Tag Archives: Inequality

Economic, G20, Government, Politics, Society, United Nations

The ‘inequality emergency’

ECONOMIC

Intro: Rising economic division is destabilising nations and eroding accountability. Joseph Stiglitz’s G20 blueprint proposes a way toward global economic renewal. For the first time the G20 has declared a global inequality emergency

WAS it a diplomatic nicety when Swiss tycoons and business magnates handed Donald Trump a gold bar and a Rolex watch, gifts that were reciprocated by a cut in US tariffs? No. It was a reminder of how concentrated wealth seems to buy access and bend policy. Alarmingly, this might just become the norm if the global “inequality emergency” continues. That’s the clear message being sent out in the most recent work by the Nobel laureate Professor Joseph Stiglitz. The economist sees the widening gap between rich and poor as a human-made crisis which is destroying politics, society, and the planet. He’s not wrong.

The problem is no longer confined to a few fragile states. It is a global harm, with 90% of the world’s population living under the World Bank’s definition of “high income inequality”. The US sits just below that threshold and is the most unequal country in the G7, followed by the UK. Prof. Stiglitz’s insight is that the current system’s defenders can no longer explain its mounting anomalies. Hence he wants a new framework to replace it. His blueprint for change is contained within the G20’s first-ever inequality report, endorsed by key European, African, and middle-income nations.

It warns that the richest 1% captured 41% of all new wealth since 2000, while the bottom half gained just 1%. On average, someone in the global top 1% became $1.3m richer; a person in the poorest half gained $585. Meanwhile, 2.3 billion people are now moderately or severely food insecure – 335 million more than in 2019. Wealth concentration far outstrips income concentration, with the total assets of billionaires’ worth one-sixth of global GDP. Shockingly, billionaire wealth is rising almost in lockstep with global food insecurity.

The report argues that extreme inequality is a policy choice – produced by specific economic, political and legal decisions rather than by “globalisation” or technology. Financial deregulation, weakening labour protections, and privatisation all aid rising inequality. As does cutting corporate and top income tax rates. The report stresses that the most dangerous consequences are political, with highly unequal countries seven times more likely to experience democratic backsliding or authoritarian drift. Stiglitz points out that the super-rich account for a disproportionate share of carbon emissions, worsening climate risks borne by the poor. He rejects the pro-market argument that inequality is good for growth.

The G20 inequality report lays out a comprehensive redesign of global economic governance reminiscent of 1944’s Bretton Woods accord. What led to that overhaul is being identified again today: global rules and institutions that are generating crises, instability, and inequality. Prof. Stiglitz wants structural change – suggesting a rewrite of intellectual property rules as well as trade and investment treaties, a reform of global lenders, and an update of tax systems as well as sovereign debt arrangements.

A fairer global order must start where every paradigm shift begins: with knowledge, scrutiny, and shared facts. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the UN-backed body assessing scientific opinion – was created in 1988 to give global authority to that knowledge. It reshaped climate politics. Prof. Stiglitz argues that the time has come for an International Panel on Inequality. Hundreds of experts agree. Endorsing it is by no means radical; it is simply the first step towards a saner world. Without it, the gold-bar diplomacy circling Trump will surely proliferate.

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Asia, Justice, Philosophy, Politics, Society

(Philosophy) Justice

REDISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE

WHAT does justice demand? The basic idea is that people should “get what they deserve,” whether in a court of law (criminals and victims), in broader society (the rich and the poor), or on the global stage (neo-colonial powers and the countries they’ve exploited). But what exactly do people deserve? And what principles can we use to ensure that justice is served, and in a way we might all find reasonable?

Anglo-American philosophy has long been dominated by debates about distributive justice: deciding which principles should determine how goods, opportunities, resources, rights, and freedoms are shared out between the members of a society, or even between different societies.

In A Theory of Justice (1971), John Rawls imagined which principles of justice people would agree to if they were unaware of their position in society and other crucial facts about themselves. He theorised that they would prioritise equality and liberty and would only accept inequalities if they were required to create the greatest benefit to the least well-off in society (the “difference principle”). His colleague Robert Nozick responded in Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974) by suggesting that if people freely did what they wanted with their talents or other resources, this would produce inequalities that would not necessarily benefit the worst-off, but that would be justifiable given the required respect for people’s individual freedoms.

The American political theorist Iris Marion Young argued that the distributive justice paradigm fails to capture important features of public appeals to justice made by women, people of colour, indigenous peoples, and gay and lesbian civil rights movements. These groups are often excluded from political practices of collective evaluation and decision-making about institutional organisation and public policy, and so lack political representation or power. These exclusions constitute injustices, which Young insisted require philosophical analysis. She defined injustice in terms of “five faces” of oppression: exploitation, marginalisation, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. Justice, through the eradication of its opposite, injustice, can only be achieved via a “politics of recognition” – acknowledging different groups’ experiences and political needs.

Justice in the legal-judicial sense is often understood as corrective or retributive – correcting criminals for their wrongdoing via means of retribution such as fines or imprisonment. The American activist and scholar Angela Davis argues wholesale against prison as a means to justice. She believes that in an age of mass incarceration, the abolishment of prisons is a central requirement for the achievement of justice in a democratic society. There are others, too, who advocate the principle of “restorative judgement” where criminals face their victims to understand the pain and hurt caused. Research suggests that when such an approach is used recidivism and rates of reoffending are dramatically reduced.

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