[Sloper]

You're the Chair of Iggy Popp studdies 

Seriously though, which do you consider the bigger issue; dealing with inequalities that are real, i.e. those at the bottom or the inequalities between say a fat doctor and a hedge fund trader?

For me, as a one nation tory it will always be the former, but then again I'm not a green (one) eyed socialist authoritarian fool.  (not that you are Andy, but many who propose the fuck the rich, tax them on a penal basis etc are just that)

[andy popp]

The relavence of the .1% of top earners in the grand scheme of things is like a fat bloke jumping up and down on the rotation of the earth.

No again. A quick bit of searching suggests that in 2003 the top 1% owned 23% of national wealth. In the US in 2007 the figure was nearer 35%.

[Sloper]

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=2

Of course they do, they're the bloody rich, it's like saying the morbidly obese own a disproportionate amount of skin.

What matters more than the rarified plutocrat is whether the people at the bottom are socially and economically engaged; this divisions is the cause of the real social ills, the crime the anti-social behaviour, the generational deprivation, not whether the chief exec of Brum City Council is on £210k or £140k, it's not whether a consultant surgeon gets £130k or £90k, whether Bob Diamond made £24m or 'only £12m'.

At the moment they real problems are largely being ignored because politically it's much better to point a sharp stick at the fat piggy bankers who won't vote Labour than to deal with the real social problems.

Arguing otherwise is like saying 4x4 cuase less damage than mtb's etc.

[Stu Littlefair]

I can see the rationale behind your point - that it's the inequality between the poorest and those earning 40-50K that drives social problems. I'm not convinced. I can see a common-sense argument for it, but I can see a common sense argument for the alternative as well. If the difference in living standards between the well-off and the underbelly causes social friction, surely the difference in living standards of the über-wealthy causes exponentially more? After all, it ticks me off on my comfortable salary. I can't imagine how it makes someone trying to raise a kid on 15K feel.

The fact that the top 1% have so much of the money is important. To a fair approximation 20% of the cash means they account for 20% of the economic activity and that shapes the economy that we all live in. And you ignored my point about the socially distorting effect that the economic elite have by their mere existence. Without spending a penny they affect society - how many brilliant young graduates will be able to resist earning millions in the City, and teach, or research, or heal instead?

As far as I can see there are arguments to be made that the über-rich are a blessing, and arguments that they are a curse. Which wins out? I'll be convinced by data, not hyperbole. Does anyone have any?

And, on the subject of data I thought you might like to see this graph, showing historical levels of income equality in the UK. Labour might not have made much impact on inequality, but your claim it has increased doesn't stand much scrutiny, and you might want to look at when the problem arose 




 

[Stu Littlefair]

oh, and dense -

I didn't mean real offence, obviously.

[Sloper]

Social and financial inequality has increased, I don't think that I've stated otherwise, the issue is on what measure and why.

Of course if the people at the very bottom, i.e. those dependent on benefits stay on benefits then the pay rise of the nurse, the person working in Tesco and so on will result in greater disparity.  Also the people at the very bottom are economically inactive and therefore don't share in the benefit of economic growth.

The question is then where you draw your data from, comparing someone long term unemployed in Rotherham with a hedge fund trader in Westminster is meaningless, just as it's meaningless to compare the long term unemployed in Rotherham with a consultant surgeon living in Whirlow.


What's important is not tinkering with the incredibly tiny percentage of people at the top but dealing with the masses at the bottom.  One of the reasons societies in Scandinavia are more equal is because they don't have the massive underclass that we've developed.

If we could bring the underclass back into social and economic integration then the damage caused would be substantially remedied.

[Stu Littlefair]

I think earlier in the thread you said that inequality had increased under labour. Or at least that was my Reading. It's a side issue but I thought it worth pointing out that that isn't necessarily so.

I think you're in danger of constructing a straw man with the rest of your argument. No-one is suggesting we ignore the underclass. Merely that it makes sense financially and practically to tackle inequality both ends. This has the added benefit of appealing to a sense of fairness that has developed as a result of seeing bankers escape relatively lightly ckmpared to the rest of the UK.

And as a side point I can't see how it is irrelevant to compare any salary with any other. Surely that is how inequality is measured?

[Sloper]

Social mobility has declined under Labour, that's different from income disparity.

I don't actually see income inequality per se as the problem the problem is the consequences of the inequality.  If you have someone living in Whirlow on £80k and their neighbour is on £200k their relationship will not be damaged by the inequal financial position; to put it simply because they have enough.

If you have some one on the manor living on benefits with a very low quality of life and their neighbour works for the council on £16k this inequality and the way it impacts on quality of life will damage their relationship.  Multiply this damage and you get a breakdown in social cohesion and all the ills that flow from that.

I actually differ in that I think that the under class have been ignored, by successive governments but the problem now is that we have this bash the banker nonsense to disguise the wasted years and billions that have failed to address the really fundamental and dangerous problems.

There's only so much legislative time and energy and wasting it on this would be like hunting with dogs mk II, really popular with the middle class lefties but utterly irrelevant, unenforceable and counter productive.   

[andy popp]

You claim to be a One-nation Tory but consistently maintain that what happens at the top and the bottom of society are entirely unrelated. I would argue there's good reason to think the simultaneous existence of a large underclass and a top 1% who own nearly 25% of the nation's wealth is not some random coincidence but instead are intimately connected facts. The long-term unemployed in Rotherham and the City billionaire are products of the same system, culture, and political-economy that have (simplifying massively, but the gist is right) for more than a century favoured financial services and the Southeast over manufacturing and the provinces. Inequality is a property of the system or structure as a whole - you cannot isolate one bit from another. I agree that the underclass have been ignored by just about all but I agree with Stu, you cannot deal with this one 'problem' in isolation. As for consequences

I don't actually see income inequality per se as the problem the problem is the consequences of the inequality.  If you have someone living in Whirlow on £80k and their neighbour is on £200k their relationship will not be damaged by the inequal financial position; to put it simply because they have enough.

You'd think so wouldn't you, but there seems to be a lot of evidence that high inequality has a negative impact on every level throughout society. We're back to systemic effects.

And, sorry but I don't get this, inequality isn't a problem, only its effects? There are some niceties there that elude me.

[stone]

I think the richness of the uber rich is far and away the greatest danger. Once people have more money than they can spend, money is simply power. My pretty ignorant understanding is that the 10,000 UK bankers paid >£1m this year will largely use that money to distort the world economy so that even more money goes to them in future. The Goldman Sachs induced spike in wheat price a couple of years ago that caused 100000000 to go hungry is just a foretaste of what this is leading to. The fact that Lansdowne Partners can afford to pay back Tony Blair so much for "lectures" and also be the main funder of the Torys shows how dangerous this is not just to a functional capitalism but also to democracy. In the UK we have a large part of the world finance system. Letting our system go to shit effects far more people than just those in this country.