1. B. Wilkins, ‘Nobel Prize Winner Shiller: Inequality Biggest Problem Facing US’, Digital Journal, 15 October 2013, at digitaljournal.com.
2. G. Sargent, ‘There’s Been Class Warfare for the Last 20 Years, and My Class Has Won’, Washington Post, 30 September 2011.
3. R. Morin, ‘Rising Share of Americans See Conflict Between Rich and Poor’, Pew Research and Social Trends, 11 January 2012, at pewsocialtrends.org.
4. J. Cribb, A. Hood, R. Joyce and D. Phillips, ‘Living Standards, Poverty and Inequality in the UK: 2013’, Institute for Fiscal Studies Report R81 (2013), pp. 30, 45, at ifs.org.uk (receiving £160,000 a year before tax is roughly the same as about £115,000 a year from all income sources after having paid income taxes, or £9,600 a month take-home income).
5. A. Park, C. Bryson, E. Clery, J. Curtice and M. Phillips, eds, ‘British Social Attitudes: The 30th Report’, London: National Centre for Social Research, 2013, at bsa-30.natcen.ac.uk.
6. ‘[M]ost people perceive the distribution of wealth in the UK to be far more equal than it actually is.’ Inequality Briefing, ‘Inequality: How Wealth is Distributed in the UK – animated video’, Guardian, Comment is Free, 8 October 2013, at the-guardian.com. In the US the equivalent is Think Progress, ‘Wealth Inequality Video Highlighting Difference Between Perception And Reality Goes Viral’, Huffington Post, 3 April 2013, at huffingtonpost.com.
7. I. Ortiz, S. Burke, M. Berrada and H. Cortés, ‘World Protests 2006–2013’, Working Paper, New York: Initiative for Policy Dialogue and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, September 2013, at policydialogue.org.
8. D. Dorling, ‘Fairness and the Changing Fortunes of People in Britain’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society A, 176: 1 (2013), at dannydorling.org.
9. Cribb et al., ‘Living Standards’, p. 40. See also, in the same source, Figure 3.3, which states: ‘Percentiles 1–4 and 99 are excluded because of large statistical uncertainty.’
10. The difference between the tenth-percentile and ninetieth-percentile individual was only 0.7 per cent. See IFS, ‘Green Budget: Summary’, London: Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2014, pp. 4–5, at ifs.org.uk.
11. Which?, ‘State Pension Explained’, 2014, at which.co.uk.
12. Others suggest the Palma ratio of the income share of the top 10 per cent divided by that of the bottom 40 per cent, which tends to vary around 1. While better than the Gini measure, it is still not as simple as the 1 per cent measure, and may well not correlate as well with social problems. On the Palma ratio, see A. Cobham, ‘Palma vs Gini: Measuring Post-2015 Inequality’, Centre for Global Development Blog, 5 March 2014, at cgdev.org.
13. D. Runciman, ‘The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement, by David Graeber – review’, Guardian, 31 March 2013.
14. When the very well-paid, now publicly owned, financial institutions such as Royal Bank of Scotland are excluded. See ONS, ‘Labour Market Statistics’, 16 October 2013, at ons.gov.uk.
15. We know it is roughly fifteen times as much, because that figure is given by the World Top Incomes Database – the most respected source in the world. This average income of the 1 per cent is calculated by multiplying the mean average income in the UK by the proportion of national income received by the 1 per cent in the UK, reported by the World Top Incomes Database to be 15 times average incomes in 2007. Thus, as £24,596 times 15 is £368,940, that is mean 1 per cent income. See topincomes.g-mond.parisschoolofeconomics.eu.
16. E. Fahmy, D. Dorling, J. Rigby, B. Wheeler, D. Ballas, D. Gordon and R. Lupton, ‘Poverty, Wealth and Place in Britain, 1968–2005’, Radical Statistics 97 (2008), pp. 11–30, at dannydorling.org.
17. In April 2013, according to the MIS, a single working-age adult needed a budget of £200 per week; a pensioner couple needed £240; a couple with two children need £470; and a lone parent with one child needed £285. See jrf.org.uk.
18. ONS, ‘The Effects of Taxes and Benefits on Household Income, 2011/12’, London: Office for National Statistics, 10 July 2013, at ons.gov.uk.
19. Open University, ‘Teaching Salary – What You Can Expect to Earn’, Open University website, November 2013, at qualificationstobeateacher.co.uk.
20. Technical Steering Committee, ‘GP Earnings and Expenses 2011/12’, Health and Social Care Information Centre, 25 September 2013, at hscic.gov.uk.
21. J. Kaffash, ‘Revealed: One in Five GPs on CCG Boards has Financial Interest in a Current Provider’, Pulse, 4 January 2014, at pulsetoday.co.uk.
22. Because those few top-earning GPs do fewer surgeries, there is about a one-in-fifty chance that you will meet one if you are ill (personal communication, David Dorling, January 2014).
23. A rate of 1:1.64. See E. Currid-Halkett, ‘The 21st Century Silver Spoon’, New York Times, 9 November 2013, at opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com.
24. It is probable that the existence of the extremely unequal societies, such as the UK and USA, puts a brake on the most equal becoming more equitable. A general trend to more equality would not be limited to the most unequal of countries, but might require a widespread cultural change in fundamental beliefs.
25. The dataset can be found at topincomes.g-mond.parisschoolofeconomics.eu.
26. N. Pearce, ‘Thomas Piketty: A Modern French Revolutionary’, New Statesman, 3 April 2014.
27. D. Hirsh, ‘A Minimum Income Standard for the UK in 2013’, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2013, at jrf.org.uk.
28. In the UK, ‘[p]oorer children have worse cognitive, social-behavioural and health outcomes in part because they are poor, and not just because poverty is correlated with other household and parental characteristics, such as levels of education or attitudes to parenting’. K. Cooper and K. Stewart, ‘Does Money Affect Children’s Outcomes?’, Joseph Rowntree Foundation Report, 22 October 2013, at jrf.org.uk.
29. A. Walker, D. Gordon and R. Levitas, The Peter Townsend Reader (Bristol: Policy Press, 2010).
30. A. Sedghi and J. Burn-Murdoch, ‘UK Wage Gap Widens. Get Data for the Past 25 Years’, Guardian, 9 November 2012.
31. In the UK, ‘rising bonuses paid to bankers alone accounted for around two-thirds of the increase in the national wage bill (‘earnings pie’) taken by the top one percent of workers since 1999.’ B. Bell and J. Van Reenen, ‘Bankers and Their Bonuses’, Centre for Economic Performance Occasional Paper 35 (2013), London School of Economics, at cep.lse.ac.uk.
32. P. Crush, ‘HSBC Circumvents EU Bankers’ Bonus Cap’, Chartered Institute of Professional Development, 25 February 2014, at cipd.co.uk.
33. As revealed by Canadian data, a proxy for the US/UK. S. Breau, ‘The Occupy Movement and the Top 1 Per Cent in Canada’, Antipode, 27 August 2013, at onlinelibrary.wiley.com.
34. Official website of the British Monarchy, at royal.gov.uk.
35. G. Smith, ‘The “Value for Money Monarchy” Myth’, Republic Campaign, 2013, at republic.org.uk.
36. Imagine the boost to tourism from having over a thousand royal families! There would be some 10,000 royal places to visit and jobs for hundreds of thousands of servants. Over the summer months, Buckingham Palace alone employs an extra 350 staff on zero-hours contracts to cope with the summer visitors, staff the palace shop, and monitor the state-rooms that tourists traipse through. See S. Neville, M. Taylor and P. Inman, ‘Buckingham Palace Uses Zero-Hours Contracts for Summer Staff’, Guardian, 30 July 2013.
37. J. Bingham and P. Dominiczak, ‘Cutting Benefits Part of a “Moral Mission”, Cameron Tells New Cardinal’, Telegraph, 18 February 2014.
38. See Z. Bauman, Does the Richness of the Few Benefit Us All? (Cambridge: Polity, 2013), p. 10, for a very well-articulated opposing view that current trends do now appear to be a little like just such a machine.
39. Dorling, ‘Fairness and the Changing Fortunes of People in Britain’.
40. For a short history of UK tax, see ‘Income Tax’ at politics.co.uk.
41. There are many sources. One that is easily edited but currently good is ‘History of Taxation in the United Kingdom’, at en.wikipedia.org.
42. W. Streeck, ‘The Crises of Democratic Capitalism’, New Left Review II/71 (September–October 2011).
43. D. Box, ‘Bond Markets, Not Politicians, Control Our Future’, Ecologist, 29 April 2010, at theecologist.org.
44. P. Roscoe, I Spend Therefore I Am (London: Penguin, 2014), p. 154.
45. Dorling, ‘Fairness and the Changing Fortunes of People in Britain’.
46. F. Alvaredo, A. B. Atkinson, T. Piketty and E. Saez, ‘The Top 1 Percent in International and Historical Perspective’, Journal of Economic Perspectives 27: 3 (2013), pp. 3–20, at pubs.aeaweb.org. For the data, see topincomes.g-mond.parisschoolofeconomics.eu.
47. R. Ramesh, ‘Coalition’s Austerity Policies Are Hitting the Poor Hardest, Says Think-Tank’, Guardian, 4 June 2013.
48. I. Denisova, ‘Income Distribution and Poverty in Russia’, OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers, No. 132 (2012), OECD Publishing, at dx.doi.org.
49. B. Klimke, ‘Oligarchs in London: super-rich Russians let the ruble roll’ Berliner Zeitung, 25 March 2014.
50. BBC, ‘Russian Tycoon Usmanov Tops Sunday Times Rich List’, BBC News, 20 April 2013, at bbc.co.uk.
51. A. Reuben, ‘Sunday Times Rich List: The Changing Face of Wealth’, BBC News, 18 April 2013, at bbc.co.uk.
52. ONS, ‘UK Worth £6.8 Trillion’, news release, 16 August 2012, at ons.gov.uk.
53. ONS, ‘The National Balance Sheet, 2013 Estimates’, 15 August 2013, at ons.gov.uk.
54. A similar map of the US appeared here at revista-amauta.org. For the UK, the figures are from D. Dorling, ‘Underclass, Overclass, Ruling Class, Supernova Class’, in A. Walker, A. Sinfield and C. Walker, eds, Fighting Poverty, Inequality and Injustice (Bristol: Policy Press, 2011).
55. K. Garthwaite, ‘The Language of Shirkers and Scroungers? Talking about Illness, Disability and Coalition Welfare Reform’, Disability and Society 26: 3 (2011), at tandfonline.com.
56. One Society, ‘How National Minimum Wage is Falling Behind Top Pay, and the Damage This Does to Living Standards and the Economy’, Briefing, 1 October 2012, at onesociety.helencross.co.uk.
57. David Cameron’s November 2006 Scarman lecture, quoted in: J. Strelitz and R. Lister, eds, ‘Why Money Matters: Family Income, Poverty and Children’s Lives’, Save The Children, 2008, p. 2, at savethechildren.org.uk.
58. H. Yousuf, ‘Obama Admits 95 Per Cent of Income Gains Gone to Top 1 Per Cent’, CNN money, 15 September 2013, at money.cnn.com.
