SO478: Social Scientific Analysis of Inequalities

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These are my notes for SO478 at the London School of Economics for the 2017-2018 school year. I took this module as part of the one-year Inequalities and Social Science MSc program.

The usual disclaimer: all notes are my personal impressions and do not necessarily reflect the view of the lecturer.

This is the core module for my masters program and is taught by a variety of different lecturers associated with the International Inequalities Institute. My seminars are run by Professor Mike Savage in the Department of Sociology at LSE.

Assessments

50% 8-hour take-home exam, featuring 2 unseen questions. I wrote about why austerity is bad (mark: 76) and why the "knowledge economy" is a scam (mark: 77)
25% poster presentation (group project) on technology & inequality. Can't be bothered to upload it atm
25% 3,000 word essay responding to one of several predetermined prompts. I wrote about how inequality is changing in the 21st century (mark: 80)

Lecture notes

Introduction - week 1

Reading

What’s wrong with inequality? – The Conversation

In short: we should maximise the well-being of the least well off, just in case that happens to be us one day (mentions Rawls’ theory of justice). We do need some (I assume material?) incentives to ensure that people do the difficult jobs, but they should not result in unmanageable inequalities. The main thing to realise is that inequality can prevent people from making full use of their opportunities, which results in inefficiency. In that vein, a slightly higher rate of growth should not be enough to justify too much inequality.

Defending the One Percent by N. Gregory Mankiw

I hadn’t actually heard of Mankiw before, so I came to the paper with pretty much a blank slate in terms of preconceived notions, and I left absolutely hating it. Reading this paper was a very infuriating experience. Basically, this guy is an economist at Harvard who also happens to have very strongly conservative views, which are extremely evident in this paper. Like the paper is covered in the stains of his centre-right ideology and fetish for the profit motive. I have much worse things to say about the paper but I’ll spare you the bulk of them. I took copious notes while reading this and considered trying to type them up, but I think that would make me too angry. I can’t fight him on his own turf (i.e., by addressing his arguments from an economic angle) because I’d have to first accept his axioms about what is “good” and “fair”, and I don’t.

Instead, I’ll just say that the paper completely ignores the role that cultural hegemony plays in maintaining capitalist realism, and thus ignores the possibility that things can change. I believe it is possible for us to transition to a culture where the profit motive is disregarded and we don’t value things solely based on financial considerations; in fact, we’re already there in some small ways. The Mammon-worshipping world that serves as the context for his arguments not only fails to adequately describe our world today, it is also not the world most of want to live in, and, with any luck, we’ll figure out how to build a much better one, with or without the assistance of Dr. Mankiw.

The 4 biggest reasons why inequality is bad for society – ideas.ted.com

A much more relaxing read. 1) Wealthy people have power over the poor, which undermines their personal liberty; 2) Political institutions are weakened; 3) Inefficiency stemming from intergenerational inequality which itself suppresses equality of opportunity; 4) Paves the way for a legitimation crisis (the article doesn’t use that specific phrase but it’s a nice Habermasian way of putting it).

Inequality by Anthony B. Atkinson (chapters 1-2)

I’ve read this book before (and saved some passages I found interesting in Bookmarker) but it’s been a while so I figured I’d re-read the first two chapters to refresh my memory. The book is a little too light on the mechanics of capitalism for my liking, but he does a good job of talking about the softer economic and moral arguments against inequality (both of outcome and of opportunity): it prevents merit from being fully realised, and thus destroys social cohesion. He provides a good overview of various methodological approaches to measuring inequality and the caveats associated with each.

Global Inequality by Branko Milanović (chapter 1)

Compared to the Atkinson book above, I thought Milanović went deeper into the larger economic factors that affect inequality, which I appreciated. He talks about neoliberalism and how, as a result, the biggest benefactors of globalisation have been the rich—not necessarily because of anything inherent to globalisation, but because it has been manipulated to protect the interests of the ruling class. Some interesting points on the effects of the financial crisis on the top 1% (many of whom lost money during the crisis but have since managed to gain it all back, roughly speaking) and the consequent rise in global asset prices.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty (chapter 5)

The book that everyone who wants to seem erudite has on their bookshelf but that no one has read. (I haven’t read it either.) Covers the economic approach to inequality—the political elements are, for the most part, neglected in favour of expounding on the structural economic features that can lead to greater inequality. This chapter is primarily is about the capital/income ratio (which Piketty defines as β=s/g, savings over growth). In the golden age years, income was growing faster than wealth, but around the mid-70’s, wealth start to outpace income growth and so it began to pile up, which had the predictable consequence of reversing inequality trends. This chapter is a lot more technical and focused than the other readings (which makes sense, considering it’s a 600+ page book). Some topics covered: asset bubbles, dividends being taxed more than capital gains (providing an incentive to reinvest), foreign asset ownership, and financialization (which he defines by the value of assets rising more than net wealth).

Lecture

Given by Professor John Hills from the Department of Social Policy at LSE.

Various graphs showing economic inequality from different perspectives (mostly income, but a few for wealth). We all already know most of these stats, all of which support a terrifying narrative: that the top 1% own a staggering amount of wealth (and that share is increasing). Hence why we’re all here.

Some topics covered:

Data usually comes from either surveys (which are very subjective and don’t always get answered by the people you want to measure) or income tax data (which can be falsified)
Adjusting for household size: lots of different ways, each with pros and cons. Important because inequality figures vary dramatically depending on whether you assume household income is shared equally or not
Pen’s parade: imagine if people’s heights were scaled to their income
90:10 ratio, for pre-tax income percentiles
Gini coefficient: area below y=x and above Lorenz curve; the problem is that it treats poor-middle disparities the same as middle-rich disparities
when conducting inequality research, you’re always working with out-of-date data, so you have to be careful about using the present tense to describe trends. case in point: Labour’s Blue Book, showing that inequality fell from 1947-1974, was published in 1974; shortly after that, inequality went way up (hello neoliberalism)
global stats are tricky to unpack because they combine multiple, often countervailing trends (e.g., the rise of China’s middle class)
wealth is substantially more unequal than income, for obvious ROI-related reasons

Seminar

For the seminar, we were arbitrarily divided into two groups to facilitate a debate on inequality. I was put in the “inequality is good” camp, and my main contribution consisted of putting my Extremely Capitalist hat on and taking that approach to its logical conclusion. To wit—inequality is good because we need some level of (economic) inequality to enable capitalism to function. We need a reserve army of labour to discipline labour. We need people who are unemployed, or underemployed, in order to keep the system politically stable: workers need to know that there are myriad others who would be happy to take their job should they ever slack off. If we want to ensure that people continue to go to jobs they hate, we have to give them something to fear, in the spectre of homelessness and starvation. They need to remain willing slaves of capital. Any attempts at alleviating inequality through making poverty less brutal are bad for capitalism–anything that might empower labour is bad for capital, and so capitalism itself is undermined. And we should make capitalism the telos of our existence.

This is an argument that I have never heard anyone seriously make but that appears to drive a lot of policy decisions, if only subconsciously. To clarify, I think it’s a stupid argument, with the last line being the crux of my proof by contradiction—the axiom that we should put capitalism first, that we should enshrine a system we have constructed over the very thing that system was constructed to serve, is clearly patently absurd. But it’s (imo) at the root of a lot of defenses of the economic system as it is now, so I think its important to understand.

I was then asked, very sensibly, what I thought of the fact that capitalism is destroying our planet. To which I replied: well, who really cares, we can just invest in space travel and move on to a new planet. I call this the Elon Musk approach to capitalist apologetics.

Some other arguments in favour of inequality included: it drives innovation and growth (a more palatable version of my point); it’s part of human nature and so there’s no a priori reason we need to get rid of it; it’s only fair that people be materially rewarded according to their contributions. The arguments on the other side came down to either the practical (too much of it results in inefficiency or loss of social cohesion) or the moral (appealing to the intrinsic human right to self-determination or principles of equality).

It was a fun exercise, but it soon became clear that the two sides were focused on two very different questions: the “inequality is good” people seized on the downsides of trying to eradicate inequality, whereas the “inequality is bad” people extolled the virtues of reducing inequality. Which, I think, sums up the standard arguments for and against inequality. Those who don’t like the idea of reducing it tend to characterise their opponents as trying to get rid of it entirely, whereas many of them would probably be happy with just a little less of it. Of course, this raises the question of whether there is an acceptable level of inequality, and how you could either define or collectively decide on it. I don’t know. Personally, I like to think of absolute equality as this asymptote we know we’ll never reach but should still keep moving towards. Kind of like how you know that your house will never be completely clean but that doesn’t mean you should stop cleaning it.

If I were on the “inequality is bad” side, but still wanted to frame my argument in economic terms in order to appeal to those who don’t care about inequality for moral reasons, I would take the obverse of my argument from before. Namely: if we want to maintain the legitimacy of capitalism, we need to prevent it from undermining itself via its internal contradictions. Capitalist ideology simultaneously impugns the idea of public services and taking care of the weakest members of society while still benefiting from it, in the provision of willing workers and consumers. All the ostensibly anti-inequality redistribution that goes on now is actually just propping up the capitalist system as such—instead of actively reducing inequality, its goal is to keep it at a safe level such that capitalism can continue along its rails. Those who are pro-capitalism but anti-inequality reduction are suffering from a level of cognitive dissonance: they clearly do not understand the long-term consequences of their actions, not just in terms of infringing on people’s quality of life but in terms of (possibly irreparably) damaging the structure of capitalism as a whole. If you make things bad enough, eventually people will prefer a violent revolution or even just death to the way things are, and if you’re not actively trying to make things better, you are walking a very dangerous tightrope, simply because the tides of capitalism are constantly pushing us toward the shore of greater inequality. So there needs to be a very delicate balance in terms of inequality for capitalism to survive, and the current state of inequality has us in danger of falling off the tightrope. (The real question is whether falling off the tightrope now—by means of pushing inequality to its extreme—is better in the long run if it brings up the social upheaval needed to radically transform the system. I’m not sure how I feel about that yet, but I do know that as a mortal being I find it hard to think about “the long run” when I know that I probably won’t be around to see what happens.)

In the end, I think my ideological opposition to inequality comes from wanting to look at the system from first principles: what is the economy for? What do we want it to accomplish, and how much has the current iteration of it drifted from that original purpose? After all, all the systems (economic and otherwise) that we’ve built are just an attempt at figuring out the best way for us to live our fleeting lives while peacefully coexisting with each other. They are means to an end, not an end in themselves. We would do well to remember that more often.

Global inequalities - week 2

Readings

Income inequality in the developing world by Martin Ravallion

Summary: income inequality in developing world less than 30 years ago, but this is mostly due to falling inequality between countries (as those on the bottom, esp China, catch up) whereas inequality within countries is slowly rising (though flat since 2000).

since the start of developmental economics in the 50s, inequality was seen as unavoidable, a secondary concern to growth; it was feared that to reduce inequality was to reduce growth (Rawls’ difference principle was often used to justify this POV)
overall inequality measures in the developing world usually pool together every single person, ignoring country boundaries (and thus obviously obscuring different trends)
mean-log deviation: a scale-invariant measure of inequality (like all relative inequality measures)
- log(mean income/household income per person), then take the mean of that
- unlike Gini coefficient, it’s linearly decomposable by population subgroups (e.g., rural vs urban, or North vs South, or whatever you want to measure)—you can add the subgroup MLD values together to get the overall MLD value
- measured with household surveys (and the obvious caveats apply there)
- in 2010, the overall developing world MLD was 0.578
  - to illustrate what this means: if we had 3 people, one had an income of $1 and one had an income of $2, the third would need an income of over $12
we usually focus on relative inequality, but absolute inequality is also important
- recent perceptions of rising inequality are likely because we think in terms of absolute inequality, even if we measure in terms of relative
- these are just different value judgments, one is not necessarily better than the other
- for an absolute inequality measure, we need translation invariance
- to illustrate the difference between abs/rel: if we find that growth does not change the share of income going to the poor, this does not mean an equal distribution of the income gains … given existing inequality, the rich will of course have greater absolute income gains
  - made-up example for my own edification: if the bottom 50% gets 10% of the income, and growth means that instead of $100 in total national income it’s now $120, then, assuming unchanging relative inequality, the bottom 50% will get $12 instead of $10, whereas the top 50% get $108 instead of $90
  - so the wealthy benefit a LOT more from growth unless relative inequality decreases substantially
  - and clearly this has major implications for the economy … scary

Who are the Global Top 1% by Sudhir Anand and Paul Segal

study that uses a combination of survey and tax data to examine the global top 1% from 1988 to 2012
- primarily from advanced economies (85%) but that percentage is falling
- using wealth trackers by Forbes, Credit Suisse
unlike the “global middle class”, the global rich are closer to constituting a class in themselves: converging culturally (somewhat), travelling to the same places, going to the same events (Davos), sharing financial knowledge
the 2012 threshold: $50k USD per capita in household income (which seems exceptionally low to me—it’s right around the median US household income—but I guess that’s just false consciousness on my part)
- Brazil has 1.5% of its population in the top 1%, which is the most of any developing country; in the developed world, it’s usually 4-8%
for the global top 10%, the threshold is $15k USD per capita in household income (60% of the US and 70% of Switzerland are in here)
there is no evidence that people at the economic bottom within a country benefit from their compatriots getting into the top 1% …
- equivalently, having more women or minorities joining the elite class will not fix things; it will not embolden rather than challenge the power structure
purchasing power parity adjustments for the global top 1% (which is, for the most part, a jetsetting class) is tricky—which country’s rates of PPP do you adjust with?
thresholds change if you use wealth instead of income (per adult):
- $710k USD per adult for the top 1% by household (wow)
- in 2012, US citizens comprised 36% of the global top 1% by wealth; China 3%, and India 0.5%
most income in the top 1% comes from salary/labour rather than capital gains (senior professionals, business owners: “supermanagers”)
- tend to be senior executives who have more in common with each other than with their fellow countrymen

Global Income Distribution by Christoph Lakner and Branko Milanovic

Published in the The World Bank Economic Review. I have my own feelings on the World Bank but I’ll try to leave them aside when writing this review.

