Inequality

In my last post but one I said I was trying to set up a local study group on sustainability issues. Since then we have had our first meeting and it went well. We decided to devote our next meeting to the subject of inequality. This was partly because the New Economics Foundation (nef) put on an event on the subject recently and one of our number attended it. A resume of the nef take on inequality can be found here.

What has inequality got to do with energy descent and sustainability - apart from the fact that they both appear to be causes associated with the left rather than the right in British politics? My gut feeling is: quite a lot.
It seems to me inevitable that effective action to tackle climate change will ultimately, though perhaps not immediately, depress economic growth. That's before we start thinking about the effects of resource depletion.

Economic growth can, I think, have the effect of depressing the demand for fairness in the way economic rewards are allocated between the different stakeholders in economic enterprises - shareholders, management, workforce, consumers, the rest of society. If my income is rising steadily, I am less likely to worry about other people's income rising faster than if my income is stagnant or falling.

In a sustainable economy, one of the things that needs to be sustained is social cohesion - a society beset by riots, strikes and crime is unlikely to prosper. When sacrifices need to be made, the slogan "We're all in this together" needs to have some substance behind it.

Those are my gut feelings but my gut feelings should not, in themselves, be of much interest to anyone. The important question is whether there is evidence to support my gut feelings.

The famous study by Wilkinson and Pickett, entitled The Spirit Level, has provided some evidence. to support some of my gut feelings on the subject. They claimed, through a series of regressions of inequality against various indicators of social well- and ill-being, that there is generally a positive relationship between equality and indicators of well-being. Furthermore, drawing on other studies, they indicated that the higher levels of well-being in the more equal societies extended right up the income scale - it was not just the poor who benefited.

Their findings have been disputed. Some of the criticism, from right-wing sources, is predictable. I haven't found the time yet (will I ever?) to establish to my own satisfaction, whether there is real substance behind the criticisms.