59. N. Davies, Dark Heart: The Shocking Truth about Hidden Britain (London: Vintage, 1998), p. 144.
60. M. Taylor, ‘Margaret Thatcher’s Estate Still a Family Secret’, Guardian, 9 April 2013. Her neighbours on the square included Roman Abramovich and Nigella Lawson. The Finns have a saying: ‘money is a little bit like snow. It tends to gather in heaps.’
1. D. Reay, ‘What Would a Socially Just Education System Look Like?’, Centre for Labour and Social Studies, 2012, p. 12.
2. See OECD, ‘Skills Outlook’, Copenhagen OECD, 2013, Table A2.7, p. 265, at skills.oecd.org.
3. SFS, ‘UK Private School Class Sizes “Smaller Than State Schools and OECD Average” ’ School Fees Trust, 14 September 2011, at sfs-group.co.uk.
4. M. Friedman, ‘Public Schools: Make Them Private’, Washington Post, 19 February 1995.
5. L. Macmillan and A. Vignoles, ‘Mapping the Occupational Destinations of New Graduates’, research report for the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, October 2013, at gov.uk.
6. J. Henry, ‘Comprehensive School Pupils Do Better at University, Two New Studies Confirm’, Observer, 15 June 2013.
7. S. Berg, ‘Five Schools “Send More to Oxbridge than 2,000 Others” ’, BBC News, 8 July 2011, at bbc.co.uk.
8. Sutton Trust, ‘Degrees of Success: University Chances by Individual School’, 2011.
9. R. Muir, ‘England Should Follow Scotland on Access to University’, Independent, 12 June 2013.
10. J. Grove, ‘Poor Aren’t Making Inroads into Elite Universities’, Times Higher Education, 13 February 2014.
11. S. Collini, ‘This Literacy Report Is Not a Story of England’s National Decline’, Guardian, 8 October 2013.
12. S. Vine, ‘Sarah Vine: Why I Want My Daughter to Go to a State School’, Guardian, 7 March 2014.
13. S. Collini, ‘Sold Out’, London Review of Books, 24 October 2013.
14. A. McGettigan, ‘Who Let the Dogs Out? The Privatization of Higher Education’, Radical Philosophy 174 (July/August 2012), p.24.
15. G. Paton, ‘Number of Pupils in Private Schools Drops amid Rising Fees’, Telegraph, 25 April 2013.
16. Joy Schaverien, quoted in S. Partridge, ‘Boarding School Syndrome: Disguised Attachment-Deficit and Dissociation Reinforced by Institutional Neglect and Abuse’, Journal of Attachment: New Directions in Psychotherapy and Relational Psychoanalysis 7: 2 (2013), pp. 202–13.
17. J. Harris, ‘Grammar Schools Do Not Aid Social Mobility. Stop This Deluded Thinking’, Guardian, 11 November 2013.
18. R. Garner, ‘Academies “Increase Divisions Between the Rich and Poor”: Study Finds Segregation Made Worse by a Wider Choice of Schooling’, Independent, 4 September 2013.
19. E. Dugan, ‘Only One in 10 Britons Has Best Friend of Different Race Survey Reveals Extent of Social Segregation in UK – along Both Ethnic and Class Boundaries’, Independent, 7 August 2013.
20. ‘Society in the UK continues to reproduce itself in terms of life chances. Social mobility may happen in small pockets … but failure is deeply embedded in other communities.’ M. Collins, M. Collins and G. Butt, ‘Social Mobility or Social Reproduction? A Case Study of the Attainment Patterns of Students According to Their Social Background and Ethnicity’, Educational Review, at tandfonline.com.
21. Reay, ‘What Would a Socially Just Education System Look Like?’, p. 10.
22. T. Slater, ‘The Myth of “Broken Britain”: Welfare Reform and the Production of Ignorance’, Antipode, 18 December 2012.
23. Quote originally seen on this poster http://owsposters.tumblr.com/page/4.
24. E. Allen, ‘Is Your Tooth Fairy Fair? Children Get £5 Under Their Pillow in London … But Only 5p in Hull’, Daily Mail, 9 November 2011.
25. Halifax, ‘Parents Loosen Purse Strings as Pocket Money Increases’, press release, 24 August 2013, at lloydsbankinggroup.com.
26. Only 2 per cent of children fit into this category in the most exclusive of state schools. Free school meals taken up at any time in the last six years is the measure used to allocate the pupil premium, so is becoming a widely available statistic. On the 2005 figure, see Sutton Trust, ‘Rates of Eligibility for Free School Meals at the Top State Schools’, 2005.
27. Halifax, ‘8–15 Year Olds Receiving Most Money since 2007’, report, 15 August 2013, at lloydsbankinggroup.com.
28. Staff Reporter, ‘Girls Left Out of Pocket Money while Boys Earn More for Chores’, Independent, 6 August 2013.
29. D. Cummings, ‘Some Thoughts on Education and Political Priorities’, self-published thesis of Dominic Cummings, at s3.documentcloud.org. Footnote 193 draws in turn on J. Wai, ‘Investigating America’s Elite: Cognitive Ability, Education, and Sex Differences’, Intelligence 41: 4 (July–August 2013), pp. 203–11, at sciencedirect.com.
30. The three-times figure (in fact nearer 3.6) is 25 per cent divided by 7 per cent from Reay, ‘What Would a Socially Just Education System Look Like?’.
31. Press Association, ‘Drop in Number of Pupils Staying in School After 16’, Guardian, 28 June 2012.
32. H. Williamson, ‘NEET Acronym Is Far from a Neat Description’, Times Educational Supplement, 5 March 2010.
33. P. Scott, ‘Universities Are Becoming Finishing Schools for Gilded Youth’, Guardian, 2 July 2012.
34. S. Higgins, M. Katsipataki, D. Kokotsaki, R. Coleman, L. E. Major and R. Coe, ‘The Sutton Trust–Education Endowment Foundation Teaching and Learning Toolkit’, Education Endowment Foundation, 2014, at educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk.
35. G. Paton, ‘Universities “Forced to Lower Entry Grades to Fill Places” ’, Telegraph, 28 April 2013.
36. Z. Williams, ‘What’s the Point of Social Mobility? It Still Leaves Some in the Gutter’, Guardian, 23 May 2012.
37. A. Milburn, ‘Fair Access to Professional Careers: A Progress Report by the Independent Reviewer on Social Mobility and Child Poverty’, Cabinet Office, UK, 2012, at cabinetoffice.gov.uk.
38. As above, ‘top twenty’ as defined by the employers who target the graduates of this group the most. And most of these firms do not even recruit from all of the ‘top twenty’ universities, which are Aston, Bath, Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Durham, Edinburgh, Exeter, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Loughborough, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Oxford, Sheffield, Southampton and Warwick.
39. High Fliers Research, ‘The Graduate Market in 2012: Annual Review of Graduate Vacancies and Starting Salaries at Britain’s Leading Employers’, High Fliers Research Limited, 2012, p. 8, at highfliers.co.uk.
40. N. Pearce, ‘What Should Social Democrats Believe?’ Juncture, 19 September 2013, at ippr.org.
41. G. Whitham, ‘Child Poverty in 2012: It Shouldn’t Happen Here’, Save the Children, 2012, p. 2.
42. B. Benjamin and B. Pourcain, ‘Childhood Intelligence Is Heritable, Highly Polygenic and Associated with FNBP1L’, Molecular Psychiatry 19 (February 2014 (note that the paper is very badly titled, given the whole genome association study being reported which is then not highly heritable because the association is so polygenic – personal communication George Davey Smith, one of the many authors).
43. Pearce, ‘What Should Social Democrats Believe?’. If you are wondering what an abstract metric of material equality is, it could be the 1 per cent! It is material (about money), it is a metric (a measure), it is abstract – you can’t see the 1 per cent all sitting together in Wembley Stadium. They would never all agree to attend the same event. The 1 per cent are a group you have to imagine. That does not mean they do not exist, or alter the fact that the effect of having such a separated sector of society is not only palpable but distorts how we all think.
44. One would appear to be Mr Gove: ‘England’s Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove to Address 6th Annual National Summit on Education Reform’, Tallahassee, Florida, Marquee Education Event, atexcelined.org.
45. Mr Gove was speaking at The ‘Foundation for Excellence in Education’, the background of which can be found at excelined.org. That Foundation is supported by some of America’s richest families (Gates, Walton, Bloomberg). A list of donors can also be found at excelined.org.
46. Often they confound gene-given and god-given potential. Press Association, ‘Church Could Take Control of Secular Schools under New Deal, Report Says’, Huffington Post, 4 July 2013, at huffingtonpost.co.uk.
47. Although it is speculated that he attended Durham School, a private all-boys school that only started taking girls from 1985. See ‘List of Old Dunelmians’, at en.wikipedia.org.
48. J. Merrick, ‘Michael Gove Held Talks with “IQ Genes” Professor’, Independent, 13 October 2013, at independent.co.uk.
49. Benyamin et al., ‘Childhood Intelligence is Heritable’.
50. C. M. A. Haworth, K. Asbury, P. S. Dales and R. Plomin ‘Added Value Measures in Education Show Genetic as Well as Environmental Influence’, PLoS One 6: 2 (2011). As of October 2013, this paper had only been cited by two other studies, both of which had Plomin as their last listed author.
51. G. Paton, ‘GCSE Results “Influenced by Children’s Genes, Not Teaching” ’, Telegraph, 25 July 2013.
52. M. Wakefield, ‘Revealed: How Exam Results Owe More to Genes than Teaching, Spectator, 27 July 2013.
53. The Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge hosts a large website providing material for anyone interested – learningwithoutlimits.educ.cam.ac.uk – from which the quote is taken.
54. A. Asthana, T. Helm and T. McVeigh, ‘Black Pupils “Are Routinely Marked Down by Teachers” ’, Guardian, 4 April 2010.
55. C. Witchalls, ‘James R. Flynn: Are We Really Getting Smarter Every Year?’, Independent, 27 September 2012.
56. S. Loughan, P. Kuppens, et al., ‘Economic Inequality Is Linked to Biased Self-Perception’, Psychological Science 22: 10 (2011), at psychologicalscience.org.
57. B. Johnson, ‘The Annual Margaret Thatcher Lecture’, London, 27 November 2013, at cps.org.uk. An astute reply to Boris would be that 2 per cent of the population have IQs of under seventy, and many of them have known medical problems which would warrant their being given special consideration. There is no such justification for giving people with IQs above 130 special consideration – they should cope just fine, although some might find social interactions difficult.
58. S. Jones, ‘There’s Much More to IQ than Biology and DNA’, Telegraph, 14 October 2013. In response to criticism from Steve Jones, Cummings suggested that Jones might not have read his essay properly. D. Cummings, ‘What I Actually Said about Genes, IQ and Heritability’, Telegraph, 15 October 2013.
59. J. Bakija, A. Cole and B. Y. Heim, ‘Jobs and Income Growth of Top Earners and the Causes of Changing Income Inequality: Evidence from US Tax Return Data’, 2012, revised analysis available on author’s webpage at web.williams.edu.
60. The Boston Consulting Group analysis was reported in turn in R. Neate, ‘China and India Swell Ranks of Millionaires in Global Rich List’, Guardian, 31 May 2012.
