How to defeat poverty worldwide

All of us who watch television are used to charity appeals urging us to give our £3 per month to help mitigate in part against the impact of poverty, hunger, and disease on those members of the human race who are most helpless. We are shown some truly shocking images of the most vulnerable people on our planet, and their unequal struggle just trying to cling to life.

I'm sure that many of us contribute what we can, and every life saved or enhanced is a small victory for humanity. At £3 per month though, plus the annual "give-athons", it will only ever be a series of small victories however many of us make the effort.

Surely so much better for those at the very top of the global economy to take a moment for reflection at how lucky they are to have been dealt such a good hand for their "one chance". To consider that the accumulation of more capital than they will ever have any purpose for is merely a vain and pompous exercise of power over everyone else, and is probably a pathological illness.

If the richest 100 individuals in the world (total aggregate worth $2.029 trillion), each gave 3% of their wealth (thereby raising in excess of $60 billion), Oxfam calculate that extreme poverty worldwide could be brought to an end "at a stroke", and those 100 richest individuals would each still have 97% of their wealth intact.

What a game changer!

Could that ever happen?

A Challenge to Inequality?

Over the last few years evidence has been gradually mounting that wealth/income inequality is harmful for all of us.

The 2009 publication of The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett highlighted the many ways in which inequality can exacerbate a whole host of social ills across the spectrum.

This was followed in 2013 by Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty suggesting how inequality is also bad for all of us in economic terms.

There are many supporters of these ideas among whom are economist Joseph Sitglitz, academic Prof. David Harvey, New York Mayor Bill di Blasio, the Occupy movement, and even it seems the IMF.

The power of these theories is in the strong evidence based logic which informs both The Spirit Level and Capital in the 21st Century.

One thing is for sure, the current neoliberal agenda has been shown to increase wealth/income inequality as part of its structural outcomes. There has been much talk of the 1% and the 99%, and it seems that this is the reality with which we now live. By inference then, neoliberalism actually harms us all both socially and economically.

Prof David Harvey has raised the question as to where a challenge will arise to this overarching ideology which seems to serve us badly in the long run. It seems that the challenge, if and when it comes, can only come from the left in the form of a definite "opposition" to the neoliberal core values of global deregulation and free market economics.

In the UK The Conservatives, The Liberal Democrats & UKIP seem firmly to support the neoliberal agenda, but quite worryingly, The Labour Party also seem content to propose how their policies will operate within that same framework, rather than providing a clear and distinct "opposition" to neoliberal values.

Len McCluskey, General Secretary of the trades union "Unite" has intimated that if the Labour Party are not prepared to take up this banner of "opposition", then the unions would consider forming a workers party for that purpose.

I am sure that 35 years of the failed experiment of neoliberalism has been quite enough for most people, and there must be a political challenge to it very soon. It remains to be seen whether the UK Labour Party will be able to see the bigger picture and will have the courage to seize the moment.

There are many who feel a sense that we are on the edge of a paradigm shift concerning the relationship between state and people, and it would be my personal hope that we can be guided forward by some committed politicians to achieve a positive outcome to serve us all.

How to Divide and Rule

There has it seems been much discussion about the intensity of the nasty comments and downright hatred directed towards benefit claimants on social media following TV programmes such as "Benefits Street" and "Don't Cap My Benefits". Lots of people are sickened by the lack of compassion and empathy, and indeed by the sheer scale of the brutal comments aimed at benefit claimants.

There is an explanation to all of this. Just suppose that the government had decided their ideology was against the provision of a social security safety net for the most vulnerable members of our society. They want to dismantle it but need to make sure that the majority of the electorate do not turn against them.

Now let us suppose that the government were able to influence the news media to instigate a persistent campaign to stereotype benefit claimants in some negative way, perhaps "undeserving" or "skivers" or "getting money for nothing". If this were successful in changing public perceptions, the government might be able to effect its desired cuts against these people without fear of a backlash of public opinion, or of losing too many votes.

This is how prejudices are managed for political ends. This is how politicians set us against each other to distract from what they are really doing:

"...it is perhaps surprising how easily stereotypes and stereotype threats are established, even in artificial conditions. Jane Elliott, an American schoolteacher, conducted an experiment with her students in 1968, in an effort to teach them about racial inequality and injustice. She told them that scientists had shown that people with blue eyes were more intelligent and more likely to succeed than people with brown eyes, who were lazy and stupid. She divided her class into blue‐eyed and brown‐eyed groups, and gave the blue‐eyed group extra privileges, praise and attention. The blue‐eyed group quickly asserted its superiority over the brown ‐eyed children, treating them contemptuously, and their school performance improved. The brown‐eyed group just as quickly adopted a submissive timidity, and their marks declined. After a few days, Elliott told the children she had got the information mixed up and that actually it was brown eyes that indicated superiority. The classroom situation rapidly reversed."

[Wilkinson, Richard; Pickett, Kate. The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone]

After this a turning point?

A few weeks before the 2010 General Election, Governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King told the American economist David Hale that whoever won the election would make themselves so unpopular because of austerity cuts that they would be out of power for a generation.

Interestingly, austerity was not the only option, and arguably should not have been an option at all. Financial crises in other places and at other times have clearly demonstrated that Keynsian demand-side expansionist policies kick-start economies, whereas austerity and cuts strangle the genesis of economic growth.

Given the lessons of history and a prescient warning from Mervyn King we might wonder why Cameron, Clegg, Osborne & co. have taken their chosen path. The question is easily answered of course, when we see that over the past 4 years the winners have been the 1% over the 99%. This sounds like a cliche and I only wish that it were.

This coalition government decided very early on that this might be their last chance of power for some time and have abandoned any sense of decorum in their indecent haste to fill the pockets of their paymasters.

The ideological fervour of sticking to the principles of neoliberalism, together with a last chance smash & grab asset stripping agenda have damaged the UK economically, socially & politically, and it will take a long time to set it right again.

The Cameron-Clegg administration will be remembered as possibly the worst UK government ever. The irony is that they think they have weakened democracy in the UK, but history will show that the reaction to this Orwellian nightmare will be demands for a new political settlement, based in challenges to the inequalities we now recognise as being the drivers for many of our economic and social ills.