Uncategorized

Since the birth of civilisation there have always been extremes of wealth and poverty.  Many societies from the Roman Empire to Victorian Britain have had a small very rich elite who rule over the masses. The Roman Empire had very high levels of slavery. The working class in Victorian Britain was exploited and impoverished. And yet they were both societies that survived and thrived.

Why then should the increasing levels of inequality in the West be destabilising? Peter Turchin in his recently published book End Times has developed an interesting explanation which has implications for all of us. He says increasing levels of inequality have two negative effects that mutually reinforce each other: immiseration and elite overpopulation.

By immiseration he means that the reduction in income levels of the poor is so significant that their quality-of-life declines. This might be manifested in lower life expectancy, less healthy, shorter children or less home ownership. It probably also involves increased levels of stress, child poverty, poor diet and drug abuse.

The USA has demonstrated the worst of these effects in recent years. Overall life expectancy has now declined for 2 decades and is significantly less than levels in Europe. The life expectancy of the white working class was particularly affected by the over-prescription of opioids in the early twenty-first century. Britain is not immune to the same trends. According to the Kings Fund:

In 2018–20, males in the least deprived 10 per cent of areas in England could expect to live almost a decade longer than males in the 10 per cent most deprived areas; for females the difference was 8 years. About one-third of these inequalities in life expectancy are caused by higher mortality rates from heart and respiratory disease, and lung cancer in more deprived areas. These conditions are potentially preventable: smoking and obesity, the main risk factors, are higher among more deprived groups.

It matters not that in the West we still have a much more affluent lifestyle, than Third World countries; that by living in the West an individual is so much more prosperous than he would be in Africa, China or India. Immiseration occurs if the current generation has a less fulfilling lifestyle than the previous generation. The poor feel that the elite ruling classes have exploited them; that the elite are actively pursuing their own get-rich agenda at the expense of the less well off. Trust in government breaks down and conspiracy theories abound.

At the other end of the scale, as society becomes more unequal, more people enter the elite group of high wage earners. More elite children are educated at private schools. They all enter the world with the expectation of getting good jobs with high incomes. The difficulty is that the number of good jobs is relatively static. The number of high-ranking posts in industry, finance and government is limited.  Not all can succeed. Those that are not successful become frustrated and more likely to breach the cultural norms of society by cheating the system. They also have a grudge against the successful elite and thus have a natural affiliation with the immiserated poor. They become the ‘counter-elite’ in Turchin’s terminology.

This is very dangerous for democracy. The counter-elite shares the anger, frustration and conspiracy theories of the immiserated. If they are politically adept, they can mobilise immiserated votes against the ruling classes. This is what Johnson and Trump managed to do. It is dangerous, because both men (being unsuccessful members of the elite) were poor managers and presided over chaotic governments that further immiserated the poor.

This is just the first stage effect of increasing levels of inequality. Turchin opines that the situation is so bad in the US that there is a danger that a further break down in society is possible. A large counter-elite will be very disruptive to the normal functions of society, at the extreme they are capable of instigating  an insurrection. With the high levels of gun ownership in America, this is a frightening prospect.

We in Britain are currently following the same track as America, although at least a decade behind. Growth in life expectancy has stalled, the economy is stagnating, young families struggle to own their own homes, all signs of growing immiseration. At the other end of the scale universities are turning out record numbers of graduates, most of whom will not get plum jobs, indicating a growing frustrated counter-elite.

Turchin believes that all societies eventually become unstable and that at an interval of around 200 years, every society has the risk of a major breakdown. The American civil war was around 1860. Could it be that America is due for another internal conflict by 2060? The French 3^rd republic was formed in 1870 after the Franco-Prussian war.  Could the race riots in France, get worse and threaten their political system in the next 50 years? Not all crisis points end in conflict and violence. According to Turchin, Britain successfully overcame the last crisis in the mid-1800s by extending the voting franchise and enabling trade-unions to operate; this eventually enabled a more equal society to emerge. It is an open question whether Britain again has the political will to avoid the next major crisis by reversing the current inequality  trends.