61. BBC, ‘Small Drop in Teenagers Scoring Five Good GCSEs’, BBC News, 18 October 2012, at bbc.co.uk.
62. S. O’Hagan, ‘A Working-Class Hero Is Something to Be … But Not in Britain’s Posh Culture’, Guardian, 26 January 2014.
63. Office of the Children’s Commissioner, ‘A Child Rights Impact Assessment of Budget Decisions – Children and Young People’s Version’, 27 June 2013, at childrenscommissioner.gov.uk.
64. D. Leigh Scott, ‘How the American University was Killed, in Five Easy Steps’, OpEdNews.com, 19 August 2012, at opednews.com.
1. J. Stiglitz, ‘Inequality Is a Choice’, New York Times, 13 October 2013, at opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com.
2. Including a growing number of Nobel Laureates such as Joseph Stiglitz and Robert Shiller (see Chapter 1, above). Ever since Sweden’s own banking crisis, more laureates have been awarded to more sceptical economists.
3. K. A. Weeden and D. N. Grusky, ‘Inequality and Market Failure’, American Behavioural Scientist, 2013 (pre-print).
4. B. Bell and J. V. Van Reenen, ‘Extreme Wage Inequality: Pay at the Very Top’, Centre for Economic Performance, Occasional Paper 34 (2013), at cep.lse.ac.uk.
5. I. Brinkley, K. Jones and N. Lee, ‘The Gender Jobs Split: How Young Men and Women Experience the Labour Market’, Tounchstone Extras, TUC, 2013, at tuc.org.uk.
6. A. Bennett, ‘Young Women In Low Paid Jobs Triples In 20 Years, Warns TUC’, Huffington Post, 1 November 2013, at huffingtonpost.co.uk.
7. H. Chowdrey and L. Sibieta, ‘Trends in Education and Schools Spending’, IFS Briefing Note BN121, Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2011, at ifs.org.uk.
8. E. Saez, ‘The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States (Updated with 2012 Preliminary Estimates)’, University of California, Berkeley, press release, 3 September 2013, at elsa.berkeley.edu.
9. Note that the BBC put the proportion at 19.3 per cent, and said: ‘The top 1 per cent of American households had income above $394,000 (£250,000) last year. The top 10 per cent had income exceeding $114,000’. BBC News, ‘US Income Inequality at Record High’, 10 September 2013, at bbc.co.uk.
10. J. Kay, ‘Higher Pay Boosts Economics and Politics’, Financial Times, 2 October 2012.
11. D. Boffey, ‘Super-rich on rise as number of £1m-plus earners doubles’, Observer, 2 June 2013.
12. D. Horsey, ‘Obscenely high CEO salaries are stark marker of U.S. wealth gap’, Los Angeles Times, 16 April 2014.
13. World Bank, ‘Ending poverty requires more than growth, says WBG’, World Bank Group (WBG) press release, 11 April 2014, at worldbank.org.
14. Z. Goldfarb and M. Boorstein, ‘Pope Francis Denounces “Trickle-Down” Economic Theories in Critique of Inequality’, Washington Post, 26 November 2013.
15. M. Haddad, ‘The Perfect Storm: Economic Stagnation, the Rising Cost of Living, Public Spending Cuts, and the Impact on UK Poverty’, Oxfam, 2012, at policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk.
16. B. Milanovic, The Haves and the Have Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality, (New York: Basic Books, 2012).
17. M. Kumhof and R. Rancière, ‘Inequality, Leverage and Crises’, IMF Working Paper, November 2010, at imf.org.
18. M. Kumhof and R. Rancière, ‘Leveraging Inequality’, Finance and Development, 47: 4, (December 2010) pp. 28–31, at imf.org.
19. S. Lansley, The Cost of Inequality: Why Economic Equality is Essential for Recovery (London: Gibson Square, 2012).
20. At least they said that in an earlier draft. The final draft was a little more toned down. Haddad, ‘Perfect Storm’.
21. M. Gill, ‘Our Instinct for Equality’, New Statesman, 27 February 2012, p. 15.
22. And it is not just us. A paper was published in Nature in 2003 concerning experiments with monkeys being fed with cucumbers, or preferably grapes, in which the monkeys rejected being rewarded unequally, opting for no reward rather than an unfair one. S. F. Brosnan and F. B. M. de Waal, ‘Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay’, Nature 425 (2003).
23. See the description of top bosses and the high frequency of unfortunate childhood experiences suffered by many of them in R. Peston, Who Runs Britain? And Who’s to Blame for the Economic Mess We’re In? (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2008).
24. J. Henrich, R. Boyd, S. Bowles et al., ‘In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies’, American Economic Review 91: 2 (May 2001), at umass.edu.
25. E. Proto and A. Rustichini, ‘A Reassessment of the Relationship Between GDP and Life Satisfaction’, Working Paper 94, Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy, Department of Economics, University of Warwick, 2012. They argue that the first to suggest the mechanism behind this was J. S. Duesenberry, Income, Saving, and the Theory of Consumer Behaviour (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949). The classic reference is R. A. Easterlin, ‘Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence’, in R. David and M. Reder, eds, Nations and Households in Economic Growth: Essays in Honour of Moses Abramovitz (New York: Academic Press, 1974).
26. K. Van den Bos, P. A. M. Van Lange, E. A. Lind, L. A. Venhoeven, D. A. Beudeker, F. M. Cramwinckel, L. Smulders and J. Van der Laan, ‘On the Benign Qualities of Behavioural Disinhibition: Because of the Pro-Social Nature of People, Behavioural Disinhibition Can Weaken Pleasure with Getting More than You Deserve’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101 (2011), at paulvanlange.com.
27. P. A. M. Van Lange, R. Bekkers, A. Chirumbolo and L. Leone, ‘Are Conservatives Less Likely to Be Pro-Social than Liberals? From Games to Ideology, Political Preferences and Voting’, European Journal of Personality 26 (2012), at paulvanlange.com.
28. L. C. Groopman and A. M. Cooper, ‘Narcissistic Personality Disorder’, American Medical Network, 2006, at health.am.
29. K. Rowlingson and S. McKay, ‘What do the Public Think about the Wealth Gap?’, University of Birmingham Wealth Commission Report, 2013, at birmingham.ac.uk.
30. J. Treanor, ‘Barclays to Reveal as Many as 600 Staff Earn More than £1m a Year’, Guardian, 26 February 2013.
31. P. O. Hosking, ‘Britain Tops League of Millionaire Bankers’, The Times, 16 July 2013 – behind a paywall, so read the Guardian instead: J. Treanor, ‘More than 2,400 UK bankers paid €1m-plus, EU regulator says, Guardian, 15 July 2013.
32. ‘Bankers Use Cocaine and Got Us Into this Terrible Mess’, headline reported in The Week, 16 April 2013, covering the story behind the Sunday Times pay-wall.
33. Staff reporter, ‘Fraudster Bernie Madoff “Had So Much Cocaine in His Office It Was Dubbed the North Pole” ’, Daily Mail, 21 October 2009.
34. Robbie Williams may have heard the joke via Richard Pryor: J. Kossoff, ‘Why Cocaine Isn’t Kosher’, The Telegraph Blog, 11 August 2008. Incidentally the UK doesn’t just have the highest rate of cocaine use per head. It also has the highest number of plastic surgery operations of any country in Europe: BBC, ‘UK tops Euro plastic surgery league’, 11 March 2002, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/. This will not be unrelated.
35. S. Anthony, ‘Cocaine: Why We Are All Talking About It’, Observer, 1 December 2013.
36. As revealed on 21 November 2012 at 7.18 a.m. on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme business news, hosted by Simon Jack, and reported a day earlier in P. Walker, ‘City-Wide “Addiction” ’, Guardian, 20 November 2012.
37. J. Arlidge, ‘The Debt Collector’, Sunday Times Magazine, 7 October 2012.
38. M. Stein, ‘A Culture of Mania: A Psychoanalytic View of the Incubation of the 2008 Credit Crisis’, Organization 18 (2011), at sagepub.com.
39. J. Salmon, ‘Barclays Fat Cat Rich Ricci Retires at 49 Just Weeks after Pocketing £18m Shares Windfall (…and He’s Getting a Year’s Salary as His Pay-Off)’, Daily Mail, 19 April 2013.
40. G. Hiscott, ‘Bob Diamond: Shamed Former Barclays Banker Claims He “Never Did Anything for Money” ’, Mirror, 2 May 2013.
41. A. Osborne, ‘Ex-HBOS Chief Sir James Crosby Gives Up Knighthood and Part of Pension’, Telegraph, 9 April 2013.
42. BBC, ‘Former RBS Boss Fred Goodwin Stripped of Knighthood’, BBC News, 31 January 2012, at bbc.co.uk.
43. J. Treanor, ‘RBS Chairman Reveals Employee Lobbying over Banker Bonuses’, Guardian, 11 November 2013.
44. S. Fleming, ‘Bank of England Is Urged to Clamp Down on Bank Bonuses’, Financial Times, 2 March 2014.
45. Ipsos MORI, ‘Politicians Trusted Less than Estate Agents, Bankers and Journalists’, 15 February 2013, at ipsos-mori.com.
46. H. Dixon, ‘Judges Lose Their Sky TV at Taxpayer Funded Lodgings’, Telegraph, 14 October 2013.
47. A. Foster, ‘Jeremy Paxman Takes 20 Per Cent Pay Cut to Stay at Newsnight – But Still Gets £3M over Four Years’, Evening Standard, 8 February 2011.
48. A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter II: ‘Of the Principle which Gives Occasion to the Division of Labour’, Section 1.2.4 (London: Methuen, 5th edn, 1904 [1776]), at econlib.org.
49. BBC, ‘David Cameron Suggests Cutting Benefits for Under-25s’, BBC News, 2 October 2013, at bbc.co.uk.
50. C. Hope, ‘Exclusive: Cabinet Is Worth £70 Million’, Telegraph, 27 May 2012.
51. R. Fergusson, ‘Punishing the Young Unemployed’, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies Report, 15 October 2013, at crimeandjustice.org.uk.
52. OECD, ‘Crisis Squeezes Income and Puts Pressure on Inequality and Poverty’, New Results from the OECD Income Distribution Database, OECD, 2013, at oecd.org (see Fig. 8, p. 7).
53. J. Berman, ‘Nick Hanauer’s TED Talk on Income Inequality Deemed Too “Political” for Site’, Huffington Post, 17 May 2012, at huffingtonpost.com.
54. Equality Trust, ‘Wealth Increase of Britain’s 100 Richest Would Pay For 1.75 Million Living Wage Jobs’, Press Release, 19 February 2014, at equalitytrust.org.uk.
55. On what more is needed, see P. Ainley and M. Allen, Lost Generation? New Strategies for Youth and Education (London: Continuum, 2010).
56. N. Morris, ‘Overqualified and Underemployed: Britain Faces “Youth Talent Crisis” as New Figures Reveal More than a Million Young People Working Menial Jobs’, Independent, 19 March 2014.
57. Unemployment was the third-largest risk out of thirty-one evaluated, and climate change was second. WEF, ‘Worsening Wealth Gap Seen as Biggest Risk Facing the World in 2014’, press release, 16 January 2014, at weforum.
