It is a false chocie to between blaming the riots on inequality or moral irresponsbility - in a fragmented society, the two fuel each other
Following the riots, the various sides dig in behind the traditional battle lines of explanation, with one side blaming a breakdown of morality and the other pointing to income inequality. However, evidence suggests that these factors are not alternative explanations: they reinforce each other.
Turning to morality first. David Cameron has blamed “Criminality, pure and simple”, On this morning’s Today programme Nick Clegg referred to a “smash and grab” and “get what you can” culture and the Spectator’s Melissa Kite referred to an “acquisitive” morality of “greed”.
It doesn’t take too much thinking to identify some role models of ‘get what you can’ morality. They include those in the financial services industry who have been seen to collect huge salaries, bonuses and pension payments while others suffered from the recession they helped cause.
They include benefit cheats who enable the demonisation of genuine claimants. They include executives whose multi-million pound performance payments appear entirely unrelated to performance and whose companies expect the taxpayer to subsidise their underpaid staff through state benefits.
They include loan sharks who prosper from others’ misery. They include MPs committing fraud in the expenses scandal. They include well-known companies doing all they can to avoid paying tax.
With the exception of some MPs and benefit cheats, most of these have not been seen to be punished for their sins.
To turn to inequality, we should first recognise that inequality is not the same as poverty. Although worrying numbers do live in poverty, inequality causes damage to society as a whole, not just those in poverty: inequality pulls the strata of society so far from each other that society begins to break apart.
Inequality causes social exclusion, not only because some cannot afford to participate in ‘normal’ society but because there is also social exclusion at the top: the former head of the CBI has said that executives “risk being treated as aliens” because “their pay is so out of step”.
Research suggests that there is a causal relationship between levels of inequality (not levels of poverty) and levels of violence (as measured in homicides).
Further research shows that levels of community trust and cohesion are lower where inequality is higher. This suggests that smash and grab morality, which neither respects nor recognises community obligation, is more common in a more unequal society.
But what can be done, if individual immorality and social inequality reinforce each other? I have three recommendations:
1) We all need to recognise is that “inequality is not inevitable, concerted policy efforts can be used to decrease it as Equality Trust research has found.
2) Policies to reduce undeserved top incomes: the review of Fair Pay currently being considered by the Government, and Vince Cabl’s’ reviews of executive pay, could be a good start.
Coupled with policies to raise undeservedly low incomes, such as promoting Living Wages (advocated by Ed Miliband and others) would help.
3) Policy makers and commentators need to recognise that we are all in this together – that smash and grab morality cannot be tolerated, at any level of society.
33 Responses to “The fragmented society: How irresponsibility and inequality feed off each other”
Anon E Mouse
Leon Wolfson – After 13 years of this situation festering and being pandered to by the Labour Party, you have some cheek to suggest this is anything to do with the current government.
It’s thanks to your New Labour buddies that the country has allowed these people to believe they are victims whilst they live off the state with no intention of finding gainful employment other than drug dealing.
Thanks to people like you and your stupid socialist aspirations, we have a country wrecked so you can continue your state handouts making people dependant on government instead of standing on their own two feet.
A lot of work is required here to change this country dramatically in the right direction and if you really want to help either just shut up or go somewhere else where your childish political systems are tolerated.
Such as North Korea…
MMMMMMWWWWWWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Tolpuddle
..and so here we go, lets blame “them”. Clearly it’s not you or me. So what shall we do? I know lets bang them up, three or more to a cell, ensure they can’t attend job interviews or exams. Oh and I know, the ultimate bit of genius let’s throw them out of their homes,
Doesn’t that smack of collective punishment? Or if one is guilty aren’t they all? Shall we use the same argument for all people found guilty of any crime? What about driving offences, shall all family members who are related to drunk drivers loose their licences?
I am amazed at the depth of philosophical rigour that has been brought to bear and the ability of “our leaders” to behave with such clarity of thought, not being driven by the bloodlust of the red top’,s obviously!
So seriously, where does this proposed road lead us? Well obviously it’s back to the future. Slight problem, this method of punishment required a pressure bypass. From the 18th Century up to 1950’s ships took the “criminals” across the sea. (Ah, out of sight and out of mind, those were the days). Given that neither the Antipodes nor the Americas are likely to welcome our castoffs, what are the alternatives? Well we can all live behind giant walls with security guards or ship “them” to an Island? Neither option is particularly palatable.
So perhaps it’s boring and lacking in theatre and doesn’t make up for the fact that our Leaders were pictured on their holidays whilst mayhem ensued. ,But surely it requires us to look at what our society is and what we want it to be?. Do we want it be entirely driven by the corrosive “market” that has created such fantastical disparities in rich and poor? A market that drives and demands and recognises “Social Darwinism” as a necessary corollary because the market, like God, is never wrong.
Or we can resuscitate the Social Contract, the idea that we are all in this together, that my safety and happiness is dependent on yours, that we look after each other and that fundamentally when children are in trouble we treat them with kindness because they are children and are not fully formed.
Or we follow Jonathon Swifts advice and eat “them”
Dave Citizen
You are absolutely right Duncan – the extreme inequality we have created in Britain is, of course, not inevitable. Indeed, such levels of inequality are an aberration in human historical terms as well as when compared to many other EU countries.
What is not unusual though is the tendency of people to defend their gains, however huge or ill-gotten they may be. Britain’s present super rich elite has been particularly good at convincing the rest of the population that their privileges are quite natural and not harmful to the country.
It’s ironic that many of the very people who say they want to see a return to responsibility, hard work and decency so often turn a blind eye to the gravy train of privilege that Britain’s super rich cling to: sucking in tax payer subsidies, rents from hard working people and maintaining control over the assets needed to turn our economy around – and all passed on to the next generation of lords and ladys while we have a go at those with next to nothing. Wake up Britain – we can change things if we take responsibility for sorting out top and bottom.
Knut Cayce
RT @leftfootfwd: The fragmented society: How irresponsibility and inequality feed off each other http://t.co/hKmGcNa
Noxi
RT @leftfootfwd: The fragmented society: How irresponsibility and inequality feed off each o: http://t.co/f7eBQSG : writes @One_Society…