to rights) are far from being as clear cut as you seem to believe. Ask any black person in the USA, or even the UK, when they believe their equality was won, and then compare it to the legislation that appeared to give them that right.
Now think about being a Muslim.
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Angel
Firstly, just point out where I said what you think I said. Or just save yourself the effort and admit that you were wrong - not paraphrasing, just wrong.
"And let's look at other countries that have suffered from their colonial past, but blame them for having been "invaded" in the first place - is that what you are saying?"
Feel free. But it's a waste of time. Plenty of countries have difficult pasts, but the one thing countries all over the muslim world have in common, regardless of their past, is that they tend to be corrupt dictatorships, and that's a result of their culture.
"You have a fixation about the Muslim world without the least idea of what you are talking about"
Wrong. I have a very good idea, from personal experience, of what I'm talking about. Can you say the same?
"there is little or no evidence of Muslim countries overrunning non-Muslim countries, unlike the evidence of what happened in the Middle East throughout the approximate period 1800 onwards."
Not that it matter, but the muslim world was intensely imperialistic until it started to collapse, and was eclipsed, militarily, politically and technogically, by the west.
"Ask any black person in the USA, or even the UK, when they believe their equality was won, and then compare it to the legislation that appeared to give them that right.
Now think about being a Muslim."
You forget that in the UK, blacks and muslims CHOSE to come here, because they get a better life here than elsewhere. Remember, they could easily leave and go elsewhere, but instead, they choose to come here. They know they get more rights and freedoms here than in countries where their own culture prevails.
There no doubt is racism and intolerance in the UK and the rest of western Europe - there is in any society. Look at the Birmingham race riots (blacks and muslims), the Danish cartoon riots, honour killings, the Fortuyn and van Gogh killings....look at the ethnic and religious violence across Africa and in the Indian subcontinent. No doubt there is some racism and intolerance amongst the white native population here, but it pales into insignificance compared to the wider world.
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I don't think inequality between peoples wealth is the main problem. I think the dissatifaction lays with peoples life chances and access to better careers. Most people want to do a job they enjoy, that they have an inate talent for. The problem is the top jobs and professions are so in demand that these employers often have a greater power of selection over its candidates. Elite university qualifications, private education, personal connections and exclusive post codes are often used to the advantage of the better off. The average person cannot compete in this system.
They say social mobility is stagnant in this country, and many parents are unhopeful that their childrens talents and ambitions will ever be realized in this country. The qualities of hard work, talent, loyalty, leadership are just not enough to guarantee a better career and hence better pay in this meritocratic society.
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#99
Apple, dear (far less formal)
If your memory fails you then you may need a doctor, or to stop indulging.
Paraphrasing is so irritating when it is used against you, isn't it?
I seem to recall that "we visited" a large number of countries, once in our Empire, and then in our Commonwealth, and that those people, who numbered a multitude of shades of skin, cultures, races, and religions, were free to visit the "homeland". It is a pity you select out those who you choose to to back your argument. Kind of discriminatory and kind of decimating your own argument.
You may wish to consider what happened to the indigenous inhabitants of a few of those countries too.
I am bored with you Apple; no ideas other than those you are fixated with.
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60. i think if a majority of people suffer in a system that benefits really only a small amount of people then that is the answer in itself.
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The stand out countries for me are Switzerland Holland and Sweden as being beacons of excellence. Largely classless and meritocratic. UK and USA are clearly societies that like to think of themselves as free and meritocratic when clearly something is going wrong.
Images of the Titanic film spring to mind when Leonardo DeCaprio gate crashes the almost impregnable high society party to which most mere mortals are not invited and never will be.
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Inequality versus incentive is one approach to this matter. We are none of us borne equal. There is a large spead in such attributes as height, intellect, physical strength. All of these properties may be modified to a certain degree, either in a positive or a negative direction. Where is the incentive to improve oneself in life if the rewards of one's efforts are largely removed in tax to benefit others less willing to better themsleves through their own industry? For those who are unable to help themselves it is right for the system to help and support them but for thsoe who won't help themselves, they should go by the wayside. Should these latter individuals step out of line, the punishment should be swift and firm until they learn to toe the line. That attitude in place they should be given the opportunity to climb the ladder or stay where they are and quit griping. We could start with our schools: re-introduce some real competition and raise examination standards. Those who aren't cut out for an academic career are just as valuable in the trade sector and should be valued appropriately, then perhaps we wouldn't need to "import" so many relatively unwelcome outsiders to do the jobs the real Brits no longer care to do.
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#95 from david Lilley. You seem like a very sensible chap and have succinctly highlighted a very valid point that has escaped successive governments for years. It probably goes hand-in-hand with the relative breakdown of society as we knew it back then: respect for the person and his property, almost a monoculture of British ways, values and standards, a certain intolerance to the "let it all hang out" attitude and an education system that actually discriminated in favour of academic ability. Well done.
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Whoever said that life was fair?
Or that those who work hard to succeed should be penalised(apart from labour politicians).
If people want to work hard, do so, and then get on in life, we should not be trying to drag them down,as media do all the time now.
As for so called "sink estates", stop categorising people as failures, stop encouraging people to fail, stop penalising people for their lifestyle, actually debar all from the school curriculum that are social, not teaching. (IE Remove religion/sex education/race relations/domestic violence and other subjects not directly associated to learning), and we may see things change.
I was born in a poor area, but didn`t know it was.(These places are now called "sink estates").
My education included discipline and proper teaching.
I have worked hard all my life, live in an affluent area, and 4 of my old school chums, born on the same estate, are millionaires.
If we can do it anyone can!
But, if people want to sit at home expecting others to support them, let them I say! But how dare politicos think of raising taxes for me to help the idle created by New Labour!!
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This merely shows that you can choose your statistics to show whatever you want, no matter how ludicrous!!
For example, no Ministers of the Crown have been murdered this century whilst hundreds of common citizens have been murdered. Hence, we should withdraw all security from Ministers who are not at risk and re-allocate the resources to the common people!
Hey, whilst being used as a ludicrous example it would stop a significant wate of money!
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Its quite easy to adress this issue. You merely have to do one thing:-
Ban ALL private education religeous or otherwise.
It is because of private education we have such a difference between rich and poor its also why we are ruled by a oligarchy. Look at Cameron? Multi millionaire, look at Blair, also exremely wealthy. Both privately educated.
When you have a private education you don't just get a unfair advantage in terms of qualifications you also get to join a very elite club and you guarantee for yourself a certain level of comfort regardless of how 'good' you are.
All the top positions in this country, politicians, ceos of companies etc are taken in the vast majority of cases by people with a private education depsite those same people being a tiny minority of the population.
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101 Angel
"Paraphrasing is so irritating when it is used against you, isn't it?"
No, it's just bizarre that you don't seem to understand the difference between paraphrasing and 'making up things that aren't there'. It's a fairly big difference, and most people seem to understand it.
"I seem to recall that "we visited" a large number of countries, once in our Empire, and then in our Commonwealth, and that those people, who numbered a multitude of shades of skin, cultures, races, and religions, were free to visit the "homeland". It is a pity you select out those who you choose to to back your argument. Kind of discriminatory and kind of decimating your own argument."
Ah, the classic pc racism argument, using 'our' past behaviour against us. Apart from that, I have no idea what you are trying to say. But I suppose the fact you equate current immigrants with British imperialists of yesteryear is revealing.
Still, if you do manage to come up with an argument that shows that immigrants in general and muslims in particular don't have a better life here than in the countries they choose to leave, feel free to post it.
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