58. J. Lugo-Ocando, Poor News: Global Journalism and the Reporting of World Poverty (London: Pluto, 2014).
59. N. Ahmed, ‘Nasa-Funded Study: Industrial Civilisation Headed for “Irreversible Collapse”?’, Earth Insight blog, Guardian, 14 March 2014.
60. See Figure 1 in I. Preston, V. White, J. Thumim and T. Bridgeman, ‘Distribution of Carbon Emissions in the UK: Implications for Domestic Energy Policy’, JRF, 2013, at jrf.org.uk.
61. G. Ananthapadmanabhan, K. Srinivas and V. Gopal, ‘Hiding Behind the Poor: A Report by Greenpeace on Climate Injustice’, Bangalore: Greenpeace India Society, 2007, at greenpeace.org.
62. W. Hutton, ‘Blame Austerity, Not Old People, for the Plight of Britain’s Young’, Guardian, 23 June 2013.
63. J. Hall, ‘Unemployment at Three-Year Low as Number of Britons in Work Reaches All-Time High of 30m’, Independent, 13 November 2013.
64. M. O’Hara – personal communication from her research on austerity Britain, 2013, due to be published by Policy Press during 2014.
65. BBC, ‘Q&A: What Will “Help to Work” Mean for Claimants?’, BBC News, 30 September 2013, at bbc.co.uk.
66. J. Beattie, ‘Forced Labour: Conservative Party to Force the Jobless to Work for Nothing or Lose Their Dole’, Mirror, 30 September 2013.
67. Ibid.
68. ‘Workhouse Rules’ (letter), Scotsman, 1 October 2013.
69. P. Routledge, ‘Michael Gove Is Patronising, Insulting, Nasty, Wrong and Arrogant’, Mirror, 13 September 2013.
70. J. Lyons, ‘Soaring Number of Starving Britons Who Rely on Food Banks Is National “Emergency”, Experts Warn’, Mirror, 4 December 2013.
71. BBC, ‘Red Cross Launches Food Aid Campaign for Britain’, BBC News, 11 October 2013, at bbc.co.uk.
72. Russia Today, ‘EU Economic Crisis Causing Massive Rise in Poverty – Red Cross’, Russia Today, 10 October 2013, at rt.com.
73. N. Morris, ‘Hungrier than Ever: Britain’s Use of Food Banks Triples’, Independent, 16 October 2013.
74. C. Cooper and K. Dutta, ‘Malnutrition Cases in English Hospitals Almost Double in Five Years’, Independent, 17 November 2013.
75. C. Cooper, ‘Food Poverty in UK Has Reached Level of “Public Health emergency”, Warn Experts’, Independent, 4 December 2013.
76. K. Willsher, ‘Will France’s Supertax Spark ‘Patriotism’ or a Brain Drain?’, Guardian, 14 September 2012.
77. Source: A. Seely, ‘Income Tax: The New 50p Rate’, House of Commons Library, Standard Note SN249, 2013, at parliament.uk, p. 33.
78. C. Beatty and S. Fothergill, ‘Hitting the Poorest Places Hardest: The Local and Regional Impact of Welfare Reform’, Sheffield: Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, Sheffield Hallam University, 2013.
79. I. Jack, ‘It’s Shameful the Way Britain Kowtows to the Super-Rich’, Guardian, 9 March 2013.
80. K. Allen, ‘British Workers Suffer Deepest Real Wages Cut since Records Began, Research Shows’, Guardian, 12 June 2013.
81. J. Void, ‘Salvation Army Fights Back – Calls Critics of Unpaid Work Offensive’, The Void Blog, 17 December 2013, at johnnyvoid.wordpress.com. See also George Orwell’s suggestion on how the Salvation Army should be viewed in the final paragraph of ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’, 1933.
82. S. Malik, ‘Workfare Placements Must Be Made Public, Tribunal Rules’, Guardian, 19 May 2013.
83. A. Beckett, ‘What Is the “Global Race”?’, Guardian, 22 September 2013.
84. F. Norris, ‘Median Pay in US is Stagnant, but Low-Paid Workers Lose’, New York Times, 26 April 2013.
85. D. Herzer and S. Vollmer, ‘Rising Top Incomes Do Not Raise the Tide’, Journal of Policy Making 35: 4 (2013), at ideas.repec.org.
86. R. H. Tawney, Equality (London: George Allen & Unwin 1952 [1931]), based on the Halley Stewart Lectures, for 1929. Quote on p. 11.
87. Z. Minton Beddoes, ‘For Richer, for Poorer – Special Report: The World Economy’, 13 October 2012.
88. R. Kutnor, ‘The Task Rabbit Economy’, American Prospect, 10 October 2013.
89. Trust for London, ‘London’s Poverty Profile, Key Facts, October’, 2013, at londonspovertyprofile.org.uk.
90. The three countries in which the 1 per cent have experienced the most similar recent increases in income are the US, the UK and Canada. D. Dorling, ‘How Only Some Rich Countries Recently Set Out to Become More Unequal’, Sociologia, Problemas e Práticas 74 (2014), at revistas.rcaap.pt.
91. The full list of ratios is: Moscow 2.63; London 1.69; Paris 1.67; Johannesburg-Gauteng 1.50; Buenos Aires 1.47; Vienna 1.30; Stockholm 1.23; Tokyo 1.14; and Seoul 1.10. Calculated from Figure 4, p. 36, in G. Clark, ‘Nations and the Wealth of Cities: A New Phase in Public Policy’, Centre for London, 2014, at centreforlondon.org.
92. M. Gibson, ‘Will Allegations of Drug Abuse Hurt Nigella Lawson’s Career?’ Time Entertainment, 14 December 2013 (which originally suggested her supporters were called ‘Team Cupcake’, but that was her staff).
93. These are the wage rates quoted on information boards at Blenheim Palace. Wages at the time of the first Duchess are given at blenheimpalace.com.
94. In a nod to understanding other people’s money problems, the businessman explained that this was a ‘huge luxury’. This butler used to work for the royal household – something the ‘Dragon’ was probably keen to make general knowledge. The vanity of this particular business mogul came to light when he ‘appeared on the Today programme – 24 hours after he went on to promote the social mobility programme – to defend himself against charges of nepotism and hypocrisy’. See R. Neate, ‘James Caan: “No Parent Is Not Going to Help Their Children’, Guardian, 6 June 2013.
95. C. James, ‘A Prediction That’s a Safe Bet’, BBC News Magazine, 2 January 2009, at bbc.co.uk.
1. M. Sinclair, ‘Why No Conservative Should Support a Mansion Tax’, Spectator, 18 February 2013.
2. The figure of 98 per cent of people being empathetic was given by Roman Krznaric on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on 28 October 2013, at 8.35 a.m. (bbc.co.uk). His forthcoming book is R. Krznaric, Empathy: A Handbook for Revolution (London: Rider Books, 2014).
3. Once you include those with a little empathy, there is a wider range of variance in levels of empathy, and of pro- and antisocial behaviour, as is often reflected through variations in political alliances. P. K. Hatemi, C. L Funk, S. E. Medland et al., ‘Genetic and Environmental Transmission of Political Attitudes over Time’, Journal of Politics 71 (2009).
4. Those countries are home to 53 per cent of HNWIs. Capgemini and RBC, ‘World Wealth Report’, Royal Bank of Canada Wealth Management Division, 2013, at worldwealthreport.com.
5. P. Bump, ‘The World’s Rich Got Richer in 2013 than You Will Ever Be’, The Wire, 2 January 2014.
6. Staff reporter, ‘Bill Gates Becomes World’s Richest Person Again’, Irish Times, 3 January 2014.
7. J. Kollewe, ‘London Retains Crown as Favourite City of World’s Ultra-Rich’, Guardian, 5 March 2014.
8. R. Fuentes, ‘Anatomy of a Killer Fact: The World’s 85 Richest People Own as Much as the Poorest 3.5 Billion’, Oxfam Blog, 31 January 2014, at oxfamblogs.org.
9. R. Wilkinson and K. Pickett, ‘The Spirit Level Authors: Why Society Is More Unequal than Ever’, Observer, 9 March 2014.
10. L. Elliott, ‘Britain’s Five Richest Families Worth More than Poorest 20 Per Cent: Oxfam Report Reveals Scale of Inequality in UK as Charity Appeals to Chancellor over Tax’, Guardian, 17 March 2014.
11. K. Moreno, ‘The 67 People As Wealthy As The World’s Poorest 3.5 Billion’, Forbes Magazine, 25 March 2014, at forbes.com.
12. D. Dorling, ‘Fairness and the Changing Fortunes of People in Britain’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society A, 176: 1 (2013), at onlinelibrary.wiley.com.
13. Capgemini and RBC, ‘World Wealth Report’, p. 18, refers in turn to ‘Outlook 2013’, Art Market Update, Fine Art Fund Group, January 2013.
14. N. Shaxson, Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World (London: Bodley Head, 2011).
15. J. Hills, F. Bastagli, F. Cowell, H. Glennerster, E. Karagiannaki and A. McKnight, Wealth in the UK: Distribution, Accumulation and Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
16. K. Roberts, Class in Modern Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 169–92. Quoted in P. Ainley and M. Allen, ‘Running up a Down Escalator in the Middle of a Class Structure Gone Pear-Shaped’, Sociological Research Online 18: 1 (2013), at socresonline.org.uk.
17. John Scott’s three-volume edited collection, The Sociology of Elites, published in 1990, is a good starting point for anyone interested in studying elitism in Britain. His Stratification and Power: Structures of Class, Status and Domination’ (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996) and Corporate Business and Capitalist Classes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) develop the same themes. Professor Scott (CBE) is the current Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research at the University of Plymouth. I collected together these references and gave them as part of a witness statement on behalf of Trenton Oldfield at his 9 December 2013 deportation hearing to make the case that the study of elites is part of the academic mainstream of the social sciences (unpublished, but in court papers).
18. I am grateful to Patrick Ainley for this suggestion (personal communication, March 2014). He continued to say that any oppressed group is likely to be the same, as Hugh McIlvenney wrote in Docherty: ‘In ony country in the world, who are the only folk that ken whit it’s like tae leeve in that country? The folk at the boattam. The rest can a’ kid themselves oan. They can afford to hiv fancy ideas.’ But another consideration is the changed nature of the state … which increasingly just runs itself – or rather has been handed over to private monopoly capital to run so they were even complaining on radio the other day that MPs absent themselves from Parliament because there is less and less going on there nowadays.’ Available at jim-murdoch.blogs-pot.co.uk. [note Docherty is written by William McIlvanney and was published by Canongate in 2013].
19. P. Collinson, ‘Richest 10 Per Cent of UK Households Own 40 Per Cent of Wealth’, Guardian, 3 December 2012.
20. Anonymous, ‘What I’m Really Thinking: The Children’s Entertainer’, Guardian, 22 June 2013.
21. In India itself, luxury apartments are being designed for Mumbai that have a swimming pool built into each balcony. See P. Johnston, ‘Ambitious Mumbai Development which Sees Balconies Replaced with Swimming Pools’, Luxury Travel Blog, 16 April 2013, at aluxurytravelblog.com.
22. L. Hewitt and S. Graham, ‘Getting Off the Ground: On the Politics of Urban Verticality’, Progress in Human Geography 37: 1 (2010), p. 83.
