Disconnection (Part 2)

The biggest disconnect in our society now is surely the gaping chasm between the richest and the poorest. During the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, income inequality increased massively in the UK. The old post-war consensus was shattered, and the result was a society that went through dramatic upheavals and pain, in a way that is still seared onto the psyche of anyone who was around in that period.

And it is these upheavals that are important. Across countries, there is a broad correlation between higher levels of income inequality and higher levels of property crime, and murder. Societies which are more unequal are more dangerous.

I believe that what this shows is that these societies begin to fall apart, that different sections of that society become disconnected from each other. Because of this process, sections of society begin to psychologically and physically separate themselves. The poorest become chavs, the richest become fat cats, and both groups hold the other in contempt. In this way, the process accelerates.

So you would hope that a Labour government, one committed to reducing inequality, and producing a fairer society, would have begun the work of reversing the changes of the long Tory government of the 80s and 90s. But it turns out, they didn't. In fact, the levels of inequality got worse.

Income inequality is now greater than at any time since 1961.

Or, to put it another way, income inequality is at its highest level since records began.

So, society has become more unequal. Combined with this, it appears that social mobility, how easy it is for someone to rise up through society, or indeed to fall, hasn't changed since 1970. And this low level of social mobility is amongst the worst in any advanced nation.

If you're born poor, you're likely to stay poor. And with the income of the lowest 10% actually falling in real terms since 2005, you're likely to get poorer.

This can't be how we want our society to be, can it? Surely a world where the bottom 10% of society have an income of £147 a week, while the top 10% make do with £1,033 a week isn't right? When the poorest 20% see their income fall by 2.6% at the same time as the richest 20% see theirs rise by 3.3%, something must be wrong?

I'm sorry to step away from the gentle cultured arguments about the effect of economic strategies, to slip into the language of black and white, right and wrong. But this is a simple binary matter, it is a matter of right and wrong. There comes a point when the impact of the economic choices we make cease to be a matter for gentle discussion over brandy and cigars, and become a bigger issue, a more important issue. There comes a point where these decisions become moral decisions, because these arguments start to affect the very lives people get to live.

When the one of the best indicators of a child's future social position, wealth, educational attainment, health, longevity and is the amount of money their parents' earn, something is wrong.

Recently, Harriet Harman launched a new equalities bill. She said that as women in general lived longer than men, it showed something was wrong that the poorest women died earlier than the richest men - and so we had to work for equal pay across the genders. This is a laudable aim, but seems to be missing the point entirely - the problem is that you will die earlier if you are poor. The money you earn decides how long you will live.

Yes, this is the language of class warfare. But the casualties are all on one side.

(To be fair, also in this bill are proposals to impose on public authorities a duty to work to reduce class inequalities. But this will only affect public authorities, leaving the rest of society to get on with the work of increasing inequality. The measures are too weak, too little, and too late.)

And yet we all seem to try very hard not to acknowledge that, turning our heads, averting our gaze, closing our eyes. We want to believe that sop to middle class sensibilities that we live in a era of 'equality of opportunity', a meaningless phrase that the statistics on social mobility to be a lie. Some of us pretend we live in a meritocracy, but isn't it odd that merit seems to be hereditary?

We used to have a political party that would point this out. We used to have a party that wouldn't help everyone ignore the effects economic policy was having on the most vulnerable. We used to have a party that would have shouted from the rooftops about inequality rising to such obscene levels. We used to.

And that is the disconnect I want to talk about tomorrow.

May you live in interesting times

We are living through momentous times. In the US, $700bn of taxpayer's money has been made available to buy bank assets no-one wants. In the UK, £500bn is being made available to provide short term loans to banks, to guarantee loans between banks, and even to buy into banks. The ideas of Thatcherism and Reaganomics that arose on either side of the Atlantic in the 1980s have reached their inevitable conclusion, with the era of individual greed collapsing into the era of shared debts. The profits were privatised, and the debts are being nationalised.

And yet despite this spectacular collapse of the economic system that we have been stuck with for the past 30 years or so, we are being told that now is not the time for recriminations, now is not the time for an investigation. The usual suspects, those who made the most, or those who represent them, are appearing on TV, on the radio, in newspapers, to tell us not to forget how wonderful the last few decades have been for them, that we mustn't over-react and risk their future profits.

We've just had our pockets picked, and the thief is trying to tell us not to call the police.

Don't forget the good years, we're told. Don't forget how good you've had it. They must think we're stupid. If you're on a roller-coaster, having a great time as it soars and dips, you're going to be hurt when it suddenly runs out of track. It doesn't make sense to pick yourself up, wait for your bones to heal, and then go and get on the ride again because it was fun at the beginning. If you get pushed off a cliff, you may be fine all the way down, but it's the landing which is important. You don't go back to the top to be shoved off again.

Besides, was it really that good? In the UK, the percentage of people in poverty (getting under 60% of the median income) was 13.7% in 1979, when Thatcher came to power. By the end of the Conservative government in 1996/97, it was up to 25.3%. A quarter of our population was living in poverty. By 2006/07, the Labour government had managed to bring that down from its high – to 22.2%.