surveys of household income in the developing world, 1988-2012
- surveys over tax record data because it’s too sparse and unreliable in developing countries
- still, these surveys have a tendency to underestimate inequality
China as an outlier that skews overall stats, due to its huge population and unusual economic history: obviously its top incomes are quite high, but still a large middle class was lifted out of poverty

Lecture

Given by Dr Sudhir Anand, Professor of Economics at Oxford University, who co-authored one of the papers above. The lecture he delivered is primarily a summary of that paper.

there’s a common perception (partly pioneered by the financial crisis & resultant Occupy-type movements) that economic growth and globalisation have resulted in higher levels of inequality, hence the reason we study it
- recent announcement by the World Economic Forum that severe income inequality is a big problem (or, as the New York Times put, it “Davos Elite Fret About Inequality Over Vintage Wine and Canapés”)
- some more stuff from people who helped to create the situation we’re in now:
  - Christine Lagarde: “Excessive inequality is corrosive to growth; it is corrosive to society.”
  - Credit Suisse has done lots of research into wealth inequality, top 1%
wealth inequality is obviously higher than for income
- at the upper end, we have stats for billionaires; more and more are coming from developing countries recently (which is, let’s just say, probably not great for those at the bottom in those countries)
- at the lower end, of course, we have lots of people living in extreme poverty (usually defined as around a dollar a day—$1.25 USD as of 2008, as defined by the World Bank). incidentally, the fact that we define it in terms of a dollar amount per day (as opposed to access to particular services) speaks to the completeness with which capitalist realism and the hegemony of free markets have permeated our lives and transformed the way we think
why do we care about global inequality?
- some people (mostly living in rich countries) seem to think that justice should stop at country borders, as if these arbitrary and artificial constructs should delimit the boundaries of our ethical concerns
- others recognise that reducing poverty globally should be a concern if we are to care about poverty at all
- plus there’s the inconvenient truth that rich countries have benefited from globalisation at the expense of poor countries
  - consider the net transfers of wealth FROM the developing world TO the developed world throughout history, from the era of colonialism to the era of the Washington Consensus (Jason Hickel, in LSE’s anthropology dept, has written an excellent post on this for The Guardian)
  - a variety of international social arrangements help preserve the dominance of already-developed countries (think trade agreements, environmental concerns, attitudes toward debt)
  - hence the developed world has a moral responsibility to fix things (per Amartya Sen’s The Idea of Justice)
for a thorough analysis, we’ll need to separate out inequalities within countries and inequalities between countries (can’t just lump them all into one)

Different methodological approaches

Concept 0: between countries, using national income as the ranking variable and either the USD or PPP-adjusted dollars as the numéraire
Concept 1: between countries, using national income per capita as the ranking variable and PPP$
Concept 2: between individuals, using national income per capita as the ranking variable and PPP$
Concept 3: between individuals, using actual household income per capita as the ranking variable and PPP$

The reason we care about national income on its own (not just per capita) is because it has some influence on a country’s authority and power when negotiating trade agreements and the like.

On PPP adjustments: obviously problematic in the sense of reducing a multidimensional vector to a scalar. Takes a typical “basket of goods” but of course the definition of that is subjective and, in the end, politically motivated (whether consciously or not). The same problem that arises when thinking about inflation.

On scaling household size: tricky topic with lots of different approaches and factors to consider (economies of scale, varying consumption patterns, cultural norms, etc). No real way to equalise across households so most research just makes assumptions about what a “household” means and isn’t too worried about how that aligns with reality.

China is an equalising force for concepts 1-3, but disequalising for concept 0 (because its national income is so high, and growing; but of course its national income per capita is still quite low).

For the paper, they looked at three different indices: Gini, MLD (also known as Theil L) and Theil T. The latter two are additively decomposable (not just into two components, but into any number, with weights). Incidentally, you can use variance as a measure of inequality; it’s just going to be an absolute measure, not a relative one.

Global Gini right now is 0.70,, which is much higher than in any individual country (speaks to how high inter-country inequality is right now).

Seminar

This was the first official seminar with our permanent seminar groups (last week was fairly ad-hoc). Focused on introductions (who we are, where we’re from, and some thoughts on inequality within our own countries). I talked about China (since Canada was taken) and its very unique position within the global inequality hierarchy: on one level, it’s been responsible for reducing worldwide income inequality via the lifting of such a large number of people out of poverty, but on another level income inequality is still staggeringly high. The rural-urban gap (which is responsible for, by some estimates, 10% of economic inequality within the country) is especially worrying, and I could see its consequences when I was living in Beijing—I, along with most of my international school friends, had various housekeepers during my time there, and they tended to be young women from rural areas (mostly Sichuan in my case) who gave up pretty much all their free time to live in someone else’s house and take care of the household while being paid a pittance. Which says something about their economic and social prospects where they came from. Among mainland citizens, 1% of the population controls 1/3 of all the wealth, which is quite scary.

Another thing to consider with China is its tumultuous recent history. During the Great Leap Forward, economic inequality was presumably lower, but a lot of people (especially my parents’ generation) were incredibly poor … It’s kind of obvious, but still deserves to be said: we can’t focus just on inequality measures when trying to understand the health of an economy. Any discussion of inequality ought to be accompanied by its proper geopolitical context, not to mention the level of economic development.

Some interesting statistics on inequality brought up by the other students:

South Africa: 60% of income owned by top 10%; worse than most countries, and growing (even since 2008)
- huge racial element to this of course
- 30/55 million people live in poverty
- unemployment at either 28% or 36% with the expanded definition (which includes those who are no longer looking for work)
- under the age of 35, unemployment is at 70%
- poverty declining due to social assistance grants
- only 7 million people actually earn enough to pay income tax
- the ratio of police:citizens is a great way to look at wealth disparities between cities: one wealthy, predominantly white town is 38:1 with very little crime, whereas a poor, predominantly black town will be closer to 1:1400 (with an exceptionally higher crime rate)
Sweden: has been quite equal for a while, but inequality is (slowly) rising lately
- the interesting thing about Sweden is that their economy was primarily agricultural for a while, but after some massive famines a lot of their population emigrated to the US
- as a result, Sweden ended up creating a state modeled after the American one at the time
- they never had a neoliberal drive à la Reagan/Thatcher so maybe that explains why things are so good now
Ireland: most unequal in the EU pre-tax, but around average post-tax
- has about 6 billionaires on Forbes’ list, several of whom appear to be residents for tax purposes …
- recent poll proposing a tax bracket of 60% for incomes of 100k EUR; 60%+ in favour (awesome)
London: most unequal part of the UK, driven by the wealth of the richest rather than the poverty of the poorest (the poor in London are generally doing better than elsewhere)
- 90:10 ratio of 4:1. income fell post-crash, at a roughly similar level across the board (thus preserving the ratio)
- most wealth in the form of property
- housing crisis has been happening for ages but only really reported about since 2010 (when it started affecting journalists, presumably)
- the construction of social housing has dropped 90% since 2010; instead, we have the cruelly-named “affordable” housing (usually 80% of local market rent which is still ridiculously high)

Global inequalities and migration - week 3

Readings

Towards a new politics of migration? by Bridget Anderson

Written as a response to Stephen Castle’s 2004 paper Migration Policies Fail, in the context of the EU migration crisis of 2015. I thought this paper was excellent.

in short: migration policies fail because they are too shallow—they focus on numbers (symptoms!) rather than the root causes of migration
so much money is spent on border technology, checks/raids, etc (symptoms)
ofc the private sector manages to extract lots of profit from migration (and policies combatting it) in the meantime
in the UK, esp among the working class, migrants can be seen as symbolic of a weakened nation state (and thus stronger business, transnational organisation interests)
- Brexit = political success of a mission to scapegoat migrants
Philip Hammond, UK Foreign Sec in 2010, quoted as saying that Africans come to the UK because life is better here
- Anderson correctly points out that the reason life is better in the UK is partly due to resource extraction, pillaging, profits from foreign assets, etc (decolonialisation in name only)
- goods are cheap in the North at the expense of the South
anti-migrant rhetoric doesn’t see migration as a structural problem, but rather as the choice of individual migrants (who then pose a threat to the national working class)
- you also see complaints from “old” migrants about “new migrants”, which has the effect of weakening solidarity and fostering divisions between potential allies :(
we have to find a way to create solidarity between citizens and non-citizens, instead of dividing based on the perceived scarcity of material goods

Global Inequality by Branko Milanović (chapter 3)

On inequality among countries. basically the same as the paper from last week (mostly methodology)

we can separate out class-based inequalities from location-based inequalities (at least for the decomposable measures), weighted by population
1820s: 20% location, 80% class; by the mid-20th century, reversed (due to colonialism, mostly)
- citing Bukharin: Second International supported WWI partly because colonial labour resulted in a better life for European workers (due to the huge amount of inter-country inequality)
now: citizenship premium is very high which (along with, of course, many other factors) undermines the idea that capitalism allocates according to based on “merit” (since it so clearly relies on exogenous factors)
- citizenship premium for the US relative to Congo (DRC or ROC?) is 93x; for Sweden to Congo, it’s 71x; for Brazil, 13x; for Yemen, 3x (average)
- if we instead look at the lowest decile: Sweden is 104x, Brazil 9x
- top decile: Sweden 46x, Brazil 17x (which aligns with what we’d expect)
we’d expect this to have an impact on migration patterns
- egalitarian countries should expect more unskilled labour (if people made were informed about relative income distributions and made decisions solely on the basis of that …)
- ofc, to combat that, developed countries tend to have lots of policies in place to prevent unskilled immigrants from arriving—instead, they tend to get more skilled immigrants (which results in a really pernicious brain drain problem in their country of origin)
the problem with a lot of our economic tools is that they were developed in an era when the nation-state ruled supreme and don’t take into account the larger global context
- for example: we rarely think of extending the concept of “equality of opportunity” beyond the confines of the nation-state
- but now we need to consider migration, and capital flight, etc
- problems with the Coase Theorem, which Milanovic describes as stating “that we can separate matters of economic efficiency from matters of distributional justice, essentially by relegating the latter to an area outside economic policy”
  - I need to understand the theorem a bit more but it seems like Coase specified various conditions that need to hold for the theorem to apply, and none of these conditions hold in the real world, which he acknowledged? so idk what the point of this theorem is except as a demonstration of how irrelevant a lot of economics work is
- Q: should we even care about global inequality of opportunity?
  - Rawls said no, focus on rational self-determination, something something moral hazard (assuming citizens choose the fate of their own country)
  - apparently he thought intergenerational wealth was bad, but nationally-acquired advantages were good??? wtf
tensions of migration
- citizens can usually (at least theoretically) leave their own country, but may not always be able to enter another
- globalisation means free movement of factors of production, not of labour
- the right of individuals to make free economic decisions to maximise personal income vs global barriers preventing this
- on the concept of development, which usually refers to increasing wages within a country, without acknowledging the possibility of migration (which could have the effect of increasing wages for those from a particular country)
230m migrants in the world today (or 3% of pop) if we define it as people living in a country where they were not born
- ofc, about 10% of this is attributable to the breakup of the Soviet Union
- 700m (10%, or 13% of adults) WANT to become migrants (estimate I guess)
Milanovic’s proposals:
- higher taxes for migrants (incl on remittances to “home” countries)
- basically he thinks migrants shouldn’t be treated equally under the law, at least for a while (we should codify discrimination rather than allowing it to exist in the shadows)
- he presents essentially two opens: allow open migration but limit the flow, or, open up borders but add legal discrimination to discourage excessive migration

Strategic Gendering by Saskia Sassen

on the invisible work of women in households
sex-trafficking
feminine industries (esp garments) in developing countries usually result in less worker empowerment, unions
more women are entering workplace as professionals which results in the “disappearing wife”
“immigrant women” as an “offshore proletariat”

Lecture

Mostly facts and figures about migration. This lecture was given by Diane Perrons, Professor of Economic Geography and Gender Studies at LSE.

graph from Milanovic showing country ventiles, Denmark vs Tanzania
- poorest 5% in Denmark are usually richer than the top 5% in Africa, PPP-adjusted
- obviously this illustrates the temptation to try to move away
migrants are 48% female, with men more likely to be economic migrants (as opposed to due to catastrophe): 88% for M vs 44% for F
if we look at migration between North and South:
- South-South: 37%
- North-North: 35%
- South-North: 23%
- North-South: 5$
almost 20% of migrants live in the top 20 largest cities
economic theories of migration:
- neoclassical perspective: an individual response to differential wage rates that results in an equilibrating process
  - free movement of factors of production leads to equilibrium
  - factor flows respond to prices
  - labour goes from low to high wages (which is ofc not possible in practice except in a rare few cases)
  - capital goes from low to high returns
- alternative theories: it’s a disequilibrating process (inequality gets worse)
  - increasing returns to capital
  - colonial legacies (how does this fit in?)
  - brain drain
on NAFTA: the primary goal was to give US corporations access to the Mexican market (as a place to dump goods)
- this drove out local producers which reduced the supply of jobs locally
- which then resulted in increased migration to the US
a more realistic economic theory of migration would include the following:
- households may make decisions collectively (not always about individuals)
- wage differentials are not necessary (like in my case)
- some members of the household may remain behind if necessary
- markets other than that of labour are also important
- the shape of the income distribution & your position in it are also important (it’s not just the raw, PPP-adjusted income)
- access to social services, geographical features, political stability, etc
Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems theory is brought up! I’m a huge fan of Wallerstein and have been meaning his World-Systems Analysis for a while
- on the formation of the capitalist world market
- labour flows in the opposite direction to capital
- follows colonial legacies
- reinforces uneven development
- thus policies should focus on international capital/goods flow
Saskia Sassen: remittances from migrant workers often exceed official development aid (for developing countries)
- largest recipients of remittances: India and China (just because of population, not per capita)
- in terms of GDP, it’s Kyrgyzstan, then nepal
the UN is working on a Global Compact on Migration for 2018
- one of the action clauses is to reduce inequality within and between countries lol yes sounds good
- sub-clause: facilitate orderly migration & reduce transaction costs to 3% (right now it can be as high as 7%—I think this includes costs of visas/transportation as well as remittances, relative to salary?)
domestic work as a gendered form of migration: “global care chain” (term defined by Arlie Hochschild), where the children of a Filipina nanny in the US are taken care of by an even poorer woman
- results in the erosion of the socioeconomic commons in the South
- these workers are strategically necessary for the global city to function
- really, they’re a private means of coping with the global wage gap (individual solution to a structural problem)
in the EU, the country with the highest proportion of non-nationals is Luxembourg (but that’s just Eurocrats); most countries have very few
- migrants tend to be disadvantaged, but long-term unemployment stats are lower than those for native-born
- also second generation tends to do quite a bit better

Seminar

Discussing Milanovic’s proposal on migration. My own take is that by the point you’re talking about migration in terms of numbers and the policies of an individual nation-state, you’ve already made a mistake. You’re already on the wrong level. It’s equivalent to trying to solve climate change by buying slightly more energy-efficient lightbulbs: an individual (in this case, national) response to a structural problem. What we need is a fundamental rethinking of the global economic system and its inequalities; otherwise, migration will keep happening. Setting quotas or imposing penalties or closing borders is addressing the symptoms, and we can’t let discourse on migration be limited to that, otherwise it’ll distract us from the real problem: global inequality.

