I have been reading Chris Mullins autobiography, the latest volume, "A Walk-On Part". He comes across as a thoroughly decent man. Of course everyone wants to be loved, and it would take superhuman objectivity to present oneself in an entirely neutral light, but I find it hard to believe that he is hiding anything very objectionable about his personality.
He is a true socialist, and believes that the moral case for redistribution of income is so strong that it justifies the damage to incentives and the consequent loss of total economic output. He does not put it this way, but this comes across from what he writes. This is an entirely respectable argument, which cannot be resolved by debate but by measurement, itself a very difficult matter. Not that Chris is concerned about ideology. His diaries are a great read and illuminate the characters of the major figures of the Blair years far more brightly than their own autobiographies are ever likely to.
Although these diaries are now very old, covering the period 1994 to 1999, the issue of income and the redistribution of it is as fresh as ever. In spite of their being, now, a Conservative-dominated administration, feelings seem to be stronger than ever that income is too unequally distributed in the UK and the USA. The Occupy Movement, in spite of its rather incoherent aims, is widely supported, and plutocratic candidates like Mitt Romney are now struggling to get elected in a way that would have been suprising even five years ago.
I am sure that the cause of this change in sentiment is the fact that people are both feeling poorer, and feeling that there is a dwindling chance of them becoming any less poor. Somehow it's much easier to tolerate extreme wealth if one's own income is at least moving in the right direction.
This is all very familiar, but it seems to me that the debate is very limited. It seems to me that inequalities of income are a consequence of inequalities of power. Lawyers, doctors, bankers, private equity investors, CEOs, hedge fund managers, bankers, actuaries, fund managers, accountants all benefit from a power structure which they can exploit to get, to a varying extent, above-average incomes. They may well have above-average academic success and personal qualities, but this is largely a result of a competition to do these jobs, as opposed to the nature of the jobs themselves. Of course there is a competitive aspect of some of these jobs, and, in some cases, maybe law and investment banking, there is a winner-takes-all aspect which means that inevitably only candidates at the extreme of the distribution will be successful.
Correcting this situation would mean taking on powerful vested interests. These high-earning groups are heavily represented both directly, and via well-funded lobbying. It is hard to see how taking on these pillars of the establishment could be done by a Conservative administration, but it's very sad to see that the previous nominally socialist administration not only did nothing, but did not seem to appreciate that tackling the sources of inequality would be much more effective than (weakly) trying to tax it out of existence. This would also have avoided many of the problems of incentive destruction that we have seen.
He is a true socialist, and believes that the moral case for redistribution of income is so strong that it justifies the damage to incentives and the consequent loss of total economic output. He does not put it this way, but this comes across from what he writes. This is an entirely respectable argument, which cannot be resolved by debate but by measurement, itself a very difficult matter. Not that Chris is concerned about ideology. His diaries are a great read and illuminate the characters of the major figures of the Blair years far more brightly than their own autobiographies are ever likely to.
Although these diaries are now very old, covering the period 1994 to 1999, the issue of income and the redistribution of it is as fresh as ever. In spite of their being, now, a Conservative-dominated administration, feelings seem to be stronger than ever that income is too unequally distributed in the UK and the USA. The Occupy Movement, in spite of its rather incoherent aims, is widely supported, and plutocratic candidates like Mitt Romney are now struggling to get elected in a way that would have been suprising even five years ago.
I am sure that the cause of this change in sentiment is the fact that people are both feeling poorer, and feeling that there is a dwindling chance of them becoming any less poor. Somehow it's much easier to tolerate extreme wealth if one's own income is at least moving in the right direction.
This is all very familiar, but it seems to me that the debate is very limited. It seems to me that inequalities of income are a consequence of inequalities of power. Lawyers, doctors, bankers, private equity investors, CEOs, hedge fund managers, bankers, actuaries, fund managers, accountants all benefit from a power structure which they can exploit to get, to a varying extent, above-average incomes. They may well have above-average academic success and personal qualities, but this is largely a result of a competition to do these jobs, as opposed to the nature of the jobs themselves. Of course there is a competitive aspect of some of these jobs, and, in some cases, maybe law and investment banking, there is a winner-takes-all aspect which means that inevitably only candidates at the extreme of the distribution will be successful.
Correcting this situation would mean taking on powerful vested interests. These high-earning groups are heavily represented both directly, and via well-funded lobbying. It is hard to see how taking on these pillars of the establishment could be done by a Conservative administration, but it's very sad to see that the previous nominally socialist administration not only did nothing, but did not seem to appreciate that tackling the sources of inequality would be much more effective than (weakly) trying to tax it out of existence. This would also have avoided many of the problems of incentive destruction that we have seen.