In the first part of this book Paul Johnson explains clearly and succinctly the British Tax system: its rules and its consequences. The second part  summarises the challenges ahead.  In addition to Climate Change the biggest future issue results from Britain’s aging population. Not only will health and social care costs ramp up but also the proportion of those of working age and paying taxes will decline. The Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimates that just to stand still expenditure will have to rise in the next 50 years by almost 10% of national income. This is huge; we currently pay 37% of National Income –  taxes will have to go up by 25%. No political party is daring to tell electors this truth.

In his final paragraph  Johnson gives an outline of what is required to manage the financial challenges ahead:

The repair job starts with honesty about costs and benefits and trade-offs inherent in any policy decisions. Promising the earth, lower taxes and higher spending, is a way to ruin. Effective policy acknowledges that change takes time , and puts in place long-term strategies to accomplish sustainable change. It recognizes the importance of delivery and values over theories. It appoints competent ministers and keeps them in post for long enough to get on top of the brief. It values effective management throughout the public sector. It rewards public servants appropriately. It is brave when it comes to confronting vested interests, whether they be taxpayers benefiting from quirks of the current system, homeowners preventing development, or public sector institutions resisting necessary change. It focuses on growth and on the delivery of services.

Does anyone think our current democratic system is capable of following through on this approach.? Political focus is always on the short term, driven by a natural  need to get re-elected. Difficult decisions are almost always postponed and vested interests are rarely confronted, especially if they are contributing to the party coffers.  Ministers change posts increasingly frequently; we have had  4 prime ministers and 6 chancellors since 2016.

We are in for some tough times ahead. To get through it our democratic system of government will need a thorough overhaul.

Inequality wastes money. The rich  fritter away their wealth, buying luxuries and investing in ego projects. This distorts a nation’s economy for the worse.   If incomes were spread evenly, ordinary people could invest more in improving their health, education and living conditions, thus increasing the wealth and vitality of society as a whole.

Thanks to inflation, many families in Britain are now entering food and fuel poverty. At the same time expenditure on luxuries is increasing. For example, The Guardian reported on 16/11/22 that:

The company behind Moët & Chandon, Veuve Clicquot, Krug and Dom Pérignon has said it is “running out of stock on our best champagnes” as the wealthy spend big on luxury goods in a new “roaring 20s” age of decadence.’

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/15/wealthy-drinking-dry-lvmh-champagne-luxury

While most of us have to tighten our belts, the market for luxury goods continues to grow – up a massive 21% on last year.

Instead of investing in initiatives that would help the planet, billions are wasted by the likes of Bezos and Musk on boys-own trips into space. Bezos actually said: “The only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel.”

While governments claim to have insufficient money to prevent climate change and maintain biodiversity, the rich pretend to be philanthropists doling a out a few million to their friends’ charities .  Martina Hyde writing in the Guardian has a magnificent polemic on this.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/15/jeff-bezos-philanthropist-taxes-amazon-founder

The rich should be fairly taxed so that a nation’s wealth can be used democratically for the good of all. Inequality is economically as well as morally indefensible.

George Monbiot asks the pertinent question. Why, if 16.5 to 28% of greenhouse emissions are due to livestock farming, is this  not an urgent subject to be addressed COP27?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/09/leaders-cop27-livestock-farming-carbon-budget-governments

Britain’s system of democratic government is the result of a haphazard evolutionary process which started in the thirteenth century.  It is the outcome of a wrestling contest for power between the king, nobles and tradesmen. Only in the nineteenth century was the electorate at all representative of the (male) population and even into the early twentieth century the nobility still had the power of veto over all legislation. There has never been a grand plan, nor any assessment of its efficacy.  Never-the less Britain’s democracy was once the envy of the civilised world, it delivered the industrial revolution, the British Empire and health, safety and security for its citizens during and after the First and Second World Wars.

Since the Suez crisis in the 1950s, Britain’s power and influence has declined enormously. Britain’s democratic system is no longer delivering world leadership. The nation is drifting and has lost its sense of direction and purpose. Where once it was forward looking, it now wallows in nostalgia and past glories

Much of the problem is due to the way the democratic system now works. There are huge inherent problems with leadership selection, vision,  rational decision making and excessive external influences which are neither being recognised nor addressed.

