The FT sent this headline out in an email today:
Note the implicit assumption: as long as nothing changes it's all right and let's carry on as before chaps!
There are moments when one despairs, not very quietly.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
The headline suggests nothing of the sort.
It simply acknowledges that a (measured) static wealth gap is at odds with claims from other people that it was growing. It says nothing about whether the gap is good, bad or irrelevant.
Why is nuance beyond the comprehension of those on the right of politics?
When was it filtered out?
Some have suggested that one of the big issues for the next election will be inequality. It certainly should be (unlike a non-issue like immigration) and as such maybe the reaction to discussion on the negatives of inequality (Piketty bashing for example) is an inevitable consequence of the increasing importance of the discussion.
At one level simple comments suggesting that there isn’t an increase in inequality (which in itself says nothing about the appropriateness of the inequality at the starting point of analysis) are frustrating: but at another maybe this is all part of a generally positive sense that at least the issue will now be discussed in the middle of the political stage. The only thing worse, perhaps, would be no discussion on inequality at all?
I feel the despair Richard! Energy poverty, food bank use trebling in a year, housing bubbles causing people to pay over 60% income to rentier institutions and all the FT can do is say: well, the richest 10% still have 44% of total wealth-so it’s not got worse. Ye gods!
The planet’s wealthiest have ample opportunity to hide their wealth from statisticians.
Very, very true
As the Tax Justice Network have shown, often
Using the analogy of an abacus, I wonder how much of this comes down to people towards the very bottom of the income scale slipping even further down the abacus (with some beads even falling off entirely) and everybody else, even the ‘normally rich’, staying put or moving in a downwards direction so that the beads on the abacus are more evenly bunched up ‘down there’, meaning that inequality is only ‘static’ because most people are getting no wealthier or actually getting poorer. Meaning that, in truth, inequality is increasing rapidly, because the beads towards the top of the abacus are moving even further away from the rest as wealth has been transferred (stolen) by those at the very top. There is a very simple to understand graphic explain the situation here (it relates to US figures but it sets out its stall well) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM#t=320
The Sunday Times rich list tells a very different story: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/may/18/sunday-times-rich-list
Apparently the combined wealth of the richest 1,000 people in the UK rose 15.4% in the last year.
I’ve no idea if the Sunday Times rich list is accurate or not, but focusing on the top 1,000 people (The top 0.004 percent, by household) means that they are much more focused on the most wealthy than the ONS’s Wealth and Assets Survey, which, even though it oversamples people in the top 1% of wealth, will probably miss all the top 1000.
Indeed….
Howard/David agreed.
ONS methodology documentation (144 pages) does not indicate that it tackles the super rich. There are no references to protocols for inclusion of exceptional households or “billionaires” or “rich”.
Using the data in the 2010/12 ONS Excel sheets [1]; each “richest 1000” [2] person/households included in the ONS’s top wealthy-households decile would add 1.38% to the quoted total % wealth of the top 10th and deduct 1.38% total wealth from the other 9-deciles.
Assuming zero “richest” are included, and give the original 44.3%/55.7% split, then:-
Add two “richest” and you get a 47%/53% split.
Add ten “richest” and you get a 55.6%/44.4% split.
Using ONS’s sample size (N=4263, for 10th decile) there should be 1.6 “richest 1000” in the ONS 2010/12 survey data, unlikely though for ONS interview teams to get their attention and reveal their secrets — but we do not know.
Add 1.6 “richest” and you get a 46.5%/53.5% split.
What is more concerning is the income distribution of the population. Lower population incomes are absent or too small to live on, requiring state benefits rather than the dignity of a living wage — that’s intentional. The Actuarial report by Jones et al [3] is a huge source of information not only on the UK but world wide data (including income distributions, some UK data I checked against ONS data sets and they tallied) and contains the arguments why continued growth is an impossibility. Jones was widely quoted this week on the low levels of UK energy reserves.
I came to this, and other websites, a year ago to learn more. I was an old fashioned Labour activist who thought in “left-right” terms. I needed to transform my thinking and learn about the neoliberal paradigm. As a scientist I knew for a long time that continued growth is impossible, I have enough knowledge now to answer that – we need a stabilized world and I can only see activism and a Green vote as the ONLY option. Will Labour “reform” – I doubt it they are largely careerists or the offspring of the current lot. I’ve worked with politicians and I have respect but they largely miss the point and want power – lacking time, vision, knowledge and possibly courage.
[1] ONS Excel file “totalwealthbackgroundtablesfinal_tcm77-363046.xls”
[2] Using Times 2011 data where the total wealth of richest 1000 =£396Bn, 1 off richest would be worth £396Mn on average.
[3] http://www.actuaries.org.uk/research-and-resources/documents/research-report-resource-constraints-sharing-finite-world-implication “Research report – Resource constraints: sharing a finite world. Implications of Limits to Growth for the Actuarial Profession”. Authors: Dr Aled Jones; Irma Allen; Nick Silver; Catherine Cameron; Candice Howarth and Ben Caldecott, Publication date: 17 January 2013
Thanks
Appreciated