A just transition to a sustainable, fairer world. Not short-term fixes

Workman pulling a dying tree from the dark barren land to a land of light and healthy nature
Image by Muhammad Sadeeq from Pixabay

‘The world was created with everything needed within it. Yet, mankind remains the biggest threat to its destruction.’

Oladosu Adenike – ecofeminist, climate justice activist and agricultural economist.

 

In Jason Hickel’s book ‘The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions’ the author recounts the parable of the man with his friends who, after many hours of diving into the rapids of a dangerous river to save many struggling in the fast-flowing, perilous water, begins to ask the question whether it wouldn’t be more useful to run upstream to find out why so many were falling into the river in the first place. Hickel suggests the lesson of the story is that we should be paying much more attention to why people are struggling to manage their lives by examining the economic systems which create poverty and inequality in the first place, rather than trying to mitigate for the symptoms.

‘Remedies do not cure the disease…they try to solve the problem of poverty…by keeping people alive’…the proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.’ Those words were written by Oscar Wilde in the 1800s, during the great industrial upheavals which created huge poverty and ill-health and shortened lives. Robert Tressell whose novel ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist’ (based partly on his own life) was explicit in his descriptions of the capitalist exploitation of labour and its consequences. Despite the work of social reformers to introduce legislation to protect working people and public health improvements, the rich industrialists of the day did very well, got richer and more influential, a situation which remains unchanged to this day.

Although there were a few decades in the post-war period when things changed materially for many because of government policies that promoted full employment, provided free healthcare, set up a social security system and invested in social housing and good public services, more recent governments, driven by a toxic economic ideology, seem bent on recreating the crushing poverty, homelessness, ill-health and despair that our forebears experienced. And whilst the world is a very different place to Tressell’s, the quest remains one of exploiting human labour and resources to extract what capitalism needs to keep its lifeblood flowing – at a terrible cost. One fix after another with scant regard for human beings, the environment or the planet’s health.

At the same time, charity (as in Victorian times) has become once again the cornerstone of an economic system not fit for purpose, both domestically and internationally. As the GIMMS Lens has written many times previously, charity is nothing more than a sticking plaster and not a cure for the social ills which persist because of inadequate government spending.

And yet once again this week the issue has been highlighted by the Trussell Trust, who reported that it had given out 2.5 million parcels, distributing 33% more in 2020/21 than the year before, and that almost 980,000 of them went to families with children – that’s an average of two every minute. It called them historic levels of need and added that it was but a fraction of the total food aid that had been handed out by other charities, schools, and councils.

It warned that 94% of people referred to foodbanks were destitute, meaning that their income was insufficient to afford absolute essentials, and went on to say that:

Years of exponential growth in the need for food banks, and the gradual erosion of financial security for people on the lowest incomes has been brought into stark focus. […] We cannot continue like this; this is why we are calling on all levels of government to act and develop a plan to end the need for food banks once and for all.’

In the same week as the Trussell Trust reported on the growing levels of hunger and destitution, the departing police chief from Merseyside, Andy Cooke, spoke of his view that if we want to reduce crime, then the government should make it a priority to reduce inequality and deprivation. He suggested rightly that social and economic justice were essentially two sides of the same coin, saying that ‘It’s such an unequal playing field we have at the moment with job prospects and with opportunities for the future.’ The solution he said was to [build] community cohesion […] and […] opportunities for young people [to level up] the playing field.’ He told the Guardian in an interview that if he were given a budget of £5bn he would spend £4bn on reducing poverty and levelling up.

However, the increase in poverty and social inequity is not a new problem. Ten years ago, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett published their celebrated book ‘The Spirit Level’, which highlighted the ‘pernicious effects that inequality has on societies’. Furthermore, independent research carried out by a variety of bodies since the 1980s has noted the dramatic growth in income inequality and social dislocation, which has had a deleterious effect on people’s lives because of the scourge of unemployment, low pay, insecure employment and working practices, poor health, hunger, homelessness, and poor living conditions.

