The UK is the second most unequal society of all the rich nations after
the USA. This ever-widening gap between the super-rich and the rest of
us has been occurring since the election of Maragret Thatcher in 1979.
This has led to the rich getting ever richer to the point that the UK's
171 billionaires now hold as much wealth as over 40 million of the rest
of us. In 2020, the Office for National Statistics calculated that the
richest 10% of households hold 43% of all wealth. The poorest 50%, by
contrast, own just 9%, while the bottom 10% own just 0.02% of the total
wealth. Today, the five richest families in the UK are wealthier than
the bottom 20 percent of the entire population combined.
Such massive wealth inequality has a profound effect on society. It
causes huge damage to the economy, shortens people's lives, makes people
unhealthy and unhappy, leads to poorer health and education systems and
increases the amount of violence and crime in society. While inequality
generally makes society a far less happy place to live and declining
public services impacts on us all, apart from the very rich, inequality
has a devastating effect on the lives of the less well off. Just to give
a few examples, a study by the Health Foundation found that a
60-year-old woman in the poorest areas of England has a level of
'diagnosed illness' equivalent to that of a 76-year-old woman in the
wealthiest areas, while a 60-year-old man in the poorest areas of
England will on average have a level of "diagnosed illness" equivalent
to that of a 70-year-old man in the wealthiest areas. A woman living in
the poorest areas has a life expectancy five years shorter than a woman
in the wealthiest areas, while men living in the poorest areas can
expect to die nine years earlier than men in the wealthiest areas.
Inequality then, blights the lives of us all and fundamentally shapes
the society we live in and causes untold harm to those less well off.
Given the harm inequality does to the vast majority of us, it does beg
the question as to just why the UK economy is so unequal. Of course,
inequality is endemic to capitalism: where there is capitalism there is
inequality.
But that does not explain why the UK is such an unequal society compared
to other rich countries. The answer to this puzzle lies in the nature of
the UK economy.
The profound economic changes introduced by Thatcher changed the nature
of British capitalism, driving out manufacturing and reasonably
well-paid jobs, to the benefit of the financial sector. Over time, this
has led to the UK economy being largely dominated by speculators and a
rentier class, who contribute little to the economy in real terms, but
are able to use their dominant position within the economy to extract an
ever-larger share of the wealth created by society as a whole. In effect
the UK economy has been turned into a cash cow for the rich.
This explains the conundrum of how it is that as a society we get ever
more rich, and yet public services seem to get ever worse. The reality
is that even though as a nation our overall wealth is increasing, an
ever-larger percentage of that increased wealth is ending up in the
hands of the rich. The super rich are hoovering up all the money,
leaving the rest of us to struggle to make ends meet and having to
finance collapsing public services out of ever dwindling incomes. As
wages decline in real terms the government has to keep increasing taxes
in an attempt to fund public services, resulting in the absurd position
of the tax burden being at the highest in 70 years while at the same
time public services are falling apart.
One solution would be to redistribute society's wealth downwards. It is
estimated that a one off 1% wealth tax on households with more than £1m
would generate an extra £260 billion in revenue. Enough to end, at least
for the time being, the crisis in the health service and social care.
But even this fairly modest proposal has been rejected by all the major
parties, including the Labour Party, who have made it clear that they
"have no plans to introduce a wealth tax". The Labour leadership has
also made it perfectly clear that they have no intention of
redistributing wealth through taxes in any meaningful way.
In January, the then shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves stated they had no
intention of reinstating the cap that limited the bonus paid out to
bankers to twice their salary. The cap was abolished by the disastrous,
shortlived Truss government. Reeves stated she had "no intention" of
bringing back the cap, saying she wanted to be the "champion of a
thriving financial services industry". Maintaining a "thriving"
financial services industry, it would appear, requires bankers receiving
obscene levels in a society where many depend on food banks. This
announcement should come as no surprise given the Labour leadership has
already withdrawn its commitment to raise the top rate of income tax to
45p. The cowardice of the Labour leadership, in the face of hostility by
the rich and their allies in the media, can be put into perspective by
the fact that even the Thatcher government kept the top rate of tax at
60p or above for the first 10 years of being in government.
Understandably many will continue to support the Labour Party in the
hope that once elected into government they will become more radical.
However, rather than being dependent on the whims of politicians,
workers should organise themselves and take action. It is no coincidence
that the most dramatic reduction in inequality in the history of the UK
came about in the immediate decades after the second world war, during a
period of trade union militancy. Militant workers were able to force
through change to the extent that by the 1970s the UK was one of the
most equal countries in the world. After the defeat of trade union
militancy in the 1980s and early 1990s inequality once again began to
grow, to the point that billionaire wealth has rocketed by over 1000%
since 1990.
Inequality has turned the UK into an ever more brutal place to live,
with levels of poverty that should be a source of shame to governments
in a country that is still one of the richest in the world. Things will
only change when people get organised and force change. Ultimately, the
scourge of inequality will only end when capitalism, a system driven by
greed and narrow self-interest, is replaced by a humane society, a
society in which each and every individual can live fulfilling lives
free from the evil and injustice of an unequal world.
http://solfed.org.uk/da/direct-action-solidarity-federation-2024-issue-2
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
the USA. This ever-widening gap between the super-rich and the rest of
us has been occurring since the election of Maragret Thatcher in 1979.