Consider leadership. The competence of our leaders appears to be in decline. This decline can be traced back to changes in the selection process; leaders are now chosen largely by party members rather than by MPs or Trades Unions. Party members now represent a very small proportion of the population and their views tend to be atypically extreme. In the last general election, as a result of this biased selection process, we voters had to choose between a habitual liar, Boris Johnson, and a man with his ideas drawn from the 1950’s, Jeremy Corbyn. Before that we had Teresa May a leader whose communication skills were so poor, she was known as the Maybot. We now have Liz Truss as our Prime Minister. She appears to live in a parallel universe, one in which all problems are solved by reducing taxes and increasing the National Debt. To be elected she has only had to appeal to members of the Conservative party; they are few in number and mostly aged, with little time for fresh ideas. How can we call this democracy?

The complexities of governance that our leaders face today are many times more challenging than when the current routines of Parliament were first defined two centuries ago. We desperately need experienced ministers who can provide leadership to both understand and confront the challenges facing us as a society. In business, candidates for job vacancies without a relevant track record would have little chance of success. In the UK, ministers are often catapulted into managing government departments for which they have no practical knowledge. As a result, they often act in an amateur knee-jerk fashion responding to each crisis as it occurs. Education and the National Health Service, in particular, have suffered greatly with ministers micro-managing according to their own pet ideas. A life in politics requires quite different skills from managing large institutions.  Surely, we need to select leaders on their proven ability in office? We need leaders of our education systems, transport infrastructure, tax collection systems, health care and indeed our prime misters   who can use their own expertise to construct world-class cost-effective institutions. Institutions that have planning horizons beyond the lifetime of a parliament and are capable of  guiding Britain into the 21^st century.

In this new and rapidly changing world there are four effects of memetic evolution that we know will happen. They are already locked in. Technology will become ever more effective, the population in the Northern Hemisphere will become more aged, the environment will deteriorate, and society will become more divided.

Technology is bringing with it enormous new social pressures. Our culture has evolved to communicate face to face and later in print. It seems the internet and the mobile phone has released a whole new wave of human nastiness in the form of bullying, trolling, crime and pornography. We still don’t know the long-term effect of this on our young. Technology is also bringing job insecurity; it has enabled the gig economy and the increasing use of robotics and artificial intelligence will further change the work environment. It is also subverting the democratic process by transmitting fake news, rumour and terrorism. And it is altering the nature of war between countries, China Russia and North Korea have already used it to disrupt the economies of the west, drones and armed robots have the potential to disrupt it further.

As regards population, whereas just 5-10 % of the British were over 65 in the 1950s, 25- 30% will be over 65 in the 21st century. This is a four-fold increase. It means that the age of retirement will have to rise further and the implications for health and social costs are enormous. For instance, The Health Foundation has recently estimated that, to keep up with growing demand, NHS and social care services in England will need more than 1.1 million extra staff over the next decade.

Thirdly, we are already seeing the effects of climate change, environmental degradation and a huge loss of biodiversity as we convert nature to arable land and pollute the environment. We have changed the very nature of the planet to suit our needs, so much so that Geologists have deemed that we have entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. Epochs usually last millions of years. If the climate scientists are right the Anthropocene will herald an era where environmental degradation will increasingly impinge on all our lives. We will see more floods, droughts, high temperatures and storms and experience more acutely the resulting economic disruption.

Finally, we are creating a divided society with a new underclass and a new super-rich aristocracy. The loss of manufacturing in the West has resulted in the demise of the old working class, organised by trade-unions. It is being replaced by a highly stressed labour force on zero hours contracts, self-employed in the gig economy. At present this new class is not organised or self-aware. This is bound to change and new class conflicts will emerge.

None of this is new. We all know this is happening and yet what are we doing about it.  We and our politicians remain resolutely short sided. Most of us are too concerned with day-to-day existence to look into the future and make cogent plans for confronting the coming problems. We see daily how we are always reacting to events with surprise, rather than anticipating issues. The NHS totters on the edge of collapse, but the government still has no long-term plan on how to cope with the health care costs of an aging population. We were totally unprepared for the Covid pandemic despite warnings from the scientific community. Immigration controls are a total mess, as seen by the recent Windrush scandal and Brexit labour shortages. Micro-plastics are polluting the oceans and the government is talking about banning cotton buds. Despite all the promises about tackling climate change, the level of greenhouse gases continues to rise at a alarming rate. Google and Apple continue to avoid paying taxes and nothing, so far, has been done about it. Amazon is becoming a global monopoly and no one seems concerned. The recent leak of the Pandora papers showed that corrupt politicians, crooks and businessmen continue to use shell companies to hide their wealth in tax-havens and buy power and influence by contributing to political parties.