The problem of poverty and inequality does not lie with individual failings, as the economic ideology of individual responsibility would have it, it lies with government policies and spending decisions. The buck stops at the top.

For too long, people have felt powerless and disenfranchised, as successive governments have pursued an economic ideology which has served corporations first in terms of employment and wages legislation, poured vast sums of public money into private profit, slashed public service provision and overseen huge disparities in wealth and access to resources. They have linked those priorities to financial unaffordability by stringing the public along with myths about how the government spends. Instead of starting with serving the public interest by investing in a shared vision of society, politicians have chosen to make their bed with those whose interests are profit, not people. These governments have distracted people with tales about the supposed burden of public debt and the deficit, which has led to austerity and cuts to public spending. Cuts that were politically instigated and unrelated to the reality of how sovereign currency-issuing governments spend.

Indeed, whilst the ONS reported its first estimates of the public finances over the last year we learned this week that more than 200,000 under 25s have been out of work for more than six months, with those under the age of 35 accounting for almost 80% of jobs which have been lost over the last year. And while the ONS focuses on the figures by themselves they tell us nothing about what is happening to the economy or how it is affecting working people, or where the money went and who benefited. They are just accounting records. The youth unemployment figures, on the other hand, tell us much about the damage unemployment is doing to our young people’s lives, their future, and the economy.

The IFS, trundling out their usual fantasy household budget stories, commented that ‘government borrowing [had] reached a peacetime record’, and whilst that was manageable provided interest rates remained low, if rates should rise that could create difficulties for the government finances which the Chancellor would have to manage in the coming years. What happens next would be dependent, it suggested, either on a rapid recovery, which would raise tax revenues to pay for spending or pay down that dastardly debt, or else lead to big tax rises and/or spending constraints should the economy not recover quickly enough. The typical deceptive ‘household budget’ narrative in action, which claims, falsely, that the government needs tax revenue so that it can spend, that borrowing is the consequence of a country spending beyond its means, and that this ‘debt’ is a burden because it will have to be paid back one day.

On the one hand, we have unemployed young people whose lives have been put on hold and may be permanently held back, combined with the ongoing economic uncertainty which could end up in increased unemployment as furlough ends and companies close. And on the other, institutions who should know better, raising debt alarms as if somehow that should be prioritised over public well-being if future generations are not to be lumbered with high taxes to pay for it. It is as if they don’t make the connection between government spending and the health of the economy and the nation.

The truth is, however, that the government is in the driving seat, not the treasury wonks pouring over public accounts, calculating the cost, and working out how to recoup the losses or pay down the national debt as if it were a business. To reiterate, the state of the public accounts is not any measure of economic competence. What really counts is a government’s economic record. How did it manage the economic challenges it faced and who benefited and who lost out as a result?

As GIMMS has pointed out many times before, the government could if it chose to do so, adopt full employment as a policy goal as post-war governments did, and implement a Job Guarantee to ensure that at times of economic stress working people are not left floundering on the unemployment scrap heap. It could also choose to increase the size of the public sector, just as it did after the war, to create the public infrastructure that supports a healthy economy, using taxation, if necessary, as a mechanism to acquire the real resources it needs to deliver a public purpose agenda.

Over the last year, the power of the government to act for the public good or otherwise through its spending policies has been clearly demonstrated. Now that the public has been let in on the secret, it should reject the diatribe that will most certainly follow as the pandemic subsides on the evils of public debt. Let us no longer be taken in by the ‘how will we pay for it’ mantra, or the lie that austerity is necessary to get the public finances straight.

For too long, successive governments have retreated from their responsibilities towards those who elect them. They have either sold off or privatised public infrastructure, poured public money into private profit and encouraged the charitable and voluntary sector to provide those services that are not profitable for the private sector. For too long, insufficient public attention has been paid to the originators of the poverty and inequality which has plagued societies around the world, i.e. ideologically driven governments and international institutions such as the IMF. It is not enough to remedy the degrading nature of poverty through good works funded by public donation or measly government grants, when the government has both the monetary and legislative mechanisms to address it. It chooses not to, despite its rhetoric about levelling up.