This has led to the rich getting ever richer to the point that the UK's
171 billionaires now hold as much wealth as over 40 million of the rest
of us. In 2020, the Office for National Statistics calculated that the
richest 10% of households hold 43% of all wealth. The poorest 50%, by
contrast, own just 9%, while the bottom 10% own just 0.02% of the total
wealth. Today, the five richest families in the UK are wealthier than
the bottom 20 percent of the entire population combined.
Such massive wealth inequality has a profound effect on society. It
causes huge damage to the economy, shortens people's lives, makes people
unhealthy and unhappy, leads to poorer health and education systems and
increases the amount of violence and crime in society. While inequality
generally makes society a far less happy place to live and declining
public services impacts on us all, apart from the very rich, inequality
has a devastating effect on the lives of the less well off. Just to give
a few examples, a study by the Health Foundation found that a
60-year-old woman in the poorest areas of England has a level of
'diagnosed illness' equivalent to that of a 76-year-old woman in the
wealthiest areas, while a 60-year-old man in the poorest areas of
England will on average have a level of "diagnosed illness" equivalent
to that of a 70-year-old man in the wealthiest areas. A woman living in
the poorest areas has a life expectancy five years shorter than a woman
in the wealthiest areas, while men living in the poorest areas can
expect to die nine years earlier than men in the wealthiest areas.
Inequality then, blights the lives of us all and fundamentally shapes
the society we live in and causes untold harm to those less well off.
Given the harm inequality does to the vast majority of us, it does beg
the question as to just why the UK economy is so unequal. Of course,
inequality is endemic to capitalism: where there is capitalism there is
inequality.
But that does not explain why the UK is such an unequal society compared
to other rich countries. The answer to this puzzle lies in the nature of
the UK economy.
The profound economic changes introduced by Thatcher changed the nature
of British capitalism, driving out manufacturing and reasonably
well-paid jobs, to the benefit of the financial sector. Over time, this
has led to the UK economy being largely dominated by speculators and a
rentier class, who contribute little to the economy in real terms, but
are able to use their dominant position within the economy to extract an
ever-larger share of the wealth created by society as a whole. In effect
the UK economy has been turned into a cash cow for the rich.
This explains the conundrum of how it is that as a society we get ever
more rich, and yet public services seem to get ever worse. The reality
is that even though as a nation our overall wealth is increasing, an
ever-larger percentage of that increased wealth is ending up in the
hands of the rich. The super rich are hoovering up all the money,
leaving the rest of us to struggle to make ends meet and having to
finance collapsing public services out of ever dwindling incomes. As
wages decline in real terms the government has to keep increasing taxes
in an attempt to fund public services, resulting in the absurd position
of the tax burden being at the highest in 70 years while at the same
time public services are falling apart.
One solution would be to redistribute society's wealth downwards. It is
estimated that a one off 1% wealth tax on households with more than £1m
would generate an extra £260 billion in revenue. Enough to end, at least
for the time being, the crisis in the health service and social care.
But even this fairly modest proposal has been rejected by all the major
parties, including the Labour Party, who have made it clear that they
"have no plans to introduce a wealth tax". The Labour leadership has
also made it perfectly clear that they have no intention of
redistributing wealth through taxes in any meaningful way.
In January, the then shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves stated they had no
intention of reinstating the cap that limited the bonus paid out to
bankers to twice their salary. The cap was abolished by the disastrous,
shortlived Truss government. Reeves stated she had "no intention" of
bringing back the cap, saying she wanted to be the "champion of a
thriving financial services industry". Maintaining a "thriving"
financial services industry, it would appear, requires bankers receiving
obscene levels in a society where many depend on food banks. This
announcement should come as no surprise given the Labour leadership has
already withdrawn its commitment to raise the top rate of income tax to
45p. The cowardice of the Labour leadership, in the face of hostility by
the rich and their allies in the media, can be put into perspective by
the fact that even the Thatcher government kept the top rate of tax at
60p or above for the first 10 years of being in government.
Understandably many will continue to support the Labour Party in the
hope that once elected into government they will become more radical.
However, rather than being dependent on the whims of politicians,
workers should organise themselves and take action. It is no coincidence
that the most dramatic reduction in inequality in the history of the UK
came about in the immediate decades after the second world war, during a
period of trade union militancy. Militant workers were able to force
through change to the extent that by the 1970s the UK was one of the
most equal countries in the world. After the defeat of trade union
militancy in the 1980s and early 1990s inequality once again began to
grow, to the point that billionaire wealth has rocketed by over 1000%
since 1990.
Inequality has turned the UK into an ever more brutal place to live,
with levels of poverty that should be a source of shame to governments
in a country that is still one of the richest in the world. Things will
only change when people get organised and force change. Ultimately, the
scourge of inequality will only end when capitalism, a system driven by
greed and narrow self-interest, is replaced by a humane society, a
society in which each and every individual can live fulfilling lives
free from the evil and injustice of an unequal world.
http://solfed.org.uk/da/direct-action-solidarity-federation-2024-issue-2
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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