Last weekend, the Conservatives published a new document on inequality. ‘Labour’s Two Nations‘ lists a wide range of the UK’s social and economic injustices. Among other recent publications, it makes reference to the Marmot Review, highlighting its recent conclusion that:

There are serious inequalities of access to labour market inequalities… many are trapped in a cycle of low-paid poor quality work and unemployment.

The final report of the National Equality Panel, which concluded that levels of inequality in the UK are currently comparable with the period shortly after the Second World War, is also referenced. The implication is that a Conservative Party would do something to reverse these trends, and the report tells us that:

We need a new, progressive government that understands that we can only defeat poverty by tackling its root causes: poor educational attainment, inter-generational worklessness, and family breakdown. Only when we have done so will we able to defeat the scourge of poverty and inequality, and call ourselves one nation again.

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Jeremy Warner has an interesting piece in today’s Telegraph in which he says:

the trickle-down effect that is meant to spring from wealth accumulation has not worked as it should have. Flexible labour markets have delivered big time for bankers and shareholders, but failed to improve the lot of ordinary workers in the same way. In Britain, growth in consumption was funded not by real economic advancement, but by the fool’s paradise of ever-increasing debt.

Now, the excesses of the system have brought fiscal ruin, and the worst economic crisis in 80 years. Yet the bankers have recklessly and arrogantly taken their windfall gains from the massive state support that resulted and paid them out in bumper bonuses. People are angry and getting angrier. And even as ordinary employees are being asked to suffer wage cuts and job losses, executive pay is continuing to rise. Never has the multiple of a chief executive’s remuneration to that of his most lowly employee been so high – in some cases, 400 times the amount.” Read more »

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It has been interesting to watch how different people have reacted to the new equality report, produced by John Hills and his team.

Of course there has been much confusion about whether we are talking about narrowing inequality of outcomes or inequality of opportunity. These are both desirable and considerably intertwined, but not the same thing at all. Read more »

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The final report of the National Equalities Panel (NEP), “An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK” is out today – you can download the full thing or exec summary from the Government Equalities Office website. It’s an exceptional piece of work, describing in graphic detail just how unfair and unequal our society has become thanks to ‘market knows best’ policies. Read more »

   Filed under: Equality, Inequality | 9 Comments »

All this week, Community Links’ LinksUK blog team are debating the way in which poverty is portrayed in the media. Richard has a guest contribution up there today, about the general public’s unusually punitive attitudes to poverty in the UK. If we really want to end poverty in this country, we are also going to have to deal with the way ordinary voters think about people living in poverty. Read more »

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The BBC is reporting that the Prime Minister is to

say Labour will create “more middle class jobs than ever before” and the party represents the “mainstream majority”. And he will suggest middle class voters would suffer disproportionately under Tory plans to cut public spending. In the past, Mr Brown’s opponents have accused him of waging a class war.

But on the radio coverage it is also reported that allied to this is a call by Lord Mandelson for the 50p top rate tax to be lifted as soon as possible.

The media and politicians of all parties are very confused by class. In a common-sense world where words mean what they are meant to, middle would mean half way between top and bottom. That puts someone middle class on about £21,000 a year. Indeed this is what US politicians mean by middle class – the great mass of working joes and joannas who are not poor but earn well short of what we would call the professional middle classes. Read more »

   Filed under: Inequality, Middle Britain, Social mobility, Tax | 1 Comment »

Well actually that’s not exactly how they put it in their feature on pay disparity this morning, but it might as well have been. What they actually said was “Middle-class workers richer than they think”. But it does depend what you mean by ‘middle class’ – what they mean is people who start their careers on more than most people earn, and keep getting richer, which is a strange use of the term “middle”. But it is a reflection of just how unequal our society has become since the 1970s (inequality rose fastest in the 80s, less fast in the 90s, and the last decade has seen ambiguous data but no reverse in the trend). Given that brief historical summary, it is surprising that the FT concludes that it is difficult to say why inequality has grown in this way, and why it has grown more in the US, UK and New Zealand than in countries like France and Germany. Er, it’s because growing inequality was the policy of UK governments in the 80s and 90s (as well as in different times in the US and New Zealand) and constraining that growth in inequality has been government policy in France and Germany, isn’t it?

All this has been explored in greater depth and with greater erudition in TUC Touchstone pamphlets like Life in the Middle, but it’s all worth revisiting – what we need is Government policies aimed at restoring equality in earnings, and non-Governmental tools like stronger trade unions and more collective bargaining to back them up. Read more »

   Filed under: Earnings, Inequality | 4 Comments »

There are some new interesting official stats about the distribution of wealth – even if they were collected before the recession bit. The top line is that the least wealthy half of the population earn just 9% of the nation’s wealth, while the top 20% own 62% of privately held wealth. The bottom ten per cent own negative wealth – i.e. they owe more than they own.

The top 10% of households were 2.4 times wealthier than the next richest 10%, and 4.8 times wealthier than the bottom 50%.

Perhaps the most surprising finding is that 5% of households own personalised number plates – perhaps the stand-out definition of having more money than sense. The report says “only five”. I’m surprised it’s that high, but perhaps they are big among statisticians (and I am sure there are some good jokes about what would make a good number plate for a stats geek). Read more »

   Filed under: Inequality, Middle Britain, Pensions | 2 Comments »

Britain is the sixth richest country in the world yet around 30% of our children (over 4 million) live in poverty; in a report released by UNICEF in 2007 Britain came 21^st out of 21 of the world’s richest countries in terms of child wellbeing. If we are to take seriously the issues of child poverty and child wellbeing then we need to tackle the high levels of inequality in this country.

In a recent blog post for the Institute of Economic Affairs, Kristian Niemietz was critical of Child Poverty Action Group for an article in the Autumn 2008 edition of our membership journal “Poverty”. In it, Polly Toynbee argued that we should tax those who earn over £100,000 fifty pence on every pound they earn over that amount, to pay for improving services and reducing inequality. Read more »

   Filed under: Child poverty, Inequality | 4 Comments »

David Cameron’s Hugo Young Lecture is the closest any Conservative has come to explaining how they expect reactionary methods to achieve progressive ends. He fails, but the speech should not be written off and it shows that he has – at least rhetorically – broken with the Conservatives of the 1980s and 90s, who didn’t give two hoots about inequality. Read more »

   Filed under: Child poverty, Inequality, Politics, Welfare | 1 Comment »