(My take is probably heavily inspired by a book that I happened to read just a few days prior to the seminar: Slavoj Žižek’s Against the Double Blackmail.)

Someone else brought up an interesting point about the impact of the automation of labour on migration: as more and more jobs go away (at least in poorer countries), there’s more impetus to move to where the jobs still are.

Inequality dynamics in developing nations since 1980 - week 4

Readings

Global Inequality by Branko Milanović (chapter 2)

the Kuznets curve (which theorised that inequality would drop after a certain high point, somewhat parabolically) and how it stopped aligning with reality since the 1980s
- many tried to alter the theory in order to preserve its relevance, for example by adding in the idea of the technological/skills gap in laboour
then Piketty’s capital-income ratio theory came along and, effectively, displaced Kuznets’
- he says: inequality will continue to rise unless we deliberately dampen it via political mechanisms, or some Act of God has the same effect (it’s just a natural component of how capitalism works)
- he views the Golden Ages as a special, exceptional time (result of the war, temporary existence of competing economic systems, etc)
- otoh, Piketty’s theory doesn’t really explain why inequality rose in the 18th/19th centuries?
  - my thought: he kind of does? need to revisit this
Milanovic’s proposal: a modified theory of the Kuznets curve explains it
- we have instead a wave/cycle that periodically moves up and down
- basically you need to ensure people don’t die of starvation/etc in order to keep society functioning
- so there is thus a ceiling on inequality levels (at least for a particular rate of growth)
- in pre-industrial eras, when mean income is close to subsistence levels, there isn’t much room for inequality to rise (because growth is never going to be high enough to compensate without mass death)
- then, the systemic forces of capitalism that (acc to Piketty) push toward higher inequality don’t really exist due to the lack of institutions to support them
- otoh, when mean income rises, so does the possibility of rising inequality
decline of ineq in the 20th century
- Kuznets says: economic forces (urbanisation, education, rising taxes, etc)
- Piketty says: political forces, lots of capital destroyed due to war so capital-income ratio was lower, more pro-labour policies due to war & the establishment of socialism elsewhere
- Milanovic says: we should endogenise the factors that Piketty treats as exogenous (which I can get on board with)
  - we can see the world wars as the inevitable result of imperialist competition (high inequality means domestic demand is not sufficient, thus you need colonial markets)
  - (here he cites Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin’s book on Imperialism, etc … kinda cool)
  - we should embed this explanation within our conceptualising of the Kuznets wave
  - maldistribution of consumption power prevents the sufficient absorption of capital & commodities
  - thus we can see high inequality as resulting in an unstable state that can generate (in an aleatory, unpredictable way) processes like war, revolution to “fix” things
  - he briefly mentions that excessive “leveling” is inimical to growth and cites the Soviet Union as an example
    - I don’t think this is a good example—the problems with the Soviet Union were myriad and to blame its failures on “excessive leveling” is silly
    - after all, the whole reason the revolution occurred in the first place was because things were so bad
    - I forget who says this but there’s this famous quote about the great tragedy of socialism: it’s most likely to be attempted in the places where it’s least likely to suceed
what’s driving up inequality today?
- technological revolution resulting in lots of rents being levied (mostly in the form of intellectual rather than physical property)
- more and more service jobs (with lower wages)
- the underlying capital-income ratio explanation
- we also have to consider trends with potentially opposing effects when it comes to global inequality: offshoring moves up the incomes of the poorest in the South, but slows the growth of the middle classes in the North
- incidentally, he mentions Robert Allen’s argument (from Technology and the Great Divergence (PDF) that technological innovation is most likely to occur when wages are high and thus firms have an incentive to try and automate jobs
some forces that could decrease inequality:
- politically: higher taxation (currently unlikely to be implemented on a large scale, due to capital mobility, political disenfranchisement, false consciousness, and of course the influence of $ in politics)
- rising supply of highly-skilled workers (the new guard class, in other words)
- rents resulting from the technological revolution could dissipate as prices fall and competition grows (this has happened historically)
- global income convergence as China, India catch up
- technology could increase the productivity (and I guess bargaining power? since it’s not like income is directly tied to productivity by any means) of low-skilled workers (though this is historically unlikely)

Falling Inequality in Latin America by Giovanni Andrea Cornia (chapters 1, 3)

No notes yet.

Lecture

This lecture was given by Rebecca Simson of the International Inequalities Institute.

The project

working on a project to look at inequality beyond the usual culprits of the developed nations
- instead: smaller/developing nations that have often bucked trends
- goal is to understand the extent of political agency in combatting inequality on a national level
- our formative (non-assessed) essays will feed into this project
- we’ll need to go through the secondary literature in an attempt to understand the main drivers (and regional dynamics) of within-nation inequality trends since 1980s
if we just look at the top 1% share of income (Piketty et al), we find that we’re missing data for many developing nations
- in order to hone in on those nations, we’ll need to look at change in Gini instead (much greater coverage)
- trends are not uniform: lots of nations with high inequality increases next to those with high inequality decreases
- lots of factors that could explain: differences in level of economic growth; effects of localised war or catastrophes

What drives decreases in inequality?

first, we’ll have to address the sort of elephant in the room: the Kuznets curve (1955)
- predicts that inequality will increase initially as a nation industrialises (as an inevitable result of higher national income)
- but eventually (theoretically) as you run out of labour in rural areas, AND as the political situation changes (stronger labour unions and labour-friendly institutions/policies) then inequality should drop
an alternative explanation: there’s a race between education and technology, and those who get ahead in that race will receive higher incomes, thus driving inequality (lots of overlap between this lecture and GV4D4 week 3)
another theory, outlined by Walter Scheidel in his book The Great Leveler
- on violence/catastrophe as the primary driver of inequality decrease
- warfare, revolution, state collapse, plague, etc
Milanovic’s approach builds on the Kuznets curve concept, but instead he posits Kuznets waves/cycle
- due to technological revolutions, we can have multiple Kuznets curves
- related to Kondratiev waves perhaps? not sure
on globalisation and its limits to domestic policy (does it constrain its effectiveness?)
- trade results in equialising of wages globally (thus lower wages in the West + deindustrialisation)
- opening up of capital flows post-Bretton Woods makes it hard to tax capital
- global markets for highly skilled workers (and associated immigration policies) results in convergence of exec pay (rising)
distinctions to keep in mind
- economic / political
- proximate / underlying
- malign / benign
- global / domestic
recall the historical context of Kuznets
- his theory was formulated during the Cold War, and you can kind of see it as capitalist propaganda—the whole point is to convince developing nations to ignore the spectre of Communism & instead have faith that their capitalist strategy will work out fine

Inequality decline in Latin America since 2000

economic proximate causes
- strong growth, partly due to improved terms of trade (higher wages, less unemployment, more $ to go around)
- demographic factors (fall in fertility ratio)
- falling skills premium (education catching up to technology)
- prudent fiscal policy (devalued currency to increase exports) … something, incidentally, that countries within the EMU are no longer able to do but should really be able to do
- rise in minimum wage + safety nets for the poorest
political factors
- democratic consolisation (i.e., democratic institutions improving over time)
- election of left-leaning governments (“pink tide”—I really need to read that Jacobin issue at some point)
we can see this recent decline in economic inequality as a backlash to the era of structural adjustment
- which ofc created stunning inequality and thus set the scene for sufficient resistance to neoliberalism/austerity
- now inequality is roughly back at 1980s levels, so we can say that Latin America as (overall) recovered from neoliberalism (acc to some metrics, anyway)
- but ofc the real question is what happens next?

Inequality trends in Asia since the 1980s

trends not so clear in Asia
- rising dramatically in China/Indonesia
- slowly rising in India but with spikes
- falling slightly but with wild oscillations in Thailand, Philippines, Camboadia
rising due to:
- shift from planned to more market-oriented economy
- industrial take-off (corresponding to the first half of the Kuznets curve)
- urban-rural and coastal-interior differences (hampered by policy restrictions on migration)
- Asian financial crisis of 1997 (currency speculation, esp of the Thai baht)

Inequality trends in Africa since the 1980s

overall, data quality is poor, no systemic trends
sub-Saharan Africa: democratisation -> more redistribution? also conflict-related capital destruction?
- the migration of elites elsewhere may have played a role in falling inequality (also more progressive post-war settlements)
- did structural adjustment reduce or increase inequality? obviously the IMF/WB like to think that liberalisation reduced it
  - rural producer incomes increased relative to urban wages, but this may have been accomplished by driving farmers to focus on cash crops as opposed to subsistence farming which means heavier exposure to the vagaries of the market in the long term
  - urban poor are poorer though
  - and highly-skilled workers make more, too
- to consider: why is inequality rising in South Africa post-apartheid? (maybe cus the larger structural issues were not addressed …)

On measurement

Kenya data comes primarily from a household budget survey
- surveyed only 10k households (0.2% of population) & was based on recall (i.e., asking people to estimate)
- also based on consumption not actually income (since not everyone has a steady income)
- some costs had to be imputed (rents, self-produced food)
the usual problems with Gini … can be in terms of consumption vs income (not always standardised), measuring errors, cleaning problems, sampling biases, etc
types of income inequality databases
- consistent (they go back to original data to clean & compare): PovCal, SEDLAC, LIS
- consolidated secondary source (may need adjustment): Milanovic’s All the ginis, WIID
- standardised Gini (they use regression techniques to clean/standardise for you): SWIId, GCIP (extrapolated)
data can sometimes be a distraction, though
- there will always be outliers, exceptions, measuring errors, etc
- you need to focus on the narrative and not get too hung up on the numbers
- can’t remember if this is something that was actually said in the lecture or just something I scribbled down myself but I stand by this sentiment
there’s the risk of data being manipulated or falsified by the producing body
- e.g., a corrupt govt that wants its inequality numbers to look better than they are can massage the data
- no data is pure!!

Some personal thoughts on neoliberalism

maybe at some point, initially, neoliberalism was implemented in good faith by people who genuinely believed that a small amount of damage in the short-term was necessary for a better standard of living for all in the long run
- but then it became reified, turned into an institution whose origins were forgotten
- and as time goes by and the policies (and the underlying world) naturally evolve, the institution begins to drift away from its original purpose
- the challenge now is to make people REALISE that, and then figure out how to readjust theories accordingly
a somewhat unrelated thought: economists have a tendency of behaving in a way that’s almost Marxian
- in the process of interpreting the world (by introducing their own economic theories), they can end up changing it
  - I mean basically any successful economist has changed the world in some way (either in the direction of their theory or not)
  - think the Kuznets curve, or Keynesian fiscal policy, or the Chicago school theories
  - so sometimes they end up being self-fulfilling prophecies, if the economist does a good enough job of convincing people

Seminar

(I didn’t take great notes here so these are more scattered than usual. Apologies.)

codependency of neoliberalism & technological change—they feed back into each other
on secular trends in rising inequality: sometimes they’re just an extension of existing race/class inequalities
Q: is the recent tech revolution just another industrial revolution that will soon fix itself inequality-wise?
- my take: no, due to its way of shrinking markets (Solow’s paradox), political attempts to close the field to outsiders (think “meritocracy”)
- plus the potential of post-scarcity economics means that we may be better off with an accelerationist approach rather than hoping tech will magically sort the economy out
- one common suggestion is to put in UBI or something similar to stabilise things but I personally think that’s a very conservative and misguided approach—instead, we need to radically transform the whole system
- Kuznets clearly never foresaw the potential that the tech industry brings (or at least it’s not codified in his theory) so we would do well to move away from it
- but yes anyway this is all just me spewing my own brand of extremely left-wing politics, pls talk to me if you want to know more
failures of Milanovic: he never really addresses legacies of colonialism/slavery
failures of Kuznets: doesn’t address barriers that may be erected for certain classes of people who want to enter the high-paying industries (in this case: tech)
regulatory capture allows elites to preserve inequality using political mechanisms (I forget the context of this being brought up but it’s a good term)
random thought I had: inequality discussions tend to be vulnerable to the shifting baseline problem
- we like to compare inequality stats to those taken in different regions, or at different points in time
- but really maybe we should be comparing to the more idealistic (but in some ways, more sensible) level of no inequality, and formulate our theories & plans based on that instead
on Piketty’s arg
- to add some nuance to Piketty’s theory: the actual level of r depends very much on your level of wealth (clearly not a constant for everyone) which exacerbates the effect of r-g in increasing inequality
- Kuznets never goes into the distinction between capital & income (which is the crux of Piketty’s arg)
- Piketty’s characterisation of Kuznets’ theory is a bit simplistic (as if Kuznets thought that a liberal economic policy w/o state intervention would magically fix things)
  - his real goal is to use Kuznets almost as a foil, so Piketty can suggest specific policy responses w/o having to actually declare a manifesto
recall that Ginis are usually focused on income, rather than capital (which we can define as “assets that can be sold”)
- though it’s important to remember that valuation of personal assets is often highly subjective (think Trump’s valuation of his own personal brand)
- Q: is capital or income inequality more important?
  - obvs neither tells the whole story
  - but the rate of return to capital is, at least, somewhat captured or encapsulated in the income inequality statistics (so you can see income inequality as a higher-order measurement), though they’re ofc interdependent
  - recall that income is used when applying for mortgages (though capital—in the form of a downpayment—is relevant too)
  - another aspect to consider: income is usually on the individual level, whereas capital is sometimes considered on the household level (esp for property), though this may be a fairly Eurocentric approach
  - when looking at intergenerational inequality, capital plays a larger role since it’s inherited
- personally, I’m kind of tired of looking at inequality statistics when we know that inequality is written into our very economic system so maybe we should think about more fundamental ways of transforming it but idk that’s just me
- problems with underreporting of income inequality: people earning a lot (esp in illegal ways) are less likely to fill out surveys, for one (not to mention: pay tax properly)—hard to accurately account for (impute) this
- another problem with Gini: treats different inequalities (middle vs top, bottom vs middle) as equally concerning when in practice this is not how we think about inequality
- doesn’t take public services into account (healthcare, education, rent, etc)
- ignores the role of growth (or other ideological factors) in changing attitudes towards inequality (if there’s enough growth, or if prices are falling, then you can keep people happy despite rampant inequality by allowing them to indulge in consumption)
- a pretty cheeky point was raised about inequality being a problem basically forever but economists only started caring fairly recently (when it started affecting the West I guess lol)
random thought I had: the term “political”, as used in popular discourse, is one of those that can almost function as an empty signifier
- in the sense that its meaning is heavily determined by your own imagination
- for example, whether all basic services (housing, healthcare, food, transport) are state-provided & free is, in some ways, a political choice
- but most of us wouldn’t see it that way because our semantic imaginations are limited by what we’ve seen in political history (and what we consider our current political/economic system to be in the same field as)
- so the idea of housing being free, or inheritance tax being 100%, or Greggs being a public good—they all seem fairly impossible in our current socioeconomic climate, and thus they don’t feel like political options
another random thought: it’ll be interesting to see the extent to which any country can actually reduce inequality within its own borders while also being embedded in the global capitalist order

Marx and beyond - week 5

My favourite week so far.