23. R. Fry and P. Taylor, ‘The Rise of Residential Segregation by Income’, PEW Social and Demographic Trends, 1 August 2012, at pewsocialtrends.org.
24. It is easier to see why this might be if you look away from where you are used to: J. Mazzocchetti, ‘Feelings of Injustice and Conspiracy Theory: Representations of Adolescents from an African Migrant Background (Morocco and Sub-Saharan Africa) in Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods of Brussels’, Brussels Studies, No. 63, (26 November 2012), at brusselsstudies.be.
25. M. Farauenfelder, ‘12 Million Americans Believe Lizard People Run the US’, Boing Boing Blog, 15 April 2013, at boingboing.net.
26. L. Mckenzie, ‘The Realities of Everyday Life for the Working-Class in Neo-Liberal Britain (Part 2)’, New Left Project, 31 August 2013, at newleftproject.org.
27. Alice, ‘Eton’s Scholarship Exam’, New Left Project, 23 May 2013, at newleftproject.org.
28. Ibid., comment by David, made on 24 May 2013, 09:17.
29. See, for example: http://auction.westminster.org.uk/lots/a-one-week-internship-at-portas (accessible as of April 2014).
30. J. S. Henry, ‘The Price of Offshore Revisited: New Estimates for ‘Missing’ Global Private Wealth, Income, Inequality, and Lost Taxes’, Tax Justice Network, July 2012, pp. 8, 36, at taxjustice.net.
31. Oxfam, ‘Working For The Few: Political Capture and Economic Inequality’, Oxfam Briefing Paper 178, 20 January 2014, at oxfam.org.
32. Frank Knight Research, ‘The Wealth Report 2012’, London Citi Private Bank, 2012, at thewealthreport.net, further details at: S. Ro, ‘10 Stats about How People with Over $100 Million Invest’, Business Insider, 11 August 2012, at businessinsider.com.
33. C. Paikert, ‘Courting the Next Generation of the Rich’, New York Times, 16 October 2012.
34. S. Ro, ‘Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems? At Wells Fargo, a $50 Million Account Will Get You a Psychologist’, Business Insider, 2 April 2012, at businessinsider.com.
35. D. Barrett, ‘One Surveillance Camera for Every 11 People in Britain, Says CCTV Survey’, Telegraph, 10 July 2013.
36. M. Brown and N. Gil, ‘Tax Exemption for Public Access to Treasured Artworks is “A Racket”, Guardian, 27 December 2013.
37. J. Fordham, ‘Historic Houses Association Guidance for Applicants to the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Our Heritage Programme’, London, Historic Houses Association, February, 2013, at theheritagealliance.org.uk.
38. M. Kennedy, ‘Stately Home Owners to Gain Access to Lottery Money’, Guardian, 5 July 2012.
39. J. Vasagar, ‘ “Buried” Report Praised Labour’s School Building Programme’, Guardian, 5 July 2012.
40. T. Middleton, ‘Climate, Land and Homes’, Strike magazine, 4 June 2013, at strikemag.org.
41. T. Wallace, ‘London’s House Prices Soar 12pc’, City AM, 19 February 2014.
42. A. Molloy, ‘Oxford is the Least Affordable City in the UK, where Houses Cost 11 Times Local Salaries’, Independent, 10 March 2014.
43. K. Allen, personal communication on ‘Cash Buyers Versus Mortgages, the Savills Analysis’, 16 January 2014, published as K. Allen, ‘Home Buyers Left Behind in Britain’s Two-Speed Housing Market’, Financial Times, 18 January 2014.
44. M. Griffith, ‘Foreign Demand Comes with Risks’ (letter), Financial Times, 5 March 2014.
45. B. Goldacre, ‘Generation Game’ (letter), The Times, 29 November 2013.
46. M. Duell, ‘All Aboard My New Home! The Shipping Containers Being Rented Out for £75 a Week to Try to Solve London’s Chronic Housing Crisis’, Daily Mail, 9 October 2013.
47. N. Shaxson, J. Christensen and N. Mathiason, ‘Inequality: You Don’t Know the Half of It’, Tax Justice Network, 19 July 2012, at taxjustice.net.
48. L. Slater, ‘Keeping Up with the Zahoors: Inside the Super-Rich World of Londongrad’, Times Magazine, 23 November 2013, p. 41.
49. M. Seamark, ‘Blairs Paid £1.35m in Cash for Home Number SEVEN: Splashed Out on a Four-Storey Georgian Townhouse for Son Nicky’, Daily Mail, 2 February 2013.
50. NatCen, ‘Mortgage Interest Rates Helping the Rich to Save More?’, London, National Centre for Social Research, 2013, at natcen.ac.uk. Note: ‘Not everyone saves money each month, but about 20 per cent of the lowest income group, 30 per cent of the 2nd quintile, 40 per cent of the 3rd quintile, 50 per cent of the 4th quintile and 60 per cent of the highest income group say they do. In 2011 the households in these groups were each earning on average £675, £1,114, £1,550, £2,203 and £4,226 per calendar month.’
51. S. Neville and K. Allen, ‘UK Wealth Gap Grows as Homeowners Save More but Renters Suffer’, Financial Times, 11 October 2013.
52. S. Hawkes, ‘Biggest Drop in Savings for 40 years, Bank of England Figures Reveal’, Telegraph, 2 December 2013.
53. Shelter are trying to have the law changed to make this type of eviction illegal. Shelter, ‘Can’t Complain: Why Poor Conditions Prevail in Private Rented Homes’, London, Shelter, March 2014.
54. P. Collinson, ‘Number of £1m UK Homes Up by Third in “Them and Us” Market’, Guardian, 28 June 2013.
55. First-time buyers are also harmed. D. Johnson, ‘Building Our Way Out of Crisis?, GLA report by Green Party Assembly Member, London, GLA, November 2012, at london.gov.uk. Note that it is not lack of supply but ‘High Prices [that] are the biggest barrier holding back first time buyers in London’.
56. D. Johnston, ‘Crumbs for Londoners’, GLA Report by Green Party Assembly Member, London, GLA, November 2013, at london.gov.uk.
57. K. Allen, ‘Wealth Survey Shows Stark North-South Divide’, Guardian, 4 June 2013.
58. N. Lee, P. Sissons and K. Jones, ‘Wage Inequality and Employment Polarisation in British Cities’, York, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2013, pp. 3, 14, at jrf.org.uk.
59. W. White and P. Owen, ‘Liberal Democrat Conference: The Spirit of Roy Jenkins Lives On’, Guardian, 24 September 2012.
60. D. Dorling, All that is Solid: The Great Housing Disaster (London: Allen Lane, 2014).
61. GRO(S), ‘Occupied and Vacant Dwellings in Each Local Authority (LA)’, September 2012’, Edinburgh, 2013, at gro-scotland.gov.uk.
62. D. G. Blanchflower and A. Oswald, ‘Does High Home-Ownership Impair the Labour Market?’ NBER Working Paper No. 19079, May 2013, at nber.org.
63. R. Ramesh, ‘One in Four UK Children Will Be Living in Poverty by 2020, Says Thinktank’, Guardian, 7 May 2013.
64. M. Hasan, ‘Strivers vs Shirkers? Ten Things They Don’t Tell You about the Welfare Budget’, Huffington Post, 17 December 2012, at huffingtonpost.co.uk.
65. Figure 3.4 in Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, ‘State of the Nation 2013, October 2013, London, Stationery Office, at gov.uk.
66. H. Reed, ‘In the Eye of the Storm: Britain’s Forgotten Children and Families – Methodological Summary’, London, Action for Children – The Children’s Society – NSPCC, 2012, p. 6.
67. G. Kelly, ‘Stealth Cuts Are Making Universal Credit Toxic to the Working Poor’, Guardian, 12 December 2013.
68. According to the research undertaken for the Children’s Society and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. See Reed, ‘In the Eye of the Storm’.
69. Nat Cen, ‘Social Attitudes in an Age of Austerity’, British Social Attitudes 2012, London, National Centre for Social Research, at bsa-29.natcen.ac.uk.
70. J. Werran, ‘Lewis Disputes “Shoddy” Labour Figures on Council Tax Arrears’, Local Government Chronicle, 11 October 2013, at localgov.co.uk.
71. DK, ‘Mapping Gentrification: The Great Inversion’, Economist, 9 September 2013.
72. T. MacInnes, H. Aldridge, S. Bushe, et al., ‘Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion 2013’, York, Jospeh Rowntree Foundation, 2013, at jrf.org.uk.
73. Reed, ‘In the Eye of the Storm’, reveals that, over the seven years leading to 2015, ‘the number of children living in families with five or more vulnerabilities is set to rise by 54,000 to 365,000, an increase of around 17 percent [and] the number of children living in extremely vulnerable families is set to almost double by 2015, to 96,000’.
74. Dorling, All that is Solid.
75. ‘Here we have relied on the figures produced by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) in their report Wealth in Great Britain Wave 2, Wealth of the Wealthiest, 2008–10. The term wealth includes pensions, investments, housing, physical possessions and land. “£1,000,000” is rounded up from £967,000.’ ‘Inequality Briefing 1: Who Has What’, 11 October 2013, at inequalitybriefing.org.
76. Reed, ‘In the Eye of the Storm’, p. 34.
77. Ian Bostridge, one of Britain’s best-known tenors, won a scholarship to Westminster School, went on to gain a first in modern history at Oxford University, a master’s degree in the history and philosophy of science at Cambridge University, and then a doctorate from Oxford. He is illustrative of the very top of the 99 per cent. A Londoner, he is possibly the last generation of his family to be able to afford to live in London. See A. Clark, ‘Lunch with the FT: Ian Bostridge’, Financial Times, 8 November 2013.
78. F. Alvaredo, A. B. Atkinson, T. Piketty and E. Saez, ‘The Top 1 Percent in International and Historical Perspective’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 27: 3 (2013), p. 14, at pubs.aeaweb.org.
79. Ibid., p. 18.
80. BBC, ‘Deutsche Bank Chief Ackermann Fears “Social Time Bomb’, BBC News, 2 February 2012, at bbc.co.uk; Bloomberg TV Business Week, ‘Bloomberg Most Wanted: Meet the King of Bulletproof Cars’, 10 November 2013, at businessweek.com.
81. J. Ramsey, ‘Production Bentley EXP 9 F Could Get Optional 3rd Row Au Pair Seating’, Auto Blog, 24 August 2012, at autoblog.com: ‘Armouring your vehicle is the latest craze among the uber-wealthy. Texas Armouring in San Antonio is the biggest private vehicle armouring company in the world, protecting celebs like T.I., Mel B and Steven Segal. They produce about 200 vehicles a year and project that number to double in the next five years due to a spike in demand in the US.’
82. E. N. Wolff, ‘The Asset Price Meltdown and the Wealth of the Middle Class’, Occasional Paper, New York University, 2012, p. 58, Table 2, at appam.confex.com.
83. Charles Elson, director of the US Center for the study of Corporate Governance, reacted to these revelations by saying, ‘I find the security argument tough to swallow … Airports are among the safest places on earth these days.’ N. D. Schwartz, ‘The Infinity Pool of Executive Pay’, International Herald Tribune, 6 April 2013.
