Scriptonite: Inequality of Wealth in UK Same as Nigeria

Yesterday Scriptonite published a post reporting UN statistics that the inequality in wealth between the rich and poor is now the same as Nigeria. It is the most extreme in the developed world, with the poorest in Britain living on the same incomes as those in Hungary and Korea. The piece is entitled Wealth Inequality in UK now Equal to Nigeria, UN Report. It begins

The UK has been sliding down the UN Human Development Report since 1991, and by 1996 became the most unequal nation in the developed world . The gap between rich and poor in UK society has risen sharply during the leadership of the Coalition government, yet long before these people got power, the gap between rich and poor in UK society was equal to Nigeria, with the poorest here living on roughly the same as their counterparts in Hungary and Korea.

Inequality, Inequality, Inequality

The 1996 and 2013 reports makes truly depressing reading, but should come as no surprise to those warning of exactly these results from ideological austerity policies.

Scriptonite links it to the implementation of the Tories’ Neo-Liberal policies, and suggests radical alternative systems, which people can join as a way of personally counteract government policy. Concerns about the growing gap between rich and poor in comparison with the Developing World goes back as far as Blair and Thatcher. I can remember a Fabian pamphlet during Thatcher’s administration noting that the inequality of wealth was the same as India. Since that time it’s become more extreme. Adam Curtis, the documentary film-maker, who directed the excellent The Century of the Self, discussed the increasing loss of social mobility in his The Trap: How We Lost Our Dreams of Freedom. He argued there that the growing division between rich and poor, and the lost of social mobility was due to Libertarian ideologies in which human behaviour was modelled on that of machines and applied to wider society in order to control the administration of goods and services after Thatcher’s privatisation. It is very well worth watching.

Scriptonite’s article is at http://scriptonitedaily.wordpress.com/2013/08/05/wealth-inequality-in-uk-now-equal-to-nigeria-un-report/.

Adam Curtis’ The Trap: How We Lost Our Dreams of Freedom is shown here

Tags: Adam Curtis, Conservatives, Hungary, Inequality of Wealth, Korea, Libertarianism, Maggie Thatcher, Neo-Liberalism, Nigeria, Scriptonite, tony blair, United Nations