Readings

Class, Status, Party by Max Weber

Chapter 13 of Social Stratification: Class, Race, & Gender in Sociological Perspective. Detailing Weber’s three-component theory of stratification.

laws are upheld essentially with violence
distinction between social/economic orders (though they condition/react to each other)
classes not as communities but as bases for communal action (based on economic circumstances)
- communal action referring to the psychological component (actors “feel” like they belong together)
- he distinguishes it from societal action: “a rationally motivated adjustment of interests”
owners of property are favoured in the market (tends towards monopoly), whereas non-owners must sell labour or existing owned goods to subsist
- thus the core of all class distinctions comes down to property vs no property
- further distinction between rentiers vs entrepreneurs among the propertied
- class situation really comes down to market situation
- credit-debtor relations can also have an impact depending on power of creditor (as expressed through interest rates)
the communal action that brings forth class “situations” (struggle?) is action between different classes
central issue today: determination of the price of labour
- struggle between labour and their direct contacts in the workplace
- strange tension in that the shareholders/bankers/rentiers pocket most of the gains from labour and yet are not directly involved in the struggle (instead, their representatives in the workforce)
- this is what has allowed historical alliances of the bourgeoisie with the proletariat (1917, 1789, etc)
status groups: amorphous communities, not necessarily economically determined; more social & networked & lifestyle-based
- can include ethnic groups
- requires performance of rituals
- within a status group, overt pursuit of economic advantage is stigmatised
parties: acquiring social power for some cause, often material (can be personal, or more idealistic, or both)
- only arise from communities that already have some sort of order & staff
- their structure is ofc influenced by the structure of domination within the larger community (and outside world)
- my take: applicable to formal political parties but also less formal ones (e.g., Bolsheviks/Mensheviks pre-revolution)
summary of the three axes: class (mostly economic/material), status (prestige), and party (power to achieve political aims)
types of classes (defined by people “occupying the same class situation”)
- property class: based on differentiation of property holdings (rentiers, essentially)
- acquisition class: opportunity for exploiting services on the market
- social class: social interchange (esp intergenerationally)
ofc no two people are incompletely identical class situation
- Weber says that those who are unskilled, w/o property, and unemployed are in an identical situation but that’s a bit reductive because there are degrees of “unskilled”
on property classes
- on the power of propertied classes to monopolise
  - purchase of expensive goods
  - can change policies to make monopolies easier to attain
  - accumulation of property through unconsumed surpluses (basically because they have a lot of it)
  - savings-based capital accumulation opportunities & thus loans, etc
  - socially advantageous education
- classes that have negative property privilege
  - themselves property (slaves)
  - “outcasts”
  - debtor classes
  - those who just don’t own much
- middle classes: some property, but not enough that they don’t have to sell their labour I guess
on acquisition classes
- positively privileged: entrepreneurs (can easily acquire capital/trust based on status, skills, etc)
- negative: those with fewer skills (as seen in the eyes of the employer) and connections
- examples: working class; petty bourgeoisie; intelligentsia
- the gradation of skill (and its potential for creating divisions between different types of workers) is an important thing to consider re: working class unity
on status classes: can be based on occupation, birth, authority within a certain group, etc
- these classes develop most strongly in a market economy
market relationships as being generally open (contrast with, say, familial relationships, or guilds which are less open)
- often a dialectic between increasing membership (to expand influence) vs closing it off (to protect their existing members)

The Forms of Capital (scanned PDF) by Pierre Bourdieu

I quite liked this one, but it’s very dense and typically French prose that many will hate.

capital as accumulated labour (incorporated, embodied) -> appropriated by private actors to command further labour
some lovely lambasting of the traditional treatment of capital by economists (as if it’s this dead, rational thing, free from subjective judgments etc etc)
capital can present as:
- economic capital: directly convertible into money, can be institutionalised via property rights
- cultural capital: can sometimes be convertible into economic capital, can be institutionalised via educational qualifications (or other systems)
- social capital: interpersonal relations and obligations, can be institutionalised via titles of nobility or the like (Nobel Prize, Forbes 30 Under 30 lol)
forms of cultural capital: embodied (in people); objectified (cultural goods); institutionalised (e.g., with education)
- in its embodied state: easier to disguise than economic capital—recognised instead as legitimate competence
  - ofc owners of this capital benefit from its scarcity & the distribution of cultural capital is shaped by this
- in objectified form: can refer to, say, paintings, but also to machines
  - to operate a machine, one needs both the material means of possessing it and the knowledge required to operate it (cultural capital), either directly or via someone else
- institutionalised: establishes conversion rates between cultural & economic capital by quantifying, say, the value of a degree (commodifying)
social capital: networks of exchange within the group (gifts, words, friends, etc) also define the limits of the group
economic capital is at the root of all the others, but this fact is concealed from the possessors
- capital is converted from one type to another usually in line with the goal of ensuring the reproduction of the system (whether it is conscious or not)
- if outright economic capital transmission is hindered, then it will take place under cover via other forms

Capitals, assets, and resources by Mike Savage et al

using Bourdieu’s theories to poke holes in CARS theory
capital’s distinction is in its potential to accumulate, be converted into other resources
on the sociology of stratification since the 1980s—moved away from macro divisions of labour -> toward micro divisions based on individuals re: assets, resources, capitals
CARS theory: shows that market processes are driven by exogenous factors (assets)
- no free markets in reality—assets (and thus class inequality) are integral to the exchange relationship (citing John Roemer)
- the goal is to move stratification theory away from exploitation and focus instead on accumulation
Erik Olin Wright, in his landmark 1985 book Classes, ontologised three kinds of assets: property, organisation & skill
- relational assets depend on aparticular social relationship between the advantaged and the disadvantaged
- resource: knowing to drive vs asset: being right-handed (cus it pits right- and left-handed people gainst each other) which is weird, highlighting a weakness in gme theoretical logic
Bourdieu also had symbolic capital & field-specific forms of capital (educational, political)
- economic class cannot truly be separated from the social angle if we want a better understanding of cultural phenomena
- class is not merely a set of relations of the structure; instead, it should be understand as an emergent effect (I really like this)
the fundamental idea is not exploitation but CARS accumulation

Lecture

This lecture was given by Mike Savage, Professor of Sociology at LSE.

the three main approaches to explaining inequality that we’ll consider today:
- the orthodox economic approach
- the sociological approach, focusing on exploitation
  - various theories: Marx focuses on class; Weber, on status; Bourdieu, on social capital (left to the last approach)
- the interdisciplinary approach, which combines the two and focuses on capital accumulation (Piketty’s theory is one facet of this approach; Bourdieu’s is another)

The orthodox economic approach

where growth is the goal and studying inequality is sidelined
trickle-down economics, rising tide lifts all boats etc
if inequality is addressed at all, there’s an asumption that the market will eventually step in to reduce it
pay discrepancies are justified by the presumed additional productivity of skilled workers (education/skills treated as investments in human capital)
- thus if you try to target inequality by restricting high earnings, you hinder the efficiency of the market
on the other hand, even orthodox economists usually recognise that some people nee to be “helped” into the labour market in order to achieve greater overall efficiency (so some sort of social welfare system is needed)
any apparent “monopoly rent” on skills is seen as temporary & equilibrating (since others will have an incentive to acquire those skills to get the higher pay)
lately, though, there’s been a new generation of economists who do focus on inequality
- the late Tony Atkinson (LSE/Oxford), often thought of as the “godfather” of inequality studies
- also Stiglitz, Krugman, Milanovic and ofc Piketty
new themes in the economics of inequality (as opposed to the neoclassical tradition):
- pace those who assume we’re all rational and knowledgeable actors, markets are actually becoming increasingly imperfect due to increasing systemic information asymmetries
  - (my thoughts: the “attention economy” angle is relevant here too: we have finite attention spans and thus can never truly be rational. more thoughts on that in my notes for Srnicek’s lectures)
  - some examples of information asymmetry: basically all consumer-facing tech companies that control what you see & are completely opaque about their processes
  - also, salary negotiation, where (except in rare circumstances where the worker has a lot of power) the corporation has more knowledge about salary bands etc than the worker
- political capture as rich/business interests influence/coerce government into providing more favourable conditions
- winner-take-all/superstar markets (think sports, media, etc—any high-profile industry) where there’s a huge premium at the top end as people compete for the “best” and a long tail for everyone else
- another factor is the intergenerational accumulation of wealth, driven by inheritance and the fact that r > g … market processes dont have much of a role to play here
- the question we should ask is: do these economic solutions give us enough, or do we need another approach as well?

The sociological approach

theories of exploitation—instead of an individualist view, there’s a division between the exploiter and the exploited
obviously this is where Marxist theories of capitalism come into play: we have the bourgeoisie exploiting the labour-power of the proletariat (appropriating the surplus value)
Weber’s term for this is domination, which he defines as the systematic use of power by one group over aother (can also apply to race, gender, etc)
exploitation depends on it being hidden to some degree (masked, mis-identified)
- Marx: commodity fetishism & false consciousness—any freedom one might feel is superficial
- Bourdieu: mis-recognition of inequality (esp gender, which is often seen as “natural”)
- Christine Delphy, French sociologist whose 1977 book “The Main Enemy” pioneered materialist feminist ideas
  - within marriage, you have unpaid labour -> the exploitation of women by men (in terms of property rights, domestic labour, access to sexuality)
  - not just a private relation—as some would like to think—but in fact institutionalised, structural; underpinned by state/corporations
Marx’s view of class is that it arises due to exploitation (extraction of surplus value), and his framing is teleological (with Hegel)
- it’s a fairly rigid and categorical way of looking at things which may be too crude for our purposes nowadays
- on the other hand, it can be useful when looking at the globl context, if we expand the division of labour into an international one (where the global South is exploited by the North)
- how do we fit in more contemporary phenomena like those of large middle classes or self-employed workers, or those who are working but also have investments (housing, pensions)
- also, how does exploitation work in a more financialised/service-based economy instead of the factory-style industrial capitalism that Marx encountered in his day?
John Goldthorpe, British sociologist who takes an empirical (non-Marxist) approach to building a class schema
- he distinguishes between longer-term, more prestigious careers & more precarious hourly jobs
- my thoughts: both groups are exploited; it’s just that those in prestigious careers are experiencing a shinier, better-disguised exploitation
  - their exploitation comes in the form of believing in the enterprise (à la Willing Slaves of Capital which is my fave book on this topic)
  - so they’re pulled in by a nice title, expensive office architecture, catered dinners and this dream that they’re somehow better than others, that it’ll all mean something in the end
  - but ofc it’s all empty underneath
Weber has an alternative approach, which he calls “status” (basically pecking order)
- here, competition/domination is central
- more fine-grained than Marx’s categorical approach
- can be measured partly by occupational prestige
- Nancy Fraser combines Marxian and Weberian theories: redistributional struggles are not just about material goods (class), but also about respect (status)

The interdisciplinary approach

Combines Marx, Bourdieu and Piketty
expanding idea of differential accumulation over time & seeing inequality arise as an emergent phenomenon
for Bourdieu, we have to take into account the macro/continuous/emergent considerations of the social world
- basically the social world (once you introduce capital to it) has a long memory
- markets are not, contrary to the fantasies of some economists, constantly reinvented every second as blank slates
- his main controversial concept is that of cultural capital: snobbery, skills, education, network, access to institutions
- it’s all about displaying your advantage over those beneath you, and accumulating capital in the process
- the context of his writing: France in the 60s, which is ofc a very different cultural landscape
- open question: is there less cultural stratification these days (in the sense that more people are cultural omnivores, consuming both “low” & “high” culture?)
Piketty on Bourdieu (the fact that he even talks about Bourdieu is notable since Piketty is an economist)
- Bourdieu was writing in the 60s when inequality was much lower, and so it made sense to talk about cultural capital then
- but now, economic factors are prevailing, so economic capital is becoming more relevant; thus, we should look at both factors in combination