To end this week’s blog, the climate has yet again been in sharp focus. In the same week that researchers reported that changes to giant ocean eddies could have a devastating effect on the ability of the Southern Ocean to lock away carbon dioxide and heat from fossil fuel burning, other scientists published a study which shows that the massive melting of glaciers has been responsible for shifts in the Earth’s axis of rotation since the 90s, demonstrating very clearly the huge impact that we humans have had on the planet.

This week, we were also reminded of the enormous task that is ahead of us as people around the world marked Earth Day which took place on 22nd April. The stated mission of the organisers is transformational change through the recognition that action will be needed at all levels, from business and investment to regional and national governments, to drive the change required. As the pandemic has and continues to wreak havoc on people’s lives and the climate emergency reminds humanity daily of the challenges it faces, we must not turn our backs on this opportunity for us all to step back and think seriously about a vision for the future.

Do we want yet another fix for capitalism in the guise of a green growth agenda that keeps the same players in charge? Or do we want something different? Will there be a real commitment from government leaders around the globe, seeking to deliver a just transition to a sustainable and fairer world, or will they continue to make the usual accommodations to capital to drive more growth, accumulation, and profits?

The UK government as a host for the COP26 later this year has so far made lots of promises (discussed in previous blogs) which so far lack real substance or have been reneged on. The mythical god of the economy comes first, it would appear, and the planet and its inhabitants somewhere down the list, particularly in the aftermath of a global pandemic. Our leaders are putting their hopes in the silver bullet of technology to save us, and whilst of course, such technologies will play an important role, as always things are never as simple as that. Tackling climate change requires a complete sea change in how we live and our expectations.

Given the urgency and the clear failure so far to match rhetoric with concrete policies and the Chancellor’s decision to cut foreign aid, at a critical time for developing countries both in terms of the pandemic and the climate emergency, it was insulting to all those climate experts and campaigners who have been ringing the alarm bells for decades to hear Boris Johnson urging his fellow leaders to ‘get serious’, saying ‘it’s vital for all of us to show that this is not all about some politically correct green act of ‘bunny hugging’.  Who wants to take lessons from politicians who have shown such contempt for climate issues? Johnson is hardly a beacon of virtue setting an example. It would be laughable if it were not so serious. The actions of his own government don’t so far match the grandiose promises and are a far cry from political reality.

Johnson has even suggested that it would be possible to cut emissions while growing the economy. The god of growth looms large as an objective in the aftermath of the pandemic. It seems we must catch up! But what sort of growth is he talking about? More of the same ‘growthism’ referred to in Jason Hickel’s book ‘Less is More’; growthism which has as its principal aim to grow profits and capital investment to engender yet more profit in an endless cycle of destruction. Or growth that is associated with a greener planetary vision that aims to create a steady-state economy that flourishes within the context of living within the capacity of the planet to sustain our existence?

In the words of Naomi Klein, author of ‘This changes everything’

“Because, underneath all of this is the real truth we have been avoiding: climate change isn’t an “issue” to add to the list of things to worry about, next to health care and taxes. It is a civilizational wake-up call. A powerful message—spoken in the language of fires, floods, droughts, and extinctions—telling us that we need an entirely new economic model and a new way of sharing this planet. Telling us that we need to evolve.”

The enormity of the challenges we face may seem daunting and the way ahead a rocky road, as our destination continues to hang in the balance. But with good leadership, political will and a better understanding of monetary realities, combined with those human traits of ingenuity and determination to forge a better world for our children and grandchildren, we do not have to accept the environmental and social decay that capitalism has created hitherto, or yet another economic fix to keep the capitalist status quo rolling.

 


 

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