84. M. Flinders, ‘Down and Out in Bloemfontein’, OUP Blog, 8 January 2014, at blog.oup.com.
85. Personal correspondence, John Hague, Whittlesey, Peterborough, 29 May 2013.
86. P. Torija, ‘Do Politicians Serve the One Percent? Evidence in OECD Countries’, Working Paper, Department of International Politics, City University, London, 2013, p.18, at ideas.repec.org.
87. R. Brand, ‘Russell Brand on Parliament’, Guardian, 24 May 2013.
88. R. O’Farrell, ‘Irish Inequality During the 20th Century’, Progressive Economy Blog, 23 September 2010, at progressive-economy.ie.
89. The tax is 0.18 per cent a year on the value of property below €1 million and 0.25 per cent on the portion of any value above that: Ryan, N. ‘Revenue will use this system to spot homes undervalued for Property Tax’, The Journal, 10 March 2014, at thejournal.ie.
90. ‘IT1 – Tax Credits, Reliefs and Rates for the Tax Years 2013 and 2014’, ‘Domicile Levy’ and ‘Capital Gains Tax’, all at revenue.ie.
91. T. McDonnell, ‘Wealth Tax: Options for Its Implementation in the Republic of Ireland’, National Economic Research Institute Paper No. 6, September 2013, at progressive-economy.ie.
92. T. Picketty, ‘Should We Make the Richest Pay to Meet Fiscal Adjustment Needs?’, in S. Princen and G. Mouree, ‘The Role of Tax Policy in Times of Fiscal Consolidation’, Economic Papers 502, August 2013, Brussels, European Commission, at piketty.pse.ens.fr.
93. In January 2014, ‘The German central bank raised the idea of an emergency “capital levy” in its monthly report’. See zerohedge.com. See also A. Evans-Pritchard, ‘Wealth Tax to Pay for EU Bail-Outs’, Telegraph, 14 April 2013.
94. McDonnell, ‘Wealth Tax’, p. 21.
95. A. B. Atkinson and S. Morelli, ‘Chartbook of Economic Inequality: 25 Countries 1911–2010’, INET Research Note 15, New York, Institute for New Economic Thinking, 2012, pp. 23, 49, at ineteconomics.org.
96. N. Dejevsky, ‘Buy-to-Let, Not Help to Buy, Is the Real Scourge of Generation Rent’, Financial Times, 25 October 2013.
97. Skandia, ‘Millionaire Monitor+: A Survey of Millionaires and Equivalent Wealthy Individuals across Skandia’s Wealth Management Territories’, Southampton, Skandia, p. 6, at www2.skandia.co.uk. They were asked for the various sources of their wealth. In the UK, 74 per cent said employment, 57 per cent investments, 41 per cent inheritance, 15 per cent their own businesses, 15 per cent marriage, 7 per cent a sporting career, 7 per cent a lottery or gambling, and 4 per cent a divorce settlement.
98. S. Wood, ‘Ed Miliband’s Mansion Tax Policy Threatens Britain’s Historic Homes’ (letter), Telegraph, 20 February 2013.
99. D. Gibson and C. Perot, ‘It’s the Inequality, Stupid’, Plutocracy Now, March/April 2011, at motherjones.com.
100. E. N. Wolff, ‘The Asset Price Meltdown and the Wealth of the Middle Class’, Occasional Paper, New York University, 2012, Table 4, p. 60, atappam.confex.com.
101. Oxfam, ‘A Tale of Two Britains’, press release, Oxfam, 2014, at thenextrecession.files.wordpress.com.
102. TUC, ‘Top 10 Per Cent Now More than 500 Times Wealthier than Bottom 10 Per Cent’, 12 July 2012, at tuc.org.uk.
103. J. Lugo-Ocando, Poor News: Global Journalism and the Reporting of World Poverty (London: Pluto Press, 2014). Many of today’s rich in the UK come from families whose original riches can be traced back to slave ownership or violence; others are recent arrivals from other countries, with dubious stories concerning how they made their money.
104. N. Shaxson, Treasure Islands.
105. It is of course an old campaign. Winston Churchill even supported a land value tax – perhaps because, although born at Blenheim Palace, he never owned it or had a chance of owning such a property. See C. Joseph, ‘Duke’s Dissolute Son Kicks Heroin Habit … and Wins Back His Birth-Right – the Keys to Blenheim Palace – in Amazing Tale of Redemption’, Daily Mail, 18 November 2012.
106. Capgemini and RBC, ‘World Wealth Report’, 2013, Fig. 23, p. 37.
107. G. Monbiot, ‘Europe’s €50bn Bung that Enriches Landowners and Kills Wildlife’, Guardian, 26 November 2012.
108. ECB, ‘The Eurosystem Household Finance and Consumption Survey, Results from the First Wave’, Statistics Paper No.2, European Central Bank, 2013, Table 2.3, p. 32, at ecb.europa.eu.
109. C. Jones, ‘Did QE Only Boost the Price of Warhols?’ Financial Times, 18 October 2013.
110. L. Warwick-Ching, ‘Classic Cars Geared to Top Alternative Sector’, Financial Times, 6 September 2013.
111. Ibid.
112. K. Watkins, ‘God, Mammon and the Debate on Inequality’, Overseas Development Institute Blog, 21 January 2014, at odi.org.uk.
113. Staff Reporter, ‘UK Planning Fast-Track Passport Lanes For Rich Travellers’, Huffington Post, 18 September 2012, at huffingtonpost.com.
1. L. Else, ‘Of Wealth and Health: Special Report on Inequality’, New Scientist, 28 July 2012, p. 45.
2. Y. Sugiura, Y. S. Ju, J. Yasuoka and M. Jimba, ‘Rapid Increase in Japanese Life Expectancy after World War II’, Bioscience Trends 4: 1 (2010), at ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
3. N. R. Nowatzki, ‘Wealth Inequality and Health: A Political Economy Perspective’, International Journal of Health Services 42: 3 (2012), at mspace.lib.umanitoba.ca.
4. T. McVeigh, ‘Inequality “Costs Britain £39bn a Year” ’, Observer, 16 March 2014.
5. Figures for 2005–08 had shown no difference by income in the prevalence of antidepressant usage in the US, but the rate for all persons over twelve years was 13.6 per cent for non-Hispanic whites, 3.9 per cent for non-Hispanic blacks, and 2.3 per cent for Mexican Americans, which might partly reflect access to healthcare. See L. A. Pratt, D. J. Brody and Q. Gu, ‘Antidepressant Use in Persons Aged 12 and Over: United States, 2005–2008’, NCHS Data Brief Number 76, October 2011, atcdc.gov.
6. S. Boseley, M. Chalabi and M. Rice-Oxley, ‘Antidepressant Use on the Rise in Rich Countries, OECD Finds’, Guardian, 20 November 2013.
7. H. Mulholland, ‘David Cameron Axes Equality Assessments in War on “Red Tape” ’, Guardian, 19 November 2012.
8. D. Dorling, ‘In Place of Fear: Narrowing Health Inequalities’, Centre for Labour and Social Studies (CLASS), 21 May 2013, at dannydorling.org.
9. R. Jones, ‘End of Life and Financial Risk in GP Commissioning’, British Journal of Healthcare Management 18: 7 (2012), at hcaf.biz.
10. C. J. Conover, ‘The Health Spending 1 Percent: Healthcare Fact of the Week’, American Enterprise Institute, 22 November 2011, at aei-ideas.org. The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, which was used to produce the graph of US medical expenditure in this source, produces figures for what households actually spent (mostly on insurance), not what their medical treatment cost, which will be higher.
11. Such as through supporting the advertising of fatty foods to children. It is London companies owned by the 1 per cent that buy this advertising; and, in the UK, it is in London that there is the greatest concentration of poverty in the UK, and where children are at greatest risk of obesity at both ages five and ten. See A. Baker, J. Fitzpatrick et al., ‘Capital Concerns: Comparing London’s Health Challenges with England’s Largest Cities’, London, London Health Observatory, 2012, p. 9, at lho.org.uk.
12. D. Blane and G. Watt, ‘GP Experience of the Impact of Austerity on Patients and General Practices in Very Deprived Areas’, Glasgow, General Practice and Primary Care, Institute of Health and Wellbeing, University of Glasgow, 2012, at gla.ac.uk.
13. BBC, ‘Life Expectancy Rises Again, ONS Says’, BBC News, 19 October 2011, at bbc.co.uk.
14. D. Dorling, Unequal Health: The Scandal of Our Times (Bristol: Policy Press, 2013).
15. CPAG, ‘The Cuts: What They Mean for Families at Risk of Poverty’, Child Poverty Action Group, 2012, at cpag.org.uk. For an update, see CPAG, ‘Welfare Reform: What It Means to Families at Risk of Poverty’, 20 May 2013, at cpag.org.uk.
16. Comment by John Ashton, posted 8 September 2013, 6:18 p.m., under S. Lind, ‘Public Health England Admits Winter Death Spike Was Due to Flu and Cold Weather’, Pulse Today, 20 August 2013, at pulsetoday.co.uk.
17. ‘This is not the whole story. Tom Hennell is one of the best health service statistical analysts in the country and he doesn’t buy this explanation and nor does the remarkable professor Martin McKee.’ See online comment by John Ashton, endnote above, and further information in: D. West, ‘Mortality Rates among Older People Show Unexpected Rise’, Health Service Journal, 26 July 2013, pp. 6–7.
18. D. MacKenzie, ‘Pattern Behind the Shutdown’, New Scientist, 12 October 2013, pp. 8–9.
19. D. R. Williams and C. Collins, ‘US Socioeconomic and Racial Differences in Health: Patterns and Explanations’, Annual Review of Sociology 21 (1995), pp. 349–86, Table 1, p. 365, at links.jstor.org.
20. Ibid.
21. C. Greenhalgh, ‘Why Does Market Capitalism Fail to Deliver a Sustainable Environment and Greater Equality of Incomes?’, Cambridge Journal of Economics 29 (2005).
22. K. Smith, ‘Long-Term Decline in Calorie Purchases Despite Increase in Calories from Eating Out, Snacks and Soft Drinks’, press release quoting Kate Smith, a research economist at the IFS, on ESRC funded research, 4 November 2013, at ifs.org.uk.
23. Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, ‘State of the Nation 2013: Social Mobility and Child Poverty in Great Britain, October 2013’, London, Stationery Office, para. 33, at gov.uk.
24. Personal communication, David Gordon, December 2013, commenting on a pernicious and persistent myth (sometimes spread by leader writers on the Daily Mail).
25. P. Gregg, J. Waldfogel and E. Washbrook, ‘Expenditure Patterns Post-Welfare Reform in the UK: Are Low-Income Families Starting to Catch Up?’, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion Working Paper 99, 2005, London, LSE, at sticerd.lse.ac.uk.
26. See Greenhalgh, ‘Why Does Market Capitalism Fail to Deliver a Sustainable Environment and Greater Equality of Incomes?’, p. 1,101 for a more nuanced discussion of how the very rich come to see themselves as time poor, because they cannot buy more time, and how this then begins to warp their priorities and behaviour.