Let's put that in context – the change from 1979 levels of poverty has put about 5.1 million more people into poverty. That is the same as the population of Scotland. We've increased the number of our fellow citizens in poverty by the size of a country. This is the result of the 'good' years.

Now is the time for recriminations. Now is the time to investigate.

Now is the time to do this, because this appalling behaviour will effect not only us, but our children. The money being used for bailouts on both sides of the Atlantic is new debt for the governments. New debt that will have to be paid off at some point, by us, by our children, by our grandchildren.

Next time you are out at night, look up at the stars. Look at the glittering magnitude of the sky. See the sweep of the Milky Way, our galaxy. In our galaxy, there are between 200 and 400 billion stars (it's hard to get an exact figure, as we're in the middle of it).

If each star was worth one pound, you couldn't cover the UK bailout.

Now look for that little smudge that is the Andromeda Galaxy, the largest galaxy in our local group, and the closest spiral galaxy to our own. If you look at it through a telescope, you get some idea of its size. Unfortunately, it's tilted such that you can't really see its spiral nature clearly, but it is still an amazing sight. In that galaxy, 220,000 light-years across, there are 1 trillion stars.

If each were worth a dollar (less than in our own galaxy, because there's bound to be a transport costs...) you would need 10 Andromeda Galaxies to pay off the US national debt.

The figures involved here truly are astronomical.

Now is the time for recriminations. Now is the time to investigate.

We are shoring up our banking system because banks provide a vital function in our economy. They hold the money we have, they move it around between us, they make payments possible, they loan our money out, to businesses, to home-buyers. This, if you like, is the banking system as a utility that we all need, like electricity, or water. Then we have the other side, which is involved in the trading of complex financial instruments, passing debt around in parcels, and other games on the financial markets. This part is, frankly, more akin to a casino. And the casino is where the banks have been making their massive losses.

So there we are, with a utility, and a casino. And we're having to make good their losses in the casino, because otherwise they'll shut the utility. This isn't right. We shouldn't be held to ransom over their failures.

Here's a little comparison for you: once upon a time, there was a utility company, providing electricity, natural gas, water and the like. Then they decided what they really wanted to do was start trading these items as commodities and related derivatives. And, amazingly enough, they started making massive losses, while paying their executives handsomely. Eventually, the losses couldn't be hidden, and the company collapsed. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Enron.

Our banks have behaved just like Enron. There are some differences, of course, not least that Enron had to hide losses to give executives massive payouts. This is mainly because they were trading in something much more tangible than our banks have been, and it had to be delivered. Our banks, however, all had the same collective delusion that what they were doing made sense, and kept trading ever higher – right up until it became clear that the things they were trading, the money they expected to get from mortgage payments, wasn't actually going to arrive.

It is now clear that Enron was a case of deliberate criminal acts by executives. Our bank executives, however, are claiming that in their case it is all due to stupidity, not criminality. And we're being told now is not the time for recriminations, now is not the time to investigate.

Now is the time for recriminations. Now is the time to investigate.

But most importantly, now is the time to make sure this can't happen again.

Here in the UK, we may soon end up with substantial government investments in most, if not all, of our high street banks. Now, these high street banks (usually) perform the functions of the utility side of banking. Why, then, if we are putting such large amounts of money into these banks, can we not impose stringent new conditions on them, or even (whisper it) take them over completely? We have been bombarded from all sides recently with how important this utility function is, how it cannot be allowed to stop without bringing the whole economy down. OK. Then make sure they can never again take our money to the casino. Limit them only to the activities of the utility. Prevent them, by law, or by ownership, from gambling not only with our deposits, but with the whole economy.

There will be those who say that this is crazy, that if we stop banks raising money in the casino we will prevent credit being available so easily. And yes, it would stop credit being so easily available. But one of the causes of this present chaos was the eagerness of banks to provide credit too easily, because they could parcel it up and pass it on, hoping they wouldn't be left holding it when the music stopped. It is time for all of us to take a bit of pain, to gain a bit of responsibility. Credit has to be harder to get hold of, because we, and the banks, have been too irresponsible with it. The banks were the ones pushing this particular drug, but we were happy to take it. The only difference is that the financial experts should have known better.

We managed to get along for years without these bizarre financial products that have led to disaster. We can get by without them again. We must get by without them again. And we should look at the pushers, and find out how much they knew, if they knew the chaos they were brewing up for the future.

Now is the time for recriminations. Now is the time to investigate.

In the past few decades, our actions seem to have guaranteed we will saddle our children, our grandchildren, and beyond, not only with massive debt, but with an unhealthy, heating, damaged world to live in. Our greed has effected their balance sheets, and their world.

It's about time we grew up. Because our kids are sure as hell going to have to grow up fast.

But the first step to growing up is admitting what we have done. It's looking at how we have behaved, and how we were wrong. It's facing up to the greed endemic throughout our system, self-destructive greed that is going to make us all poorer for years, if not generations, to come. And part of showing we have grown up is making sure that those who have behaved badly, those who have behaved stupidly, or criminally, or negligently, are held to account for what they have done. We need to take a good long look at our banks.

Now is the time for recriminations. Now is the time to investigate.