Edward Hadas

Around 100 BC, a Roman nobleman calculated that it took about 100,000 sesterces a year to live comfortably. That was roughly 200 times the amount of money a poor city dweller needed to eke out a living. If an American needed the same multiple of the subsistence income to join the upper middle class today, the threshold would be $3.5 million. The United States economy has become less equal lately, but it remains much more egalitarian than the ancient Roman Republic.

The modern news on economic inequality is much more good than bad. The good news is very good. The greatest moral problem caused by inequality – the unequal access to the most basic economic goods, those which support life – has become less severe. The portion of the total population that suffers from this bottom-inequality is probably the lowest ever in history.

True, we do not know how many ancient Romans were on the wrong side of the bottom-inequality, but statistics for the most recent decades are encouraging. In 1970, 26 percent of the world’s population suffered from hunger, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation. The proportion is now 13 percent – still scandalously high, but the gain in food-equality is clear. Nor is food an isolated example. Electricity is a relative new development, but the Soviet dream of universal electrification has already nearly become a reality; more than 80 percent of the world’s population can plug in, according to the International Energy Agency. Health care and sanitary living conditions are now considered basic goods – and access to them has become more equal. The average life expectancy at birth is 65 or above in countries accounting for roughly 80 percent of the world’s population.

The bad news is on the other end of the income spectrum. There has been an increase in top-inequality – a widening gap between the elite and the rest – in the United States, the UK and a few other countries. The bottom 90 percent in the United States are not exactly suffering; they have been getting richer on average for the last few decades. But the rich, especially the very rich, have been getting richer much faster. The top 10 percent of earners took in 32 percent of the nation’s total income three decades ago. That has risen to 46 percent. The share taken by the top 1 percent has more than doubled, from 8 to 18 percent, according to the World Top Incomes Database. In the UK, the newly published report from the High Pay Commission points out that the top 0.1 percent’s portion has multiplied from 1.3 to 6.5 percent.

The increase in top-inequality is bad in principle. People are not different enough in their abilities or in their dedication to work to justify the recent increases in the gap between rich and relatively poor. The damage can be seen in practice. The commission makes a good case that top-inequality reduces social solidarity, making companies less efficient and slowing GDP growth. It also points out, along with the book The Spirit Level, that greater top-inequality is associated with societies which have more health and behavior problems.

Still, there are four mitigating factors:

First, the allocation of wealth within a society is usually best left to the collective judgement of that society. The people have not, not yet at least, definitively rejected the widening gap between rich and poor. That suggests the problem is not widely perceived as grave.

Second, the elite just might be able to do some good with their extra resources. The ancient Romans offered bread and circuses and renaissance princes sponsored artists. In modern industrial societies, the financially secure elite could be a helpful alternative to governments for cultural, social and economic initiatives.

Third, whatever the evil caused by top-inequality in rich societies, it is much less significant than the good news on bottom-equality. As the American and British masses get richer, it becomes harder to argue that they lose out in a morally significant way when the elite gain. Even the poverty which causes the social problems identified by The Spirit Level is arguably more spiritual and social than strictly material.

Finally, if the people do decide that the recent increase in top-inequality is unjust, the trend can be reversed with much less trouble than bottom-inequality. Major social changes are required to increase crop yields or trade in the remaining deprived parts of the world, but the rich can be curbed fairly easily in developed economies. Choose from the following list: shame, taxes, limits on the range of pay inside companies or income caps in the particularly lucrative financial sector. Even for the very rich, the sacrifices needed to reduce inequality would be mild. As Bill Gates pointed out, more money stops meaning much after the first few millions. In his words, “it’s the same hamburger”.

By Edward Hadas
The views expressed are his own.

Occupy Wall Street can claim a tremendous heritage. In almost every generation – from the French Revolution of 1789 to the student revolts of the 1960s – popular movements have rejected a society which, they say, denies some sort of basic freedom. But for a protest to leave a lasting impression, it has to start or mark a significant cultural change. What could OWS signify?

The Occupy movement certainly expresses popular fury at high finance. But that sentiment is far from revolutionary. President Obama and many business dignitaries have expressed sympathy. There also seems to be anger at inequality created by unjust practices. In the words of an October 14 blog entry on Occupywallst.org, the “99 percent” of the population will “no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the one percent.” Such righteous indignation could perhaps spawn a revolution, but only if it came with a more positive agenda. As it stands, though, the manifestos and soundbites coming out of the leaderless groups are long on complaints and short on both intellectual coherence and suggestions for new arrangements.

Still, this movement must have something going for it. It has spread around the world and attracts much friendly attention from the mainstream media. I see three forces at work.

First, economic confusion. Occupiers see the economy as a disaster. They blame the triumph of “neoliberals” who put their trust in small government and big companies. Many of the hand-lettered signs at Occupy protests go further; they suggest the enemy is not an erroneous ideology but a huge economic conspiracy of the elite against the people.

Such claims are not justified. The global economy is certainly not in bad shape. The big news these days is the increasing prosperity and influence of China, India and other countries which used to be too poor to matter. The U.S. economy does have problems, especially in the job market, but the country remains prosperous. Occupy is certainly right that the elite are still powerful; that is what elites do. New laws and regulations would be enough to temper corporate power; a brand new economic order is not required.

As for the dangers of neoliberalism, faulty ideology did indeed lead to inept deregulation of the financial sector, but the political tide is already flowing in the opposite direction. In other parts of the economy, there is no need for reversal. During the years leading up to the crisis, the U.S. government increased its sway over healthcare, education and mortgage finance – three of the four domains citied in the Occupy Wall Street blog as under neoliberal control.

Second, utopianism. The spirit of Woodstock lives in OWS. There are tents, talk of peace and love and hope for improvement in human nature. “We must change, we must evolve” is a typical slogan. Utopianism, though, was not invented in 1968. The belief that society can be made perfect through radical democracy has long been part of the Left’s revolutionary ideology. More than two centuries of history show how easily the failures of past experiments in radical social engineering are forgotten. The enthusiasts at Occupy have duly forgotten.

Third, the decline of the Left. If the moderate left had a distinctive agenda for reform, Occupy’s wrongheaded and unrealistic musings would look like a dangerous distraction. But there is nothing to be distracted from. Even a crisis in speculative financial capitalism has not spawned substantial left-wing proposals for reform.

The Democrats in the U.S. make a partisan show while the European center-left parties mostly feud among themselves. As bearers of anything like an ideology, though, the Left is a spent force everywhere. The decline is easy to explain. The Left’s basic economic demands have largely been met: the proletariat has mostly become middle class and the government mostly protects the weak. That leaves the Left without an obvious agenda. In practice, it must choose between fine-tuning and revolution. The politicians go for incremental policy initiatives. The timidity leaves room for extremists to flourish.

Occupy’s participants might want to be revolutionaries, but they are a pale imitation of the idealists of the 1960s. While the new movement is undoubtedly counter-cultural, corporate leaders and politicians have learned how to co-opt such incoherent anti-establishment sentiments. Apple, for example, has done brilliantly by combining high tech, high prices and a veneer of counter-culture. Occupy participants use more than their share of Apple products.

Indeed, the grief over the death of Apple’s founder, Steve Jobs, gives a more accurate cultural reading than Occupy. The college dropout who wandered to Asia looking for enlightenment became a hero for many of the 99 percent. They may feel oppressed by the state of the economy, but they sense they have more to lose than to gain from any substantial change in the system that has provided iPhones and iPads. So what does OWS signify? The shallowness of our discontent.