Seminar

Why is Marx still relevant today & what are the limitations?
- lots that he didn’t really anticipate:
  - the rise of the advertising-industrial complex & how that plays with our affects and keeps us continually wanting to consume consume consume
  - the IT revolution introducing zero marginal cost goods (and all the attendant possibilities of that for a postcapitalist world)
  - Guy Standing’s concept of the “precariat” & how that could spell a potential legitimation crisis for capitalism
on social stratification today
- when most people have access to a particular technology (say, the Internet), then stratification will still occur, it’ll just be based on skill (ability to use it)
on how we evaluate the usefulness of the different lenses of sociological models
- my own take on the Marxian notion of classes is that it’s not meant for “us” and we have to remember that
  - his approach is much more teleological: it’s about getting the proletariat to understand the chains
  - his categorical theory was not designed to help us, in a sociology class, interpret the world; it was designed to change it
  - we also have to remember that those in the Marxist tradition tend to be more binary about class distinctions than Marx was
  - Marx’s main thing was that of exploitation—we can leave the rigidities of the class theory behind and focus instead on exploitation
on autonomy and self-determination and a little bit of freedom as a mask for hiding greater exploitation
- my example: tech companies, where you’re nominally given more control than less prestigious industries
  - you can control your workflow, lots of creative freedom, work from home, take unlimited vacation, etc
  - but ofc that’s just a means of controlling you, giving you a longer leash so you think you’re free and thus feel some sort of gratitude for your corporation which lets them squeeze more work out of you
on the educational system as a means of laundering injustice and disguising it under the fantasy of “meritocracy”
- my personal favourite takes on meritocracy:
  - Immanuel Wallerstein has a great quote from his book Historical Capitalism: “The institutionalized meritocratic system helps a few to gain access to positions they merit and from which they might otherwise be barred. But it allows many more to gain access to positions on the basis of ascribed status under the cover of having gained this access by achievement.”
  - Piketty has a similar take on it, in an interview with Mike Savage for the III: “it’s as if the […] modern meritocracy discourse is invented as a way to protect the elite from democracy”
- there’s an interesting intersection between meritocracy discourse and cultural capital in some specific fields (e.g., tech)
  - you can kinda just show up in the tech industry and if you look the part and know the right words (cultural capital) people will assume you have merit, open doors for you
how do we update Bourdieu’s theories of social capital for today?
- accents, vocabulary, table manners, clothing, travel, knowledge of cultural artefacts etc
- where does the low/high distinction come from & who makes that distinction?
  - my own take is that it’s best thought of as materially conditioned
  - underlying economic stratification underpins social/cultural stratification, as you would expect
  - Marxian idea that the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas—“high culture” is thus determined (to some degree) by the habits of the ruling class itself
- on the other hand, cultural markers/trends are constantly shifting—it’s more fluid/dynamic than Bourdieu makes it out to be
- cultural capital is probably most important when you’re an outsider and thus have no social capital to fall back on
open question: can you eradicate social/cultural stratification if there is still economic inequality? what’s the relationship between the two

- week 6

Capabilities, poverty and inequality - week 7

Readings

The Capability Approach by David A. Clark

On Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach. Wealth as a means of achieving something else & noting differing conversion rates for income/commodities into achievements, based on personal situation + cultural factors. Neither is utility (perceived happiness) a suficient consideration. Formulates a mapping from a “functioning” vector -> set of capability vectors. He refuses to establish an “objective” set of capabilities (could differ between contexts, like poverty vs well-being). Benefit of this approach: treats people as ends in themselves and not just means to an economic end—the goal of development should be expansion of capabilities rather than economic growth (which should be a means, at most). Weaknesses: doesn’t really address the subjectivity factor (people will disagree about what capabilities should be valued); there isn’t always data to assess. Also mentions Martha Nussbaum’s attempts to build on the CA: draws on Aristotle to develop a list of “central human capabilities”, whereas Sen argues for a more democratic approach to building this list.

The idea of “adequate income” which allocates income acc to an individual’s conversion rate, which is ofc difficult to objectively quantify (people are incentivised to lie about it), so you end up giving some people more than they need (which is unfair) + end up spending more overall (though this really only matters in relation to the total quantity of money & how it affects individual capability assessments). This is, incidentally, probably my biggest problem with basic income proposals: you’re trying to extend the reach of quantification (i.e., commodification) when you should really be DECOMMODIFYING by introducing more public services that don’t rely on income. (Longer post on that forthcoming.)

Collective Capabilities, Culture, and Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom by Peter Evans

No notes for this yet.

Assessing global poverty and inequality by Ingrid Robeyns

No notes for this yet.

Lecture

This lecture was given by Naila Kabeer, Professor of Gender and Development in the Gender Studies & International Development departments at LSE.

we should recall the historical context of Sen’s capabilities framework: as a response to traditional welfare economists
- where the focus is on utility (pain/pleasure), as revealed through spending money (assumed to be done rationally, in order to maximise utility)
- Samuelson thought that the best quantitative way of measuring utility was by looking at purchasing power
- thus using spending was seen as a proxy for utility
- this led to an outlook where the goal of society was seen as maximising utility by increasing wealth
Sen’s critique of this: pleasure/pain is too reductive; instead, we should consider what each one of us wants to achieve in life
- he thought of capabilities as means to achieve particular functionings
- for him, a fundamental weakness of welfare economics is that it ignores the distinction between positive and negative freedoms, or virtuous/vicious sources of happiness
- thus that framework doesn’t allow for discrimination redress if the oppressed are “happy”
- (though ofc your views on yourself and what you think of as “good” are products of your environment—basically, your preferences are produced through your life experiences)
- after all, the legitimacy of inequality rests on the “consent” of the governed; inequality thrives when the oppressors make allies out of the oppressed
- he establishes the concept of a conversion factor (from capabilities to functionings), which can vary for personal (disability, cognitive, age, sex, health), environmental (infrastructure, climate, remoteness), and social (public policy, social norms) reasons
important to recognise that Sen is not in the Marxist tradition; instead, he’s a fairly good, pluralist liberal
- recall his initial paper, Equality of What? from 1979, where his answer to the titular question was basically “capabilities” (without being too specific)
- his personal research context: he was focused on poverty in South Asia, and he wanted to distinguish between “basic” and “other” capabilities in order to define the “very poor”
  - you can see the basic capabilities as preconditions for others (necessary for survival)
  - he doesn’t actually propose this list himself—he assumes it’ll be deliberated upon democratically
- Martha Nussbaum builds on this framework but takes it a step farther by proposing a normative list
  - her reasoning: it’s important because not all capabilities are equally “good”; having such a list is useful as a minimum set that governments can endorse/enforce
  - Sen’s criticism of her list is that we should have different lists for different purposes
- one practical implication of Sen’s framework is the development of the HDI (as a multidimensional indicator of wellbeing)
critiques of Sen:
- too ethically individualistic (though Sen does recognise, to an extent, that individual preferences etc are culturally shaped)
- otoh, he doesn’t really go into how corporations shape our preferences via clever marketing
- too focused on the disadvantaged end at the expense of the advantaged end
  - for ex, we could view the unique capabilities of rich people as important for understanding inequality
  - philanthrophy, ability to influence elections, having someone drive you around etc
  - we could extend the capabilities framework to allow us to better understand the privileges of the wealthy (by looking at the capabilities they have in common)
on a collective capabilities framework
- designed in recognition of the fact that taking on structures of inequality is beyond individual capabilities
- there’s a dialectical relationship: structures can affect our capabilities but we can also change the structures

Seminar

Q: is the capabilities framework useful? given that it was developed before inequalities debate took off
- when I read it, being divorced from the original context & having already absorbed post-Sen ideas on egalitarianism, i already agree with the moral objections to the libertarian view
- it actually paints quite a bad picture of the economic landscape at the time—the fact that his really basic arguments NEEDED to be made (because he thought there were those who might not readily agree)
his ideas might be useful for understanding inequality, but it’s harder to turn them into something quantitative
problems with the deliberative approach: draw on fraser, doesnt it just reproduce power structures
- plus how do you deal with local cultures deciding on things (like arranged marriages) that others would disagree on
- the deliberative approach might conceal individuals’ choices cus decided by dominant factors (child marriage, FGM etc)
incidentally, while trying to think through critical theories of Sen I found this paper: Sen, Marx and justice: a critique
- “the overall problem with Sen’s use of Marx regarding justice is that the injustices Sen speaks of are systemically created by capitalism. If Sen or any other theorist of justice wants to use Marx then they must start with that fundamental fact. They of course cannot because they assume justice can be achieved within capitalism whereas for Marx it was only fully achievable with its abolition”
we should view sen’s contribution as a beginning, since quant-only approaches have failed
can the capabilities framework serve as a measurement of ineq?
- no, cus remember dialectical rel between ineq & pov
- depending on how rising ineq works, can necessitate raising the poverty line
- assumes a fairly static model and thus assumes lack of ineq
- otoh, maybe we can use the capabilities approach to understand how much inequality is too much
Sen’s critique of liberal utilility ideas are good; he recognises that revealed prefs are shaped by larger structural factors
- and yet his solution—deliberative democracy—doesnt actually fix the problem, it just pushes it one step back
my thoughts: capabilities bear on inequality cus being able to access goods etc given equal distribution is a cap
- the rich have ability to compel poor to sell labour, so capability of not labouring is granted
- you have to take a normative approach where full equality is the comparison point
- access to information & education (esp about ones own situation) could also be a capability
- false consciousness, misunderstanding economic reality is a functioning?

Social mobility and inequality - week 8

Readings

Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite by Shamus Khan (introduction)

A moving first-person account of upward social mobility. Highlights a trend (that I can personally relate to) where immigrant parents are okay with their own lack of social/cultural capital because they imagine their kids will, in some way, make up for that. Mentions the skewed nature of admittants to elite schools (Harvard’s definition of “middle income” is $110k-$200k which is really the top 5% …). Also briefly touches on the recent trend toward cultural omnivorism, where part of being privileged means being comfortable in any cultural environment.

Great quote:

They may claim otherwise, but colleges are truly “need blind” in the worst possible way. They are ambivalent to the disadvantages of poverty.

He also talks about meritocracy discourse and how there’s been a trend toward greater awareness of inequality & attempts to alleviate it. He isn’t nearly as critical as I would be here—I would treat it as a less of a demonstration of kindness and more of a defense mechanism on the part of the elite class, allowing a small amount of upward mobility from the lower classes in exchange for their consent—and seems to treat any negative consequences of meritocracy as due to drift (because the abilities being measured aren’t the right abilities) instead of as immanent. Piketty’s comments on meritocracy (from an interview with Mike Savage, coincidentally) are relevant here (referencing the founder of Sciences Po):

[…] now that we have universal suffrage, there’s a risk that basically the poor and the majority of the population will try to expropriate us, the elite. We have to display merits and our own standings so that it will be a completely crazy idea to get rid of us. So in a way it’s as if […] modern meritocracy discourse is invented as a way to protect the elite from democracy basically, from the universal suffrage.

Frédéric Lordon says something similar in Willing Slaves of Capital:

[…] With the eras of aristocratic and plutocratic legitimacy gone (at least in their pure forms), the contemporary mythogenesis of the university degree, as Bourdieu repeatedly insisted, struggles to hide its own indifference to content and its only true mission, which is to certify ‘elites’, namely, to provide alibis to the distribution of individuals within the social division of desire.

Immanuel Wallerstein also has an excellent take on this, in Historical Capitalism:

[…] The institutionalized meritocratic system helps a few to gain access to positions they merit and from which they might otherwise be barred. But it allows many more to gain access to positions on the basis of ascribed status under the cover of having gained this access by achievement.

I just read the whole book since I happened to have it already. My notes are all in Bookmarker.

There’s a quote from John Hills’ Good Times, Bad Times which is fairly relevant to the discussion of social mobility in chapter 6:

[…] If policy helps increase the chances of someone starting in a less privileged position to go up the social scale, that must mean that someone else’s chance of going down has to rise, which may include their own children, and does not then seem so attractive. While many favour increased upward mobility, few want to mention the increased downward mobility that has to go with it (in terms of relative positions, at least).

The Price of the Ticket (PDF) by Sam Friedman

On the downsides of upward social mobility. Challenges Goldthorphe’s landmark work on this field (which drew on surveys and concluded that upward mobility was a Good Thing) by focusing on the downsides of it (mostly int terms of the negative psychological effects on the subjects). Cites Bourdieu and Durkheim, among others. This paper raised some good points about why we shouldn’t uncritically support the idea of social mobility, but I kept waiting for the obvious conclusion—that we should destroy class hierarchies altogether—that never came …

Lecture

This lecture was given by Mike Savage, Professor of Sociology at LSE.

