Class Matters: UK Law Would Require Gov't to Lessen Inequality

By Sam Pizzigati, Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality. Posted February 3, 2009.

But other observers of the UK economic scene are noting that any obligation on government to narrow "gaps in outcomes for people from different backgrounds" would inevitably, if taken seriously, have to confront wealth at the top. The dollars needed for fully funding early childhood programs, after all, have to come from somewhere.

Polly Toynbee, one of the UK's most widely read progressive commentators, added another reason in a Guardian column last week that hailed Harman's class mandate as "legislation of extraordinary radicalism."

If all children truly have equal opportunity, Toynbee's analysis explained, then the children of the affluent will face more competition for the limited number of places at institutions like top law firms and medical schools.

"Social mobility," as Toynbee put it, "means some must fall as others rise."

Naturally, Toynbee continued, the affluent will "fight hard to hold their own." But the fury of that fight will always depend on the level of a society's inequality. The greater the gap between rich and poor, the farther the potential distance to fall, the greater the fury of a society's affluents against government "equal opportunity" policies that threaten their privileged place.

By the same token, the more equal a society, the shorter the distance to fall, the less the affluent will rage.

"The falling hurts less," points out Toynbee, "when lifestyle, status, and pay are less cruelly divided and penalties for failure less punishing."

"For everyone to have an equal chance of success," agreed last week Britain's top trade union leader, Brendan Barber, "there needs to be a much smaller gap between rich and poor in the first place."

"All the evidence," Barber added Saturday at a national Fabian Society public policy conference, "shows that societies that are genuinely socially mobile are far more equal than the UK is today – even after the many worthwhile initiatives since 1997."

Barber went on to call for a new resolve to close the enormously large loopholes in the UK tax code. In 2006, he noted, Britain's 54 billionaires paid just 0.1 percent of their combined £126 billion -- $186 billion -- fortune in tax.

Harriet Harman's proposal for a narrow-the-class-divide mandate, Barber's remarks left plain, just might give a boost to the UK's tax-the-rich advocates.

That may be why British right-wingers have let loose at Harman and her mandate. One UK Conservative Party leader, Theresa May, is calling Harman's proposal a return to "class war."  Harriet Harman, adds a Daily Telegraph commentator, "is preparing to knit in front of the guillotine while she watches the heads of the high and mighty roll."

This could get interesting. Americans -- and the rest of the world, too -- should be paying attention.

See more stories tagged with: class, uk, u.s., social justice, social mobility, opportunity, labor party

Sam Pizzigati is the editor of the online weekly Too Much, and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.

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