Article by Yuyang Ren

Photo by Elyse Chia on Unsplash

Is the inequality existing fair, because it results from legal processes and fair competition? This is a question often doubted by people, after the world’s ten richest men increased their fortunes from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion during the pandemic while the incomes of 99% of humanity have fallen (Oxfam, 2022)

My answer is no, because there is no “fair competition”. Inherited wealth, birth location, gender/race differences… none of those factors is fair. When you look at the Forbes World’s Billionaires List, you might think that they made their way to be on that list through their own efforts. But in fact, many “self-made” billionaires had family backups. For example, Elon Musk’s dad owned an emerald mine in South Africa, while Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, started his legend with $300,000 in seed capital from his parents.

First of all, the idea of “fair competition” is a strategy of the capitalists to mask the innate gap between different classes, to weaken the “collective consciousness” (what Carl Marx mentioned in the theory of class conflict) of the working class, consolidating their own political and economic position. For example, the idea of the “American dream” emphasised meritocracy and individualism: everyone has equal chances for success based on individual effort and talent. This clearly downplayed the natural-born barriers of lower classes that shape life chances. By spreading this idea of “fairness competition”, they created a situation where somebody unsatisfied with their current income level, will tend to think this is because they are not making enough effort, rather than noticing the impact of class differences.

A classic example of those ignored barriers is that wealth can be gained by inherited assets. For example, someone who inherited two houses can rent them out to earn money, without making an effort to go to work, while the renters need to work to pay the rent. In this case, the owner of the houses is the one who earns more, while paying less effort compared to the renters. This shows that the theory of “wealth=effort” is a false proposition. In this aspect, propaganda like the American Dream emphasising fairness is indeed just a dream.

“There’s never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this ‘homeland of the free.

The millions who have nothing for our pay—

Except the dream that’s almost dead today.”

—Let America Be America Again, Langston Hughes

As for “legal processes” that aided this inequality, they can hardly be called “fair” either, as the billionaires’ economic power can be transferred into political power, to make “legal processes” work for their interests. As sociologist Miliband (1987) said, the “power elites”, i.e. those who hold economic and political power, are “usually remained sufficiently cohesive to ensure that their common purposes are effectively defended.” A current example perfectly shows the influence of economic power on politics: Musk giving $1m to some US voters. See more in this article: Is Musk’s $1m-a-day cash giveaway to US voters legal? – BBC News

Lastly, some may say that existing inequality is fair because although the income gap between the rich and poor widened, it helps to reduce global poverty and poor people also benefit. However, even if the society’s income level is improving, inequality has more negative impacts on the relatively poorer members of society. Studies by Wilkinson and Pickett showed that social problems they examined are more prevalent in more unequal societies. These problems all have a “social gradient”, which means that the poorer members of societies experience them more. “Gradients in health and social problems reflect social status differences in culture and behaviour”, and “material inequality is probably central to those differences.” (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2010). The effect of social gradient due to inequality is independent of the effects of poverty. One evidence of this is the climate issues: rich people contribute more to greenhouse gas emissions and suffer less from it than poor children living close to a working mineral mine: in 2019, the top 10% of richest men solely emitted 48% of the total greenhouse gases (Chancel, 2022).

So, there is no way to say that the existing inequality is fair: it is not a result of “fair competition” or “legal processes”, and it created more negative impacts on poorer members of society. Together, we can make a change to inequality, but we need to know why it needs to be changed first—- and that is the single purpose of this blog.

References:

https://www.oxfam.org.uk/mc/np588q/

Let America Be America Again | The Poetry Foundation https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147907/let-america-be-america-again

Is Musk’s $1m-a-day cash giveaway to US voters legal? – BBC News

[Giddens, A. & Turner, J.H. (1987) Social Theory Today, Chapter 10 ‘Class Analysis’ by Miliband, R. pp. 325-346] https://read.kortext.com/reader/pdf-file/5b5ee4c5-0916-4d41-bf86-5085bfb038a0/8

[Wilkinson, R. & Pickett, K. (2010) The spirit level: why equality is better for everyone pp.26-29] https://read.kortext.com/reader/pdf-file/0bca86b9-d993-453e-8306-e6e1ca21d4ab/2

Chancel, L. Global carbon inequality over 1990–2019. Nat Sustain 5, 931–938 (2022). https://rdcu.be/dYMc4 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00955-z

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