quote from former Labour MP Alan Milburn on social mobility as a way of breaking integenerational transmission of advantage
- (thus it’s a limited, conservative, reactionary attitude that implicitly accepts the current class hierarchy)
- (what Nancy Fraser would have called “affirmative” rather than “transformative”)
- (what else would you expect from a Blairite I suppose)
the more inequality there is in a society, the more important the idea of “meritocracy” becomes in order to justify it
- and since inequality is rising, there’s been an urgent focus on social mobility (often seen as a necessary condition for meritocracy)
there’s a debate on whether social mobility is increasing or decreasing
- takeaway from this lecture: it’s very complicated, multifaceted, and difficult to measure
- be skeptical about anyone who tells you unequivocally that it’s rising/falling
- complications when measuring it include:
  - which benchmark do you use? income, level of educational attainment, home ownership, ??
  - which unit? individual, household, community?
  - compared to whom? parents, grandparents, younger you?
  - what time scale?
  - individualist or structural approach (where you’re compared with others)?
The “Great Gatsby curve” from 2012, showing the relationship between Gini coefficient and intergenerational earnings elasticity
- (image from Wikipedia)
- shows the relationship you’d expect between inequality and social mobility
- possible reasons:
  - in a more equal society, there’s less “distance” to travel and so it’s easier
  - in a less equal society, the rich try to pass on privileges to their children (closure, pulling up the ladder behind them etc)
Raj Chetty did research looking at social mobility rates for each birth year (presumably adjusted for inflation?)
- shows that the % of children out-earning their parents has been decreasing over time (since the 40s)
- measured in terms of absolute income (adjusted for inflation presumably, which is itself problematic)
- this graph doesn’t tell you the whole story, though; could be due to decline of wages overall, or economic growth (?)
- basically the point of showing us this graph is to illustrate the dangers of reductive thinking re: social mobility
in the UK case, Blanden & Machin looked at social mobility among children in 1956 & 1970 (separating sons & daughters)
- produced some transition matrices showing that social mobility has decreased
- (incidentally, this is a good example of a structural approach as opposed to an individual one)
another Chetty approach (w/ Saez, 2013): rank ordering of income compared with parents
- shows that social mobility (measured by income percentile) hasn’t really changed
- though college attendance gradient in decline (probably due to increased tuition fees …)
- this is an example of a relative approach to social mobility
we should reconsider the relationship between Gini & social mobility
- not a standard causation -> correlation story
- if we consider the wealth of the countries involved (in the Great Gatsby graph) you see a pattern
- the more equal & mobile countries on the bottom left (Scandinavian) are also quite wealthy
- and the less equal & mobile countries on the top right (South American) are relatively poor
Goldthorpe (who’s contributed a lot to the study of social mobility) emphasises that we need to look at relative social mobility, especially in periods of economic change
- when you have skills-biased technological change, education will be a factor in social mobility
- e.g., in China: in the past few decades, modernisation has resulted in a lot of upward mobility
- but that doesn’t mean that the children of the poor today should expect the same upward mobility
- it just means that at a certain time in the past, education was used as a filter to fill posts in the new economy
- (note that Goldthorpe is looking at occupation-based social class here, not income)
graph of upward & downward mobility: shows that the total amount of mobility has gone up
- and ofc upward/downward are mirror images of each other
- reason for increasing downward mobility: changing composition of labour market?
- open Q: what are the downsides of using Goldthorpe’s class structure for our understanding of social mobility?
  - there are obviously lots of caveats (like what if you have a lower income but the same lifestyle, and what if a partner provides for you)
in an era of rising inequality, should we be looking beyond absolute social mobility?
the economist approach to social mobility: looking at income (as opposed to the class model used in sociology)
- the economists’ human capital model assumes fluid mobility due to skills
- whereas the Weberian/Bourdieusian approach considers social class as a way of excluding people below you
  - draws heavily from feminist theory (think the “glass ceiling”) and homophily theory
  - Friedman (from the third reading) proposes the idea of a class ceiling in which the highest earnings are reserved for the upper class
  - in a complementary vein, Khan (first reading) proposes that education is at least partly performative—a way to sustain the privileges and know-how of elites
conclusion: there is definitely some social mobility
- just not enough to justify existing inequalities & this idea of meritocracy
- plus ofc lots of closure

Seminar

This was a pretty unstructured one where we mostly talked about our own personal experiences with social mobility. Some takeaways:

the way we look at social mobility in terms of a hierarchy: how much does that influence our conception of it?
- as in, does it make us more likely to want to try to “rise” in it
- when there isn’t necessarily an a priori reason we need to?
- my own trajectory is a pretty good example: turning away from the possibility of an extremely well-paid job at Google to do an (essentially unpaid) startup and, now, spending most of my savings on a masters degree without the expectation of a higher income later on
  - which really comes down to me not being a good member of Homo economicus, and instead prioritising things other than income (can u imagine)
  - you could also look at it as me still playing into the logic of capitalism, just eschewing economic capital in favour of the cultural capital I theoretically get in exchange (not a great exchange rate tho tbh)
institutionalisation of privileges as a field advances
- e.g., tech, where as more and more people pour in to the field, the goalposts get raised (you need more credentials etc to get people to take you seriously, whereas initially it was perhaps more open)

Algorithmic inequality - week 9

Readings

Skeggs and Yuill paper on Facebook

This paper was summarised at an LSE public lecture back in September:

You Are Being Tracked, Evaluated and Sold: an analysis of digital inequalities

Weapons of Math Destruction

Read it a while back but don’t have notes for it yet.

Lecture and seminar

This lecture (and subsequent seminar) was given by Beverly Skeggs, Visiting Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. She used the same slides from her LSE public lecture but skipped some of the content due to time constraints + went into some other topics as well. Below is a brief summary of what wasn’t covered in the public lecture (& includes my personal notes).

recently, we’ve seen a big shift in global capitalism
- similar to the trend toward financialisation (she cites Costas Lapavista’s Profiting Without Producing here)
- but now instead of a financial bubble it’s an advertising one
- of course, the way it’s sustained & grown is by people consuming more than what they really need to live
- thus the advertising industry, seen holistically, is something that cannot be justified exogenously—it’s just a way to prop up aggregate demand for frankly unnecessary goods (the self-sustaining logic of capitalism)
social media, which is fueled by advertising, is creating stratification based on the value that different groups provide to advertisers (in terms of potential purchasing power)
- tracking is done sometimes for the purpose of trading (selling) data, but sometimes for the purpose of control (both by the market & by the state)
- these companies are also putting massive amounts of $ into lobbying which makes it harder to hold them accountable
my take: the problem isn’t necessarily that this data is being collected, it’s that these companies have the ability to use it because they hold our attention
best software engineers get scooped up by tech companies because they’re able to pay so much
- thought: imagine if you could implement some sort of wage control system (based on total compensation), maybe that would help
on the whole Russia-influencing-politics thing (that Twitter, Facebook etc got tangled up in)
- imo it’s just a scapegoat for liberals who realise how bad things are but would rather put it down to foreign meddling in a decent system, because the alternative is to blame capitalism
there’s a general air of resignation toward technology because the average person just doesn’t understand how it really works (by design)
my take on the adtech industry (and everything that relies on it) is that it’s really just the hidden desires of capitalism equipped with the technology it needs to make those dreams a reality
- so its worst excesses are nothing more than the worst excesses of capitalism
- which ofc means we can’t really combat its problems on a fundamental level without confronting capitalism
- approaches that don’t change structural incentives will never succeed except temporarily
- risk of political capture, esp as some of these companies become “too big to fail” (just like the banks)
- otoh, there’s hope in the case of India pushing back against Facebook’s Free Basics, and regulators finally catching up to Uber
- in the end, only states have power to really regulate, we can pair that with a bottom-up approach of changing public image (because these companies do care about that) but alone it won’t be sufficient
Skeggs ended on a nice note: we need to move from a politics of resignation to a politics of the yet-to-come
- follow-up from someone else: we can expose the gap between ideology and what’s really happening (since capitalism runs on ideology & doesn’t function unless enough people believe that it works the way it’s claimed to)

Capitalism, inequality and conjugated oppression - week 10

Reading

Class Racism by Etienne Balibar

From the 1991 Verso book Race, Nation, Class (PDF) which features various essays written by either Etienne Balibar or Immanuel Wallerstein. Chapter 12. No real takeaways tbh

Conjugated Oppression by Philippe Bourgois

On class and ethnicity among Guaymi and Kuna banana workers.

Ground Down by Growth

A forthcoming Pluto Press book by Alpa Shah (lecturer) and co-authors.

Lecture

This lecture was given by Alpa Shah, Associate Professor of Anthropology at LSE, and Jens Lerche at SOAS. Held at the Behind The Indian Boom exhibition at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS. No seminar.

Focus: on the Dalits (at the bottom of the Hindu caste system) and the Adivasis (indigenous peoples) in India.

92% of India’s workforce is in informal employment
- Either informal sector or short-term unprotected work
- In some industries they fire them before a year is up to avoid having to provide (state-legislated) protections
Q: why are these two groups still at the bottom, despite a putative transition from a caste-based system to a modern economy?
- Stuart Hall argues that capitalism works by exploiting existing ethnic divisions, finds the divisions useful
- These divisions are still extant and pervasive, not just in the old agrarian sector but persisting across employment categories
- Existing social inequalities (of power) being reified through economic relations
Migrant workers excluded from lots of state resources, classic outsiders (super exploited)
- Usually internal migrants, from different states (not nations) which have different laws
- Managed by contractors who bond them through debt (since they have to take out an advance to work) which gets them working the whole season cus they don’t get paid until the end
- Seasonal bondage (basically slavery)
- Also used to discipline (replace) local workers who go on strike
- Divided by language too
- Different caste groups used against each other to undermine solidarity and prevent organised, united front
- this is all done by global corporations
Conjugated oppression
- Balibar argues that race was used to divide the good working class and the bad/other/dangerous that deserves oppression (the good: allies)
- Discourse is that certain castes can be and in fact deserve to be treated differently (worse)
- Inherited power inequalities entrenched during economic growth
- Intersectional inequalities (class race gender) intertwined
Silver lining: people fighting back
- Unionising
- maoists (armed communist insurrection)—they’re heavily repressed by state so you can see why it would seem like the only option
- Unfortunately, caste struggles have not aligned with classic far left (socialist) movements Q: is there solidarity between the Dalits and Adivasis?
- Adivasis are people outside the caste system, who traditionally lived outside mainstream society; they get displaced due to resource extraction
- Dalits are more embedded in caste system and do the unwanted jobs (untouchables) but also landless labourers (proletariat)
- So this prevents them from uniting into one faction—their struggles are different
- Still, recently there is a convergence as Adivasis migrate and have to work the same jobs
- Adivasis are much worse off than Dalits in general, and are sometimes used to discipline Dalit labour.
- We also have to remember there are lots of informal workers who are not members of either caste and who may not ally with the movement
Caste is not independent of capitalism; it may be used by capitalism now, but it preceded capitalism
- It’s a way of exploiting people that’s separate from capitalism
- Capitalism makes use of existing distinctions
- Rules around caste are changing (more progressive) but that’s not necessarily reflected in what’s happening on the ground, as another oppressive system sweeps in
- So to make things better, both systems would need to be dismantled
On the role of the state: we can’t see it as a unitary thing
- It’s complex and contradictory
- A mix of progressive measures & socialist rhetoric but not always enforced (like informal labour market)
- But also tied to global capital
In general, poverty reduction is very slow, very far from China
- This is partly because politicians never really represent ordinarily citizens; instead, they tend to prioritise the interests of the industrial capitalist class

Inequality and Austerity - week 11

Readings

Can Society be Commodities All the Way Down (PDF) by Nancy Fraser

From 2012. Subtitled “Polanyian reflections on capitalist crisis”.

Draws on Polanyi’s ideas of fictitious commodities and his double movement theory in order to better understand the state of neoliberalism today, though she identifies its limitations (not enough focused on internal injustice/domination)
Identifies three strands of the current age of crisis: ecological; financialisation; social reproduction
Proposes a Hegelian “structural interpretation” of fictitious commodities as opposed to Polanyi’s ontological one (where their fictitiousness stems from the fact that labour, land and money were not originally produced as commodities), in order to shine light on “the tendency of unregulated markets to destroy their own conditions of possibility”, and to remind us that commodification “can actually foster emancipation by weakening traditional supports for domination”
Notes Polanyi’s omission of the gendered aspect of labour commodification (after all, it historically required the non-commodification of social reproduction, i.e., women doing domestic work)
- today, women are increasingly entering the labour force while public provision of care services is simultaneously being cut, resulting in a migration-fueled “global care chain”
Introduces the idea of a “triple movement” (moving beyond protection and toward emancipation)
On financialisation as the new frontier for the commodification of money, and the neocolonial function it now serves

Rethinking Capitalism by Mariana Mazzucato and Michael Jacobs (introduction)

On the weaknesses of capitalism as revealed through the financial crisis: low growth, rising inequality, insecure labour markets, environmental degradation. Challenges received neoliberal wisdom. Seems decent. Topics covered in the rest of the book:

the inanity of austerity
quantitative easing as a poor solution to low aggregate demand
short-term thinking in financial markets (reducing productive corporate investment)
on different ways of organising firms (presumably focusing on the benefits of the Toyotist model, though I hope not cus that’s a poor solution that relies on management-by-stress)
the role of the state in pioneering high-tech innovation (citizens should share in the fruits of it)
challenging the “crowding out” theory (public spending can actually result in greater private spending)
high incomes by execs etc is just rent-seeking, and is inefficient (slows growth)
the dangers of oligopolies and resultant political capture
environmental threats

Austerity Measures in Developing Countries by Isabel Ortiz and Matthew Cummins

The disproportionate impact of austerity policies (worldwide) on vulnerable populations, especially women and children.

Lecture

diane

labour declining power, skill-biased technological change etc etc
obvs wages not keeping up with productivity
she argues that connecting wages to productivity is problematic
- wage distribution gendered, racialised (in terms of social norms)
- esp re: care work
on Robert Reich linking recession to financial crisis exposing larger structural problems of inequality
- “policy overreach of market fundamentalists” UNCTAD
- global demand deficit due to wealth concentration
- hegemony of self-regulating market
responses to the crisis: initially somewhat Keynesian, conscious investment in infra; automatic stabilisers kicked in
“expansionary fiscal contraction” the idea that reduced public spending will expand public consumption (based on crowding-out theory)
orthodox approach assumes there isn’t enough savings, so QE which will lead to investment -> growth
Keynesian approach takes the opposite approach: not enough consumption, so public spending will “crowd in” public sector (overcome liquidity pref)
biases of austerity’s macroeconomic policy: male breadwinner; deflationary; decommodification
austerity policies
- capping public sector spending
- lowering subsidies for certain groups
- limiting expenditure in general
- raising pension age and reforming
impacts of austerity
- worse for single mothers, and racialised too
alternatives to austerity
looking at report, Beyond Austerity: towards a global new deal (UNCTAD)
- sustainable development goals not enough
- need strategy that harnesses positives of markets while restraining the negatives
- change in econ policy is feasible, cf New Deal/Marshall Plan
- “recovery, regulation, redistribution”
- fairly Keynesian policy
- Fraser might argue that existing social inequalities are not addressed tho (conjugated oppression)
recommendations by women’s budget group: investing 2% of GDP in care or construction
- direct employment creation + indirect effects of increased consumption
- looks at the gender breakdown of created jobs (assuming the jobs are gendered I guess)
- the dynamics of both the gender breakdown & number of jobs created depends on the specific country (but in general, good)
on the limitations of the state & how to hold it accountable or step in when it fails
- markets can unleash certain types of emancipation while repressing others

Seminar

how can we solve inequality

nonreformist reforms, UBI only works as that if it’s accompanied by UBS (for all the basic things citizens might need), otherwise inflation and predatory landlords/etc and extending the status quo a little longer
organised movement
job treadmill (ever increasing consumerism) -> need degrowth instead
abolishing private education
maybe things need to get worse before they get better, but if you have the right conditions it could get a LOT better, doesnt have to be just like Polanyi’s double movement
- the whole eat the rich thing on twitter after US tax bill, raising consciousness, radicalising more people, looking for way better solutions, not just to what we had before
Mike Savage thinks chances of another financial crisis are fairly high, markets still awash with liquidity but shortage of good (productive) investment opportunities
- there will be another major correction, but will govts have ability to act next time?
- global South will come out better than North
- also thinks we need stronger campaign for Piketty’s wealth tax
(also we need 100% inheritance tax lol)
more predistribution not just redistribution
we need more downward mobility (tho that’s only ideal if you level the playing field)
the left needs to be ready for the next financial crisis + have compelling ideas, policy proposals (akin to MPS)
cut down on finance, even if it reduces total wealth in society
- but most of that wealth is never used for benefit of most of society anyway
- plus it’s destabilising
- and could direct resources (ie work hours) into more useful industries
on tech companies, market shrinking powers, airbnb making hospitality industry more efficient which means contracted labour market in the long run
- we need a future where these big tech companies are abolished, they shouldnt exist, their IP should be protocols
- if there’s anything efficiency gains, anyway
- something like uber, hopefully ppl use it less anyway if we have more public transit
- need to change what people are used to re: uber etc; people used to being selfish, individualistic instead of thinking of wider societal impacts of choices
  - comes down to education, where you’re taught to be Homo economicus & covet luxury goods (values based on fear)
we need more accessible info, to radicalise especially working class (they know there’s a prob, we need to show to fix it), need to offer them hope

Gender and inequality - week 12

Readings

I don’t have notes for this week.

Economic Pathways to Women’s Empowerment and Active Citizenship

A paper by Naila Kabeer from 2016.

Closing the gender pay gap (PDF)

A report by the International Labour Organization (ILO, with a weird mismatch of American and British spelling) in 2016.

Defending Equality of Outcome

A paper by Anne Phillips from 2004.

Lecture

This lecture was given by Diane Perrons.

quote from Nancy Fraser on how feminist ideas are now in the mainstream, and yet they’re not always in practice
- McKinsey report on women’s equality adding $12 trillion to the global economy, omg lmao
the concept of thought starvation, a form of inequality that can persist even if economic inequality is addressed (if women have less influence on society)
ILO report defining equality vs equity
- equality: rights/responsibilities/opportunities don’t depend on gender
- equity: fairness based on gender, equivalent (not necessarily the same)
- Fraser on equality of outcome
  - things to consider include antipoverty; exploitation; income; leisure time; respect; antimarginalisation; antiandocentrism; equality between women (not just male/female equality)
- Anne Phillips is pro-equality of outcome, recognising that opportunities themselves can be biased
  - there can be illegitimate processes of exclusion occuring that “equality of opportunity” alone can’t address
- (my thoughts: example of the former would be giving women “opportunities” to enter tech and thus get high salaries. example of the latter would be a much more radical overhaul of salary and the fact that certain activities which we’ve historically associated with maleness are deemed more “valuable”. if the “market distribution” produces an unequal outcome, then rather than reifying the process and assuming that inequality is natural, perhaps we should consider that the very process is flawed and should not be relied on)
- on the idea that women “choose” to, say, not enter high-paying fields as often
  - “choice” as a semantic choice (lol) obscures the extent of complicating factors
  - “decisions based on a pragmatic adjustment to conditions” might be a better way of understanding the process
that incredibly trite and misguided Christine Lagarde quote about “Lehman Sisters”
- EY report echoes that: more women -> more stability
- (me: obscures structural reasons behind financial crisis + furthermore robs women of agency by assuming they can’t be evil or corrupted the way men can)
- Julie Nelson’s book Gender and Risk-Taking trying to dispel the myth that women are more risk-averse
  - statistically significant differences are very small; there are biases in reporting/publishing that emphasise sensationalist claims
  - (idk why it really matters tbh, surely we can move beyond the idea that excess returns are “compensation” for risk)
- (my thoughts: McKenzie Wark makes some good points on representation in A Hacker Manifesto. it’s tolerated by the ruling classes as it doesn’t challenge the existing order)
lots of neoliberal propaganda lately on how gender equality is good for the “economy” lmao
- we’re shown that truly awful “girl effect” video (YouTube)
- some classic tropes: de-emphasising structural oppression in favour of individual empowerment; seeing gender equality as a means to an end of improving economic efficiency
- on the slightly less neoliberal end of the spectrum, but still highly flawed, we have this idea that women should be paid wages for housework/carework (we need LESS commodification not more omg)
- somewhat surprisingly, the World Bank has suggested a quite radical set of policies: mandatory quotas with frequent tracking and sanctions for noncompliance
on the gender pay gap
- in toto it’s around 15% worldwide
- David Cameron, in 2015, voted to end the pay gap in a generation lol
- recall that the gender pay gap is different from the (illegal) practice of paying women less for the same job
- this figure takes into account all work, and thus obviously has to deal with different employment patterns and job title distributions

Seminar

My seminar was run by John Hills. Question: how has gender inequality been changing lately?

gender equality is changing: visible representation (e.g., politically) has gone up overall, but underlying inequalities have not been fixed
- remember that various forms of inequality weren’t being measured until recently, which should affect how we interpret measurements
- are things getting better? the overall consensus seems to be yes
  - (my point, otoh, is that we shouldn’t assume a linear or even teleological element to this—we’re already seeing backlash in the form of MRA crap, James Damore suing Google, etc)
on equality of outcome as a test of opportunity (whether the opportunities are themselves biased)
- (me: in which case, perhaps we need to change distribution mechanisms so that they’re not based on flawed mechanisms)
on pay inequality at the top of the scale (e.g., with the BBC pay gap scandal)
- is there a symbolic effect to closing the gap at the top level that could help narrow the gap at other levels too?
- interesting point raised about athletics and how women are almost universally paid less even if they are working/training at similar “levels” from most perspectives (soccer, tennis, basketball, etc)
- (me: men will always invent some sort of ex post justification to legitimate the existing system of inequality … measures of “worth” are slippery and ultimately arbitrary)
- (also me: questions of gendered income inequality is always, always entwined with questions of overall inequality … do the men at the top of the pay scale deserve that much money? no. neither do the women. otoh, until the men start making less it’s silly to demand women to ask for less as well, so idk what the solution in this very limited scenario)
on minimum wage increases
- bigger impact on women
- phenomeon of men resenting women as wages of minimum wage work (cleaning, etc) catches up
on the value of slicing out gender and implementing gender-based policies rather than more explicitly intersectional policies
- yes, because the gender pay gap is, at least partly, a symptom of socially constructed ideas of what’s valuable and what’s not which is always gendered
- we can think of gender as a vanguard issue, where the fight for women’s rights spurs the development of other gains in equality
on the dilemma of women in the Soviet Union (should look into this more to confirm the accuracy of these claims)
- women had to do regular work as well as domestic work (which men didn’t do as much?)
- which illustrates the failure of emancipation along class lines alone
- I guess the question here is: is it then necessary to emanicipate along all lines at once? is that even possible? or do you have to do one at at time
on economic inequality and how we can’t address that in isolation
- if you try to fix it by fiat (by forcing equal pay, for instance), it’ll leak out in other ways instead unless you look at the structural underpinnings of power
on the dialectic (?) between adaptive preferences/false consciousness vs respecting the choices of the “oppressed”
- should there be a set of topics where democratic vote is overruled given historical reasons for distrusting beliefs of the majority?

Race and media - week 13

Readings

No notes for this week.

Representing Black Britain by Sarita Malik (chapters 1 & 9)

A book from 2002.

Locating the ‘Radical’ in Shoot the Messenger by Sarita Malik

A paper from 2013.

Diversity pie by Clive James Nwonka

A paper from 2015 by the lecturer.

Lecture

This was an excellent lecture given by Clive James Nwonka, a researcher with the Inequalities Institute, which connected issues of race representation within the media to larger questions of politics, ideology and capitalism. No seminar this time (the lecture started late)

film and media (and the culture industry in general) are ideological tools to shape how people view the world
this lecture is indebted to Stuart Hall’s theories on race and cultural studies
- chronically, begins with Stuart Hall arriving in the UK from Jamaica as part of a larger effort to fill labour gaps in the UK by “importing” foreigners
- of course, these new arrivals were often denied access to various services/goods
clip from Flame in the Streets (1961), showcasing common (negative) views on interracial marriage
- quote from Nina Hibbin (film critic): you can’t just fight the colour bar by displaying it; you have to fight it passionately, otherwise you end up fanning the flames
on film studies and how we should interpret films
- one view is to treat a film as you would a text
- the cultural studies view, though, is more reader-response-oriented; a film needs an audience to give it meaning
- on the importance of social realism and sociopolitical films that often self-deconstruct/self-undermine? asking you to question the film? (not sure what my notes are saying here)
clip from National Front protests (English nationalism) with a fascinating quote: “we’re not racists, we’re realists”
clip of the lovely Margaret Thatcher in an interviewing discussing the National Front and immigration
- saying that the country is being “swamped” by people of a different culture, whereas British culture has done so much for democracy and the world lmao
- saying that people go to the National Front because they’re the only party talking about it—about the perils of immigration—and so if the Tories want to win, they’ll have to start talking about it as well (sounds familiar)
- if we deconstruct what she’s saying, it really doesn’t come down to immigration as such; it’s about race and cultural identity, about homogeneity
in 1981, during the recession, unemployment among black men was 82% and they were much more likely to get arrested for various institutional reasons
- culminated in the Brixton Riots of 1981, Newcross Massacre (fire) cover up
- April 1981, Scarman reporthttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarman_Report) on the Brixton riots: although it didn’t really acknowledge institutional racism, it at least accepted that black people face greater societal difficulties (which he mainly boiled down to issues of cultural assimilation)
- and the films created around this time reflected this
- black youth faced a double bind: not only were the institutions they had to deal with in society racist, but the fictional worlds they could escape to rarely had more promising (realistic) depictions, not to mention role models
  - symbolic relationship between black youth being portrayed as criminals in media & treated as such by police
- 1982, channel 4 was created as an outlet for media focused on ethnic minorities (and as a space for left-wing, more radical ideas in general)
Babylon, 1981, Franco Rossi: exemplar of critical realism
- shows how people interact with institutions & illuminates the power dynamics at play
- deemed too radical for the BBC—shunted to channel 4 instead (fears that it would incite uprisings against police through showing how corrupt it all was)
Michael Wayne on theory of anti-national national film
- showing divided and fractured society underneath the illusion of unity of a nation, exposing mechanisms of ideology
book recs:
- Stuart Hall’s Policing the Crisis and Culture, Media, Language
- Paul Gilroy’s Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack
- New Times with Marxism Today, edied by Stuart Hall (after the fall of the Soviet Union)
now on New Labour and how they embraced the concept of multiculturalism, managing cultural differences through shared cultural unity
- different from silos, idpol in the 80s
- core idea: that you could build a post-racial society through cultural appreciation
- New Labour embraced “culture”, established first minister of film
  - recognising that film contributes to social cohesion
- in 1999, when New Labour came into power, they commissioned a report on the death of a black boy (Stephen Lawrence) which the Tory govt that was in power at the time had refused to investigate
  - this was one of the first public admittances of institutional racism
- in Lord Scarman’s original report, he didn’t mention film/media but after this report, it became more of an issue
- quote from Tony Blair (2007) on cultural lack of discipline, rather than economic inequality, being the problem
concept: cultural/general verisimilitude
- doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be actually “true” according to social reality
- rather, it’s about whether the audience believes it to be true (cultural hegemony)
- (Baudrillard inevitably comes to my mind here: meant to simulate a culture that doesn’t really exist in reality)
clip from Bullet Boy (2005): striking realism, exemplified through the vernacular, music, settings
- creating epistemologies in the process—narrative sociology
- on the horizon of expectations: we’ve already been conditioned to find certain images believable (e.g., a black boy holding a gun)
Top Boy (meant to be the UK’s answer to _The Wire__), another example of cultural verisimilitude
- even just the poster itself was a media Event with a capital E
- the release was soon after the 2011 riots, and one Guardian article decided to connect the two, despite the fact that there was no mention of the riots or anything like them in the show
  - points to hidden associations on the part of the writer
  - good quote from the article tho: “no jobs, no prospects and no power beyond their own postcode”
on diversity in film
- different from inclusion and different from equality
- fits in with the New Labour ethos, which is heavily politicised and commodified and (one might say) not actually genuine
clip of the stabbing scene from NW (adaptation of the Zadie Smith novel)
- Stuart Hall’s positive/negative theory
  - positive images among a dominant negative repertoire don’t displace the negativity—if the primary binaries are in place they continue to frame the meaning
- the way the film is made, the stabbing scene feels more voyeuristic than anything else (like a gaze into the life of the Other)
- “black neoliberal aesthetic” (amazing)
  - black people are still criminalised
  - “neoliberal” here refers to the fact that there is a market for these commodified images
- when the man (the stabber) draws up his hood in NW, that’s the moment he becomes the Other in the eyes of the audience
  - beyond diegesis (i.e. the actual plot), he is transmitting a signal to the audience that they are well aware of; he is putting on a mask
- quote from Stuart Hall: “Far from only coming from the still small point of truth inside us, identities actually come from outside, they are the way in which we are recognized and then come to step into the place of the recognitions which others give us”
- “black” and “crime” become symbiotic, naturalised; we need radical skepticism to counter
channel 4 fractured the media landscape in negative ways; it became a marginal outlet for all the “ethnic stuff”
- “separate but equal” by other means
- somewhat similar vein: moonlight was portrayed as a movie about blackness (another example of neoliberal framing, commodification)
  - similarly with 12 years a slave: the very premise of the plot, that here was a black man that didn’t “belong” with all the other slaves
  - the question we should ask here is: what is it about the media ecology that requires this kind of image? especially when Brad Pitt makes a cameo as this weird white saviour character
on diversity quotas
- they don’t fundamentally challenge root inequalities; they’re very surface-level, paper over the problem
- they shut down discussion
- setting an arbitrary number
- evades a deep questioning of the whole idea of meritocracy
- very New Labour lol
- we should also be asking: who receives the benefits of such quotas?
  - certainly not the lowest common denominators
  - it’s those who already have cultural capital in the first place, who fit into the existing system with least resistance

Equality and discrimination: legal issues - week 14

Readings

No notes.

Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution

aka the 14th amendment. 1868.

Prohibition of discrimination in the European Convention on Human Rights

Article 14. 1950/1953.

African (Banjul) Charter on Human and People’s Rights

1981.

Lecture

Given by Nicola Lacey, School Professor of Law, Gender and Social Policy in LSE’s Department of Law

her specialty is criminal law
criminality has a lot to do with inequality because it comes from this standpoint of justice etc but ofc we know the least well-off members tend to be affected the most
reconciling feminism and “underreprsentation” of women in prosecution
equality instruments always implemented with words (legislation etc)
today: equality and discrim from a legal perspective
- equality act 2010, just the TOC, very complicated and structured
- US 1868, 14th amendment, equal protection clause: no state shall make laws abrdiging privileges of citizens + deprive right to life/liberty/property w/o due process
- key question when it comes to legal guarantees of equality: who does it pertain to? especially relevant in the US case
european human rights convention 1950/3, article 14, sets out equality w/o discrimination, but only where relevant to the rights set out in THIS convention
- also remember that a lot of these conventions/constitutions etc came as the result of upheaval
- US civil war, WWII
CEDAW:
- states who accept convention commit to ending discrimination against women (by anyone) in various ways
equality act: protected characteristics include
- age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation
- also political affiliation is missing which is a tricky one tbf (what counts as politics … as for any characteristic that is a choice, there has to be some nuance that looks at the intent behind that choice)
- often the specific chars chosen depend on perceived social problems (eg religion originally in NI but ot england/wales until lately)
- the question here is: does one regulatory regime fit all of these types of discriminations with very diff histories
- there are specific exemptions carved out for specific types of age discrim, like forced retirement age
- notably social class (or other economic factors) omitted, like in most legislation
- also note that it’s gender reasignment not allowing gender identity (like nonbinary), law is great at producing ambiguity but doesnt like to acknowledge its existence
def of direct discrimination: treating someone less favourably due to their protected characteristic
- ambiguity over because: can it be unintentional or does it have to be deliberate
indirect: accumulated rules, practices, institutions, applied formally neutrally but in practice result in exclusion etc when you dont have a good reason (“effects discrim”)
- eg height requirements would discriminate based on sex despite seeming neutrality in terms of protected chars
- have to show that it’s not a “proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”
  - eg firm having white men at the top because they get a biz advantage cus their clients like that (currently treated as illegal but the line is fuzzy, lots of discretion on part of judge)
note that although discrim is illegal under this act, damages are usualy small and only if intent can be shown
- and recall the “proportionate means” & “legitimate aim” lots of room for leeway
quote by anatole france: law forbids rich as well as poor to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, steal bread
- formal inequality can ofc disguise or rationalise substantive ineq
- can we move from treatment as an equal toward actual legal treatment
- opps or outcomes?
- resources, welfare, wellbeing, capabilities?
concepts of legislation against discrim
- status (lack of formal equality)
- direct (disparate treatment)
- indirect (disparate impact)
- reverse discrim (compensation for past discrim, affirm action etc)
- right now, lots of practical difficulties in actually having quotas or anything DUE TO equality law
q for nicola on whether things have changed since her article was published ~30 years ago
- legal regime hasnt really changed tho a few things have expanded
- she thinks it might have gotten worse, harder to enforce laws at the low level cus of labour market changes

Seminar

how are equality/discrim related to each other
- antidiscrim is a subset but not sufficient condition for equality
is the law capable of encoding adequate conception of equality
- there are some areas where it fails esp more private areas like household but can have symbolic effect even if unenforceable
assessing potential of law
- who is covered? citizens etc
- who can access it
- who implements it and how much leeway do they have
- gaps in whats included or not
- law can itself be a mechanism for ineq eg property rights

Why spatial inequalities matter - week 15

by Neil Lee. I zoned out this week, sorry (it was the same time as the Notes From Below launch …)

Health inequalities and policy - week 16

Aaron Reeves talking about health inequalities. My notes aren’t great, sorry. No notes from the readings.

Lecture

talking about cholera
mortality rates across europe
what explains health disparities between countries
relative position in income distribution affects mortality, not just the actual amount you earn
- (obvs, cus it controls what goods you have access to)
incentives for ruling classes to contain public health lower cus they’re not really as integrated, more segregated
- otoh labour costs will rise if a bunch of people die lol
why is health so much worse in the US
- food deserts where it’s really hard to get healthy food
- healthcare
- lifestyle choices (smoking, diet) but ofc look at structural factors too
my thought: why are we so focused on mortality
- when it’s a spectrum, having to work long hours at a shitty minimum wage job and living in a shitty house and having to sit on public transit for two hours every day is pretty close to death but that’s normalised
rel between income ineq and health depends on the level of income ineq (like second order) yeah no shit
one of those lectures meant to convince ppl that things are bad, well im convinced
- preaching to the choir etc
- increasingly realising that this program isnt really a good fit for me (or im not a good fit for the program)
on comparing health for diff income ineq levels when controlled for total income level
- my thought: it’s all relative cus it depends on labour power and shit and what money actually buys you
- plus health doesnt measure everything, mortality isnt the only important thing
- mental health??? alienation
wilkinson focused on when countries are already at a high level of wealth, just looking at ineq levels AMONG those countries, focused on that very small subset

Seminar

criticism of the spirit level (delusion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/aug/26/response-spirit-level-bad-social-science)
- from what i’ve heard, the spirit level’s strategy was to put together a bunch of case studies to prove that inequality is also bad for rich people? a very particular case of the shifted baseline phenomenon
- i would critique it from the left but at least it moves overton window idk
that 1980 report on healthcare shocked ppl cus national healthcare service etc
- my thought: what do people think income inequality is FOR if it doesnt negatively impact health
- like what is the purpose, what is being distributed?
- why dont i care about health in general
- because it’s not directly correlated to exploitation (ie systematised oppression) like smoking pollution diet etc
- the parts i care about are those tht are a direct result of capitalism/etc
boiling down wilkinson pickett arg to its core, inequality per se is bad for you
- agreed cus labour-power
- but also cost of living
- and hiring people to shine shoes
higher level problem: income inequality being important symptom of commodified, rampant capitalism and other systems of structural oppression
- why are people locked up? property crimes, or drug crimes

- week 17

Capitalism, technology and inequality 1 - week 18

Featuring David Soskice (part 1 of 2). Readings (for this week and next):

Goldin & Katz, 2007
Meltzer & Richard, 1981
Hall & Soskice, 2001 (VoC intro)
Iversen & Soskice, 2006
Kristensen & Lilja, 2012 (Nordic capitalism)
The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
Strangers in their own land by Arlie Russell Hochschild

i’m not a big fan of his approach but it’s a useful bellwether for mainstream takes on this topic

Lecture

(no time for seminar)

knowledge economy, transition from a time (golden ages, fordist) when stats were all good and moving in the right direction
- and then NEOLIBERALISM came shock
- things get better during the 1990s
- quote: chair of federal reserve bank, “age of great moderation”
- which ofc came to an end (or maybe pause) with fin crisis
- focused on advanced world (US, western europe and japan) since it’s driven both the ups and the downs
- switch in regime from mass prod to ICT
- acknowledged the role of politics, all key decisions are ultimately political
from fordist, period of rel high equality (wage compression etc)
- i get the sense that he wants to go back to the keynesian golden ages
- remember the gender equality issue in the fordist era, women expected to do domestic work etc
how did this happen?
- high degree of unionisation obvs (esp in manufacturing), biggest factor in income equality (compared to now)
- my thoughts: the ontological question of skilled v unskilled.
  - cant separate it from the moral factor
  - we think skilled workers are inherently more deserving
  - but what does it really mean to be skilled? isnt it just that you’re lucky enough to be able to command higher wages
  - circular definition really
- back then, rules were simple, “social contract” of the time that you could drp out of HS but as long as you had physical stamina (and male) could get a job in manufacturing, and do decently well
  - semi-skilled workers wages rising rel to skilled workers
- now onto the OPEC crises, which produced two major deflations (i assume he’s talking about 1971, 1973 stagflation?)
  - because of union power, the oil price increases translated into wage increase demands
  - and ofc volcker coup, birth of neoliberalism (jacked up interest rates) -> some details here
  - fed moved from fiscal to monetary policy
  - through 1980s, fall in inflation
  - and then ofc thatcher reagan
- and ofc around the same time: technological revolution
  - my question is: is it a coincidence that it occured during the economic rev (TINA world)
  - or was it inevitable for timing reasons
  - semiconductor as general purpose technology which gets used in pretty much everything now
- me: must remember what role technology plays in ec dev, from a marxist POV, productive forces, humanity mastery over nature
- now we’re moving toward knowledge economy, information age, computational-based production (capital) so less labour needed
- now onto the soviet union??
  - people werent allowed to have computers??
  - collapse coincided with huge boom in tech
- we’re in an interesting situation now where education is so common, more so than ever before
  - but those who DON’T have access to education do much worse
  - education has become more of a stratifier, filter, new cleavage where society is divided into upper class (those who use uber deliveroo etc) and lower (those who work for them)
- incentive changes??
  - since you can make a lot more money if you have tech skills?
  - physical skills no longer necessary
  - now people have huge incentives to raise level of their education (me: i hate thinking about this on an individual incentive level rather than structural collective level)
  - also potential for more group work, division of labour? communication/working togheter/social skills more and more important
  - i feel like he hasnt met a lot of silicon valley programmers lol
  - basically he’s describing the shift from manual to cognitive labour but in many more words than necessary
- during 1980s when manufacturing was doing badly, factories closed (not just up north in Manchester etc but also London)
  - worse in the US (rust belt) than it was here
  - but since 1990s things have reserved (big cities doing well cus of finance though lol)
  - me: is this really reversing (are things really getting better) when they’re not producing anything socially valuable, is it sustainable, obvs not
  - him: the question is why this has come about
  - me: is it not finance lol
- now going through arguments why this change has come about
- q relating to goldin and katz, immigration important element (think immigration to SV)
  - ok now he’s talking about taiwanese immigrants in silicon valley, also bangalore and india?
  - success of silicon valley due to immigrants
  - he’s saying this aspect (skilled immigration) is neglected on this topic
- me: is he going to mention entrepeneurial state?
- him: we would have thought knowledge economy would have been period of massive innovation and growth
  - but growth has actually come right down and the question is really why
  - (me: growth is a bad measurement anyway and we should challenge that maybe that’s an unhelpful take lol)
  - he admits that growth is higher in emerging economies than advanced
  - the q is the exent to which the latter growth is spillover effect of growth in advanced economies
- the role of politics in allowing tech change to happen the way it did
  - denationalised
  - education policy that resulted in half of population going to higher education (political decision)
now on urbanisation
- cities have become v important in last 25 years or so
- (me: cus of finance)
- also house prices (me: also finance, he completely didnt talk about the role of big capital in keeping up house prices)
- agglomeration
  - there’s a question of why that’s happening
  - (me: alec j ross talks about this, cant find quote tho)
- mentioned thomas friedman’s flat earth (big cities will disappear as info tech connects people)
  - since he wrote it, things have obvs gone in opposite direction (Smart people like to live/work together)
  - (me: remote work trend fighting against that but small in the grand scheme of things)
  - (also me: thoughts on trends at upper level of wages vs lower level, similar outcome but diff reasons)
  - “it would be slightly alarming if people could move wherever they want to move” because of a complex social norm/contract
    - “i’m not sure if i would feel confident making an agreement with you if you could just go off to whatever part of the world you want to”
    - how do you enforce trust, bargains etc
    - a lot of how the world works with today depends on long-term relationships
    - (me: why on earth is geographic proximity required for this)
    - he’s very much of the need-to-be-together school (analogy to marriage)
    - capital wants people in the same place so they’re easier to monitor and manage
    - on the agglomeration point, lots of things that cant be dispersed (care, services work)
    - me: it hasnt been automated yet just cus labour has been so cheap
- the obvious management school reason: due to companies setting up offices in places where they know they can poach workers from other companies (skilled clusters)
- q: why not small towns? literally who knows
  - now he’s talking about assortative mating (assuming maximising based on lifetime household income)
  - highly educated people paired up etc (esp cus people meet in uni, or through social networks, homophily etc)
- now he’s talking about housing prices
  - he’s not mentioning the extent to which that’s buoyed by global capital? makes it seems like it’s solely a matter of people wanting to live in the same city …
  - geographical segregation develops as people who cant afford to live in london move out NO SHIT
- “low-skilled workers physically needed”
  - ugh this conflation of care workers as low-skilled with all the moral judgments of that, should honestly use a new word
  - there’s an imbrication with meritocracy

Capitalism, technology and inequality 2 - week 19

Lecture

VoC, focus on advanced economies

northern european economies much more organised for stronger labour and more coordination (going back a long way)
just a thought: he doesnt really question skill-based allocation? kinda just takes it for granted, never critical
he’s acknowledging that democracy hasnt been increasing redistribution
- in fordism, labour market produced egalitarian outcomes
- in knowledge economy less egalitarian, bifurcation
- so just as political system becomes more crucial for providing equality, it has become less capable
soskice says that one reason for this:
- people losing out the most not a majority
- i dont really agree with this, i think we have to look at problems with the implementation of electoral systems literally everywhere
interesting that immigrant populist backlash tends to be along nationnal lines: why??

Seminar

(my bit, explaining the rise of far-right populism)

here i’m building on work by dani rodrik and by nancy fraser
in a word, i would say the answer is neoliberalism. in two different senses
- neoliberal policy over the last four decades
  - specifically, favouring capital over labour, resulting in increased inequality and worsening conditions for many at the bottom
  - combined with concurrent technological development and opening up the flow of goods through globalisation
  - low union density
- at the same time, there’s been this shift in the political landscape which i would call the failure of centrist politics
  - where