27. P. Crawshaw, ‘Public Health Policy and the Behavioural Turn: The Case of Social Marketing’, Critical Social Policy 33: 4 (2013), at csp.sagepub.com.
28. M. Pember Reeves, Round About a Pound a Week (London: G. Bell & Sons, 2013).
29. A. Gregory, ‘North and South Health Divide: Chilling Study Reveals Premature Death is “Postcode Lottery” ’, Mirror, 11 June 2013.
30. L. Johnston, L. Miles and C. N. Macrae, ‘Why Are You Smiling at Me? Social Functions of Enjoyment and Non-Enjoyment Smiles’, British Journal of Social Psychology 49: 1 (2010), at ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
31. C. Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (London: HarperCollins, 1998 [1872]).
32. D. Goleman, ‘Rich People Just Care Less’, New York Times, 5 October 2013, at opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com.
33. Occasionally there are accounts of shame, when the poor are forced to talk to the rich. For a review of a book that includes many examples, see M. Savage, Review: A Phenomenology of Working-Class Experience, Simon J. Charlesworth’ (Cambridge University Press, 1999), at socresonline.org.uk.
34. S. T. Fiske, ‘Look Twice: How Prejudiced Are You?’, Greater Good Science Centre press release, University of California, Berkeley, 2008, at greatergood.berkeley.edu.
35. ‘Social death is the condition under which some people can be condemned to civil death, while the rest of us fail to care or even to notice. It is the condition under which entire groups of people may be exposed to disproportionate state violence, neglect, and/or exploitation, without provoking the concern or support of other members of the community. Social death is both a condition of civil death and one of its effects; they amplify one another in a vicious circle that is difficult to interrupt.’ From Lisa Guenther’s blog on the California prison hunger strikes, written on 6 August 2013, at 08.15, at crimeandjustice.org.uk.
36. Lisa Guenther is an associate professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University. Located in Nashville, Vanderbilt was built thanks to a gift of a million dollars from a member of the incredibly wealthy Vanderbilt family in 1873. Nearly a century and a half later, their investment is helping to define the problems of a return to the inequalities of their times.
37. R. Walker, G. Bantebya Kyomuhendo et al., ‘Poverty in Global Perspective: Is Shame a Common Denominator?’ Journal of Social Policy 42 (2013).
38. P. Townsend, Poverty in the United Kingdom (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979). A. Sen, ‘Poor, Relatively Speaking’, Oxford Economic Papers 35 (1983).
39. Goleman, ‘Rich People Just Care Less’.
40. M. Goodwin, ‘Why the “Immigration Debate” Is Getting Us Nowhere’, New Statesman, 27 November 2013.
41. B. Guerin, ‘Demography and Inequality: How Europe’s Changing Population Will Impact on Income Inequality’, report by Rand Europe, April 2013, at rand.org.
42. Z. Minton Beddoes, ‘For Richer, for Poorer – Special Report: The World Economy’, Economist, 13 October 2012.
43. G. Wyler, ‘US Women Are Dying Younger Than Their Mothers, and No One Knows Why’, Atlantic, 7 October 2013.
44. D. Stuckler and M. McKee, ‘Why Are Death Rates Rising in People Aged Over 85?’, Better Health For All – The Blog of the Faculty of Public Health, 23 August 2013, at betterhealthforall.org.
45. BBC, ‘Southern Cross Set to Shut Down and Stop Running Homes’, BBC News, 11 July 2011, at bbc.co.uk.
46. J. L. Fernandez, T. Snell and G. Wistow, ‘Changes in the Patterns of Social Care Provision in England: 2005/6 to 2012/13’, Personal Social Services Research Unit, PSSRU Discussion Paper 2867, December 2013, at pssru.ac.uk.
47. ONS, ‘Period Expectations of Life, Principal Projections Based on Historical Mortality Rates from 1981 to 2012’, 11 December 2013, at ons.gov.uk.
48. N. Triggle, ‘Many Vulnerable People Denied Care, Says Age UK’, BBC News, 6 March 2014, at bbc.co.uk.
49. D. Campbell, ‘Age UK Sounds Alarm Over Cuts to Care for Older People’, Guardian, 5 March 2014.
50. N. Pratley, ‘Barclays’ So-Called Pay for Performance Is a Distortion of Capitalism’, Guardian, 5 March 2014.
51. D. Dorling, ‘Why Are the Old Dying Before Their Time? How Austerity Has Affected Mortality Rates’, New Statesman, 7 February 2014.
52. A. Gollner, The Book of Immortality: The Science, Belief, and Magic Behind Living Forever (Canada: Doubleday, 2013), quoted in the online weekly ‘Too much’ on excess and inequality, at toomuchonline.org, 9 September 2013.
53. You have to enter the realm of science fiction to see where such behaviour would eventually lead: G. Egan, Permutation City (London: Gollancz, 2008).
54. A. Aittomäkia, P. Martikainenb, O. Rahkonena, E. Lahelmaa, ‘Household Income and Health Problems During a Period of Labour-Market Change and Widening Income Inequalities – A Study Among the Finnish Population Between 1987 and 2007’, Social Science and Medicine 100 (2014), at sciencedirect.com.
55. A. Hartocollis, ‘With Affordable Care Act, Cancelled Policies for New York Professionals’, New York Times, 13 December 2013.
56. R. Guillén, ‘We Slept and Now We Have Woken. Square Occupied’, Le Monde Diplomatique, 12 July 2011, at mondediplo.com.
57. B. Kavousii, ‘Spanish Locksmiths Refuse to Help Evict Homeowners Any Longer’, Huffington Post, 23 January 2014, at huffingtonpost.com.
58. Details can be found at studentfinance.direct.gov.uk.
59. R. H. Tawney, The School Leaving Age and Juvenile Unemployment (London: Workers’ Educational Association, 1934), p. 29.
60. A. Kershaw, ‘Fewer Teenagers Staying On for Post-16 Education’, Independent, 28 June 2012.
61. P. Ainley, ‘ “Lost” Generation’ (letter), Guardian, 22 January 2014.
62. N. Groves, ‘Student Suicides Rise during Recession Years’, Guardian, 30 November 2012.
63. By the Boston Consulting Group, reported in R. Neate, ‘China and India Swell Ranks of Millionaires in Global Rich List’, Guardian, 31 May 2012.
64. R. B. Reich, ‘The American Right Focuses on Poverty, Not Inequality, to Avoid Blame’, Observer, 23 February 2014.
65. L. Elliott, ‘IMF Eyes Tax Potential of the World’s Super-Rich’, Guardian, 13 October 2013.
66. P. Krugman, ‘The Long Run History of Taxes on the Rich’, New York Times, 12 July 2012.
67. S. Fothergill, ‘Welfare-to-Work Isn’t Working’, People, Place and Policy 7: 2 (2013), at extra.shu.ac.uk.
68. BBC, ‘Southern Cross Set to Shut Down’.
69. C. Jeffery, ‘Jugaad Neoliberalism’ (letter), Guardian, 9 October 2012.
70. OECD, ‘Crisis Squeezes Income and Puts Pressure on Inequality and Poverty’, New Results from the OECD Income Distribution Database, Paris, OECD report, 2013, at oecd.org.
71. P. Collinson, ‘Pension Schemes Have Fewer Members than Any Time since Records Began’, Guardian, 16 July 2013.
72. M. Morrissey and N. Sabadish, ‘Retirement Inequality Chartbook: How the 401(k) Revolution Created a Few Big Winners and Many Losers’, Economic Policy Institute, September 2013, at epi.org.
73. And also a debtor, who wrote these words in the year before his death at age sixty-five. This quotation taken from Essay XV of Seditions and Troubles (London: Everyman, 1962), p. 46. See also ‘Spreading the Muck’, Economist, 17 May 2007.
74. Z. Williams, ‘Achieving a Social State: What Can We Learn from Beveridge’s Giant Evils?’, Think Piece, London, Centre for Labour and Social Studies, February 2013, p. 6.
75. R. Seymour, ‘How Food Insecurity Keeps the Workforce Cowed’, Guardian, 23 August 2012.
76. I am grateful to Kevin Albertson of the Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics, Manchester Metropolitan University Business School, for some of these suggestions. Personal communication, September 2012.
77. It is estimated that four local jobs are lost for every job created in a large supermarket. This is not hard to calculate, as the till take per employee is about four times higher. D. Craig, ‘Why Can Stupid Journalists Not Understand that Supermarkets Destroy Jobs?’, Snouts in the Trough Blog, 20 March 2012, at snouts-in-the-trough.com.
78. J. Kay, ‘Higher Pay Boosts Economics and Politics’, Financial Times, 2 October 2012.
79. Only eight prosecutions have ever taken place for failure to pay the minimum wage. J. O’Leary, ‘Is the Government Failing to Enforce the Minimum Wage?’, Full Fact, 6 March 2013, at full-fact.org.
80. Simultaneously the 1 per cent get away with most of their crimes, or have done thus far: ‘The real test will be the government’s willingness to indict or obtain a guilty plea from a major bank. If the Barclays agreement is any indication, it will have plenty of opportunities. None of the other banks implicated can take credit for being the first to come forward, since Barclays has already claimed that prize.’ See J. B. Stewart, ‘Calculated Deal in a Rate-Rigging Inquiry’, New York Times, 13 July 2012.
81. H. G. Rufrancos, M. Power, K. E. Pickett and R. Wilkinson, ‘Income Inequality and Crime: A Review and Explanation of the Time–Series Evidence’, Social Criminology, 1: 1 (29 August 2013), relying in turn on B. Reilly and R. Witt, ‘Domestic Burglaries and the Real Price of Audio-Visual Goods: Some Time Series Evidence for Britain’, Economic Letters 100 (2008), at econpapers.repec.org.
82. BBC, ‘Burglaries in Wales up 20 Per Cent in Year, Despite Falling Crime’, BBC News, 8 March 2012, at bbc.co.uk.
83. ‘In egalitarian countries the cultural activity is high, in highly stratified countries it is low.’ T. Szlendak and A. Karwacki, ‘Do the Swedes Really Aspire to Sense and the Portuguese to Status? Cultural Activity and Income Gap in the Member States of the European Union’, International Sociology, 27: 6 March 2012. The online version of this article can be found at iss.sagepub.com.
84. B. Olinsky and S. Post, ‘Middle-Out Mobility: Regions with Larger Middle Classes Have More Economic Mobility’, Centre for American Progress Report, 4 September 2013, at american-progress.org.
85. A. Petri, ‘The Most Ludicrous Hitler Comparison, Ever’, Washington Post, 21 March 2014.
86. R. Urwin, ‘We’re So Mean to Those Poor Billionaires’, Evening Standard, 20 March 2014, p. 15.
1. J. Schalansky, Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Not Visited and Never Will (London: Particular Books, 2012), p. 76 (although she should have said mutinies rather than revolutions perhaps).
2. M. Taussig, Beauty and the Beast (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), pp. 11, 152.
3. G. Dines, ‘Downton Abbey and House of Cards: Dramas that Live in the World of the 1 Per Cent’, Guardian, 20 February 2014.
4. N. Powdthavee and A. J. Oswald, ‘Does Money Make People Right-Wing and Inegalitarian? A Longitudinal Study of Lottery Winners’, Warwick University Working Paper, 2014, at ideas.repec.org.
