Monbiot on the 1%...and trickle down

One silver lining to the ongoing economic crisis is that equality, and the failure of 'trickle-down' models, is rising on the public agenda. More and more of what I read recently convinces me that this is perhaps the most important topic, if the world is to move into a true post-boom and bust phase.

So nothing particularly new in George Monbiot's latest column (here), but saying things that always need to be heard, for example :

Between 1947 and 1979, productivity in the US rose by 119%, while the income of the bottom fifth of the population rose by 122%. But from 1979 to 2009, productivity rose by 80%, while the income of the bottom fifth fell by 4%. In roughly the same period, the income of the top 1% rose by 270%.

Which shows that indeed something has been tricking down from the top onto the rest of society in the post-80s 'boom', but it wasn't wealth.

But before this is dismissed as standard leftwing moans about the fabled 'growth creators' (who just need to be left alone more to achieve such wonderous prosperity that there'll be more than enough to go around), there are 2 fundamental points to be bear in mind :

• at the end of the day, it is in everyone's, even those at the top's, self-interest to have a fully functioning society, which doesn't crash regularly or have extreme levels of internal conflict in between. This is not about pie-in-the-sky idealism, it is about pragmatic self-concern.
• there are more ways to achieve a balanced and equal economy than just tax re-distribution, as the case of Japan shows (high equality, relatively low amount of redistribution via tax).  Indeed even within the US, the states of Massachusettes and Vermont represent extremes of the level of tax-burden within the US, but both have similar levels of equality.

The point is that notions of economic equality are not just old politics in a new situation, they are fundamental to the new politics that is needed (from both left and right) to solve old and reoccurrent problems.