Our democratically elected leaders are failing us. They remain resolutely focused on short term issues with opinions set by past experience. Conservative politicians cling to the failed policies of neo-liberalism and try to imitate Margaret Thatcher. The left is deeply divided between hard core socialists with policies from the 1950s and those that are afraid to speak out for the working class and seem to have no positive ideas of their own. Memetic evolution is changing the world faster than ever. No party appears capable of looking forward or effectively communicating the nature of the challenge or the speed of change.

We need a new politics for a new era. One that looks forward rather than back. One that is capable of anticipating change and setting appropriate policies to mitigate its effects. One that is not appealing constantly to past glories but can galvanise the nation to address the coming problems. The lives of our children and grandchildren are dependent on us making the right decisions now.

Democracy is the art of thinking independently together’ said the American philosopher, Alexander Meikljohn. If this is true then this art has been lost in the West and democratic government is in crisis as a consequence.

One problem is that the tribalism of party politics gets in the way of effective democratic processes. Too often party loyalty trumps rational decision-making.  A scandalous example of this occurs in the Committee stage of law-making at the House of Commons. This is the stage in which the finer points of a proposed law are discussed and problem areas are supposed to be resolved. Isobel Hardman in her book Why we get the Wrong Politicians describes the process as non-functional: in effect a charade. The government has a majority on the committee. They select the participating MPs, not for their knowledge and interest, but for their compliance; these doormats of politicians are expected to support the Government at all times. During the committee meetings only opposition MPs raise issues. Government MPs, with nothing to contribute, spend their time on other work such as answering emails on their laptops. The Government deliberately side-lines MPs who think independently and actively discourages rational discussion.

Debates in the Chamber are little better, too often political discussion appears to be a process in which the deaf shout at each other. No points are conceded, no questions are answered and no light is shed on the issues discussed. Party dogma and party loyalty rules.

Alexander Meikljohn also believed that democracy should mean self-government by the people; by this he meant that the Government should be involved in an informed dialogue with the electorate.   At the present time, the public is rarely enlightened by political discussion. The accepted art of a politician seems to be avoiding answering difficult questions. Never admit to a mistake is a mantra. New ideas are rarely discussed as politicians stick rigidly to the party line. As politicians waffle non-responses, media interviews frustrate both interviewer and public alike.

The tribalism of party politics is at its worst in the USA. Democrats and Republicans are barely on speaking terms. The American constitutional system was designed as a balance of power, involving discussion and compromise.  Too often Democrats dominate Congress and Republicans the Senate;  the result is stalemate. During the last two presidencies there have been long periods in which Congress barely functions at all.

We desperately need cultural change in the way our politicians behave. The excesses of tribal behaviour need to be curbed to allow issue identification and resolution. The remnants of effective democratic processes in the House of Commons survive in conventions for speaking courtesies: representatives must be addressed as Right Honourable and members are not allowed to use ‘unparliamentary language’. But the essence of the democratic processes  have been so degraded over time that there needs to be a root and branch review of systems and codes of behaviour. Politics would be much more effective if representatives listened to other views, ceded points of discussion and reached genuine rational decisions. It’s not rocket science.  It needs good chairing and agreed rules of conduct, such as those suggested by Peter Macfadyn in his book Flatpack Democracy. There is a precedent for change to be possible. According to Isobel Hardman, Select Committees, introduced in 1979, have a different political culture in which members are much less partisan.

As soon as people identify as a group, tribal behaviour becomes inevitable. A truly effective democracy depends on its culture and its processes to minimise this behaviour and allow rational discussion to take place. In Britain and the USA, at least, these democratic norms have fallen into disrepair. The West’s position in the world pecking order is under threat from populist movements, Chinese militarism and the success of East Asian forms of democratic government. If the West is to maintain its international competitiveness it will need to look again at its failing democratic procedures and revise them to be fit for the 21^st century.

Political parties and politicians running for office need money in order to campaign and function. For most of the twentieth century the Labour party were dependent on income from trades-unions whilst the Conservatives relied on donations from wealthy businessmen. As a result, the trade-union political agenda had a large influence on Labour policies. Wealthy businessmen not only had leverage on Conservative policies but were also rewarded with honours and peerages. You can argue that both funding methods eroded the democratic process and gave a small number of individuals outside government a say in the way the country was run. Politicians recognised some of the dangers involved and, by an Act of 2000, some restrictions were placed on funding and record keeping. Funding must only come from UK electors or UK-registered organisations; political parties must also record donations or loans over £7,500; and MPs must report those over £500.

However, it has become apparent that these rules are insufficient and easily subverted. In the last three decades there has been a trend for right-wing parties to rely increasingly on income from a few rich individuals. These individuals are often libertarians who want low taxes, minimum state control and are against all forms of cross-community support. This first occurred with the Republican party in America and is spreading to Britain. Peter Geoghegan in his book Democracy for Sale tells the story about how this occurred during the Brexit debate and has continued under Boris Johnson’s leadership. Indeed, leaks from tax havens have recently revealed the extent to which the Tory party is beholden to offshore funds from Russian oligarchs and tax exiles. ‘Access capitalism’, is the term Geoghegan uses to describe a democratic process in which the rich buy power and influence.

Apart from direct donations there are many other ways in which the rich influence government. There’s the press. The right-wing owners of the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express all use their papers to propagate their views in the UK. In America, Murdoch’s Fox News is a notorious supporter and influencer of the Republican party. As well as directly lobbying ministers, rich companies and individuals fund think tanks, pressure groups and academic research to further their case. Much of this work is conducted through front organisations that hide the identity of the source of their funding. ‘Astroturfing’ a term used to describe the practise of presenting their case as if it comes from a groundswell of public opinion when in fact it is entirely based on propaganda from companies or individuals.

In most political debates, rich individuals and businesses have the ability to outspend any alternative views to their own.  Actions, or more often inaction, on climate change, the obesity epidemic, the use of pesticides, Brexit, the privatisation of the NHS all have been heavily influenced by the rich. And, just like the tobacco lobby in the 1950s and 1960s, these have negatively affected the health and wealth of the British people.  If democracy is to work for the good of all, the influence of outside money on the political process has to be better managed and controlled.

I love George Monbiot’s polemic at the end of his Guardian article https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/30/putin-lie-machine-history-untruths

It ends:

Most of us recognise nonsense when we see it. Really? So how do we account for the fact that almost everyone in public life subscribes to the same set of preposterous beliefs? Let’s set aside the wild conspiracy theories of the far right, even though they’re now starting to infect the mainstream right. Let’s focus on the “acceptable” range of political opinion.

Nearly everyone who appears in the media, across almost the entire political spectrum, seems to accept that economic growth can and should continue indefinitely on a finite planet. Almost all believe that we should take action to protect life on Earth only when it is cost-effective. Even then, we should avoid compromising the profits of legacy industries. They appear to believe that something they call “the economy” takes priority over our life support systems.

They further believe that the unhindered acquisition of enormous wealth by a few people is somehow acceptable. They believe that taxes sufficient to break the cycle of accumulation and redistribute extreme wealth are unthinkable. They believe that permitting a handful of offshore billionaires to own the media, set the political agenda and tell us where our best interests lie is fine. They believe that we should pledge unquestioning allegiance to a system we call capitalism even though they are unable to define it, let alone predict where it might be heading.

No terror or torture is required to persuade people to fall into line with these crazy beliefs. Somehow our system of organised lying has created an entire class of politicians, officials, media commentators, cultural leaders, academics and intellectuals who nod along with them. Reading accounts of 20th-century terror, it sometimes seems to me that there was more dissent among intellectuals confronting totalitarian regimes than there is in our age of freedom and choice.

We have a truth crisis all right. But it is much deeper and wider than we care to admit. Perhaps the biggest lie of all is that the crisis is confined to the Kremlin’s falsehoods and the far right’s conspiracy theories. On the contrary, it is systemic and almost universal.