5. C. Davies, ‘Lottery Millionaires Each Fund Six Jobs a Year, Study Shows’, Guardian, 22 October 2012.
6. M. Robinson and J. Stevens, ‘Couple Who Scooped £148 Million Lottery Jackpot to Divorce Just Over a Year Since Their Win’, Daily Mail, 20 November 2013.
7. Ibid., quoting from the Sun (which is now behind a paywall).
8. R. Pendlebury, ‘Spent, Spent, Spent – Pools Winner Now Living on £87 a Week’, Daily Mail, 22 April 2007.
9. Think of pop stars who die young in the US, such as Michael Jackson or Whitney Houston. And of the more extreme stories of how so many unknowns will do almost anything for money. In 2002 Fox TV in the United States aired the show Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? Some fifty women competed to marry a man they could not see. All they knew about him was that he was rich. The man turned out to be Rick Rockwell. He married the contestant from California. She, Darva Conger, got some money and a big ring, and had the marriage annulled within a few weeks. Then she posed for Playboy magazine. Neither Darva or Rick appear particularly happy: R. Palazzolo, ‘Darva Conger and Rick Rockwell Reunite’, ABC News, 21 February 2001, at abcnews.go.com.
10. Centre for Policy Studies, ‘The 2013 Margaret Thatcher Lecture – Boris Johnson’, 27 November 2013, at cps.org.uk.
11. For National Insurance, the rate falls from 12 per cent or 9 per cent self-employed to only 2 per cent above an upper threshold. See J. Browne and B. Roantree, ‘A Survey of the UK Tax System’, IFS Briefing Note BN09, London, Institute for Fiscal Studies, at ifs.org.uk.
12. ONS, ‘The Effects of Taxes and Benefits on Household Income, 2011/12’, London, Office for National Statistics, 2013, at ons.gov.uk.
13. M. West, ‘Britain’s Banks Show They Have Learned Nothing as Figures Reveal Top Bankers’ Salaries Soared by More than a THIRD in 2012’, Daily Mail, 29 November 2013, at thisismoney.co.uk.
14. EBA, ‘2012 Report on the Data Collection Exercise for High Earners’, London, European Banking Authority, 2013, at eba.europa.eu.
15. J. Norman, ‘The Co-op Bank Calamity Proved One Thing: What Matters is Good Ownership’, Telegraph, 4 December 2013.
16. J. Moore, ‘RBS Settles £5.7bn Debt, but We’re Still £20bn Under Water’, Independent, 5 May 2012.
17. The City of London is home to the Livery company, the Worshipful Company of International Bankers. P. Latham, The State and Local Government: Towards a New Basis for ‘Local Democracy’ and the Defeat of Big Business Control (Croydon: Manifesto Press, 2011), p. 87.
18. K. Roose, ‘One-Percent Jokes and Plutocrats in Drag: What I Saw When I Crashed a Wall Street Secret Society’, New York, 18 February 2014.
19. J. Nye, ‘Inside Wall Street’s Most Secret Society: The Billionaire Banker Fraternity where Cross-Dressing New Members Make Jokes about Hillary Clinton and Drunkenly Mock the Financial Crisis’, Daily Mail, 18 February 2014.
20. The ‘most expensive schooling, the right connections, the financial backing [can produce a] sense of entitlement’. See D. Exley, ‘Attacking the Evidence that Excessive Inequality Prevents Social Mobility Doesn’t Stand Up to Scrutiny’, Equality Trust Blog, 29 November 2013, at equalitytrust.org.uk.
21. It does not include the effect of the small section of society that continues to get wage rises, and the large section whose wages are frozen or reduced, nor the added effects of inflation. J. Cribb, A. Hood, R. Joyce and D. Phillips, ‘Living Standards, Poverty and Inequality in the UK: 2013’, Institute for Fiscal Studies Report R81, June 2013, p. 48, at ifs.org.uk. This relies in turn on M. Brewer, J. Browne, A. Hood, R. Joyce and L. Sibieta, ‘The short- and medium-term Impacts of the recession on the UK income distribution’, Fiscal Studies, 34, 2013.
22. D. Stuckler and S. Basu, The Body Economic: Eight Experiments in Economic Recovery, from Iceland to Greece (London: Allen Lane, 2013).
23. Figures from Table 5.1, 3.6 and 3.5 of Cribb et al., ‘Living Standards, Poverty and Inequality in the UK: 2013’.
24. Office of the Children’s Commissioner, ‘A Child Rights Impact Assessment of Budget Decisions – Including the 2013 Budget, and the Cumulative Impact of Tax-Benefit Reforms and Reductions in Spending on Public Services 2010–2015’, June 2013, p. 38, at childrenscommissioner.gov.uk.
25. Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, ‘State of the Nation 2013’, London, Stationery Office, 2013, p. 180, at gov.uk.
26. IFS, ‘Elderly See Incomes Rise, Whilst Young Adults See Large Falls’, London, Institute of Fiscal Studies, 2013, at ifs.org.uk.
27. J. Suk, A. Pharris and J. Semenza, ‘Health Inequalities, the Financial Crisis, and Infectious Disease in Europe’, Stockholm, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, 2013, Figure 1, p. 3, at ecdc.europa.eu.
28. D. Attenborough, ‘Population Cannot Go On Increasing’, BBC News, 16 December 2013, at bbc.co.uk.
29. T. Dávid-Barrett and R. I. M. Dunbar, ‘Social Elites Can Emerge Naturally When Interaction in Networks is Restricted’, Behavioral Ecology 25: 1 (2014), at oxfordjournals.org.
30. T. Piketty, E. Saez and S. Stantcheva, ‘Taxing the 1%: Why the Top Tax Rate Could Be Over 80 Per Cent’, Vox: Research-Based Policy Analysis and Commentary from Leading Economists, 8 December 2011, at voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/7402.
31. M. Luke and J. Mukuno, ‘Why Do Leonardo DiCaprio and Richard Branson Lecture Us About Carbon Consumption While Plotting Trips to Space?’ Wall Street Journal, 7 January 2014, at online.wsj.com.
32. L. Dam, ‘Elvin Wyly Speaks at Occupy Vancouver’, UBC Geographer 7: 3 (November 2011), at geog.ubc.ca.
33. J. V. Beaverstock and J. R. Faulconbridge, ‘Wealth Segmentation and the Mobilities of the Super-Rich: A Conceptual Framework’, GaWC Research Bulletin 422 (2013), at lboro.ac.uk.
34. E. Saez, ‘The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States (Updated with 2012 Preliminary Estimates)’, University of California, Berkeley, press release, 3 September 2013, at elsa.berkeley.edu.
35. E. N. Wolff, ‘The Asset Price Meltdown and the Wealth of the Middle Class’, New York University Working Paper, 26 August 2012, at confex.com.
36. S. Gilani, ‘Income Inequality Is What’s Destroying America’, Forbes Magazine, 27 September 2013.
37. As Shah Gilani did in Forbes (see endnote above) after saying that the middle class of the US ‘will increasingly slip into poverty and the backbone of America’s increasingly brittle skeleton will turn to dust.’ See: ‘About Shah Gilani’, at capitalwaveforecast.com: ‘Gilani studied economics and psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He now lives in Florida and is a managing member of a private equity company.’
38. ‘In February 2008, Gilani advised his blog followers to “sell everything and short everything or stay 100 per cent in cash.” On 27 March 2009, in a lead story for Money Morning, Gilani said the market had bottomed and told investors to jump back into stocks.’ Ibid.
39. S. Greenhouse, ‘Here’s a Memo From the Boss: Vote This Way’, New York Times, 26 October 2013.
40. C. Freeland, ‘Why the Superrich Really Hate Obama’, New York Times, 12 July 2012.
41. M. Gilens and B. I. Page, ‘Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens’ forthcoming in Autumn 2014 in Perspectives on Politics, pre-publication version available at http://folk.uio.no/sigurdkn/usa_oligarchy_empirical.pdf in April 2014.
42. Which continues: ‘ “It doesn’t make me feel personally uncomfortable because I like each of the individuals concerned, but it’s ridiculous”, Mr Gove said. “I don’t know where you can find some such similar situation in a developed economy.” ’ G. Parker and H. Warrell, ‘Gove Takes Aim at Cameron’s Etonians’, Financial Times, 14 March 2014.
43. P. Wintour, ‘Ed Miliband Attacks Coalition’s Growth Strategy in which Rich Will Gain Most’, Guardian, 17 March 2014.
44. ‘He was later widely reported as saying that Labour would “tax the rich until the pips squeak”, which Healey denied.’ Denis Healey, at en.wikipedia.org.
45. Apparently income inequality has been falling worldwide since the year 2000. Figure 3 in B. Milanovic, ‘Global Income Inequality by the Numbers: in History and Now’, Policy Research Working Paper 6259, November 2012, World Bank, at elibrary.worldbank.org.
46. CROP, ‘Mobilizing Critical Research for Preventing and Eradicating Poverty’, Policy Brief, January 2013, Bergen, Centre For Research on Poverty.
47. U. Elbaek and N. Lawson, ‘The Bridge: How the Politics of the Future Will Link the Vertical to the Horizontal’, London, Compass, at compassonline.org.uk.
48. H. Dalton, ‘The Measurement of the Inequality of Incomes’, Economics Journal 30: 119 (September 1920), at jstor.org.
49. World Bank, ‘Where is the Wealth of Nations? Measuring Capital for the 21st Century’, Washington, DC, World Bank, 2006, at web.worldbank.org.
50. J. B. Stewart, ‘Calculated Deal in a Rate-Rigging Inquiry’, New York Times, 13 July 2012.
51. E. Logutenkova, ‘UBS, Barclays Dodge $4.3 Billion EU Fines for Rate Rigging’, Bloomberg News, 4 December 2013, at bloomberg.com.
52. T. Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), pp. 515–17.
53. Ipsos MORI, ‘General Concern About the Economy Continues to Fall as Concern Shifts to Poverty/Inequality and the Personal Economy’, Economist/Ipsos MORI, 29 November 2013, at ipsos-mori.com.
54. P. Diamond, ‘Labour’s Economic Path to Power’, Policy Network, 2 December 2013, at policy-network.net.
55. C. James, ‘A Prediction That’s a Safe Bet’, BBC News, 2 January 2009, at news.bbc.co.uk. For Clive James’s astute observations on the free market, see the quote.
56. E. Rolfes, ‘Clive James on Turning His “Last Time on Earth” into a Writing Wellspring’, PBS Newshour, 3 December 2013, at pbs.org.
57. A. Cockburn, A Colossal Wreck: A Road Trip through Political Scandal, Corruption and American Culture (London: Verso, 2013), p. 566.
58. One of the most famous payouts was to Mike Ovitz, the former president of the Walt Disney Company, who may have been awarded as much as $140 million on his departure. Images of him on his luxury yacht can be found at hollywoodreporter.com – where, of Michael and his friend, it is said: ‘Both Ovitz and Tamara are nothing if not deeply litigious. Tamara battled her own mother in court. They are two of the most ruthless people ever when it comes to business, so they are perfect for each other.’ Why, when we can see how the 1 per cent behave when their private lives are revealed, do we not recognise them for what they are? Could it be because most of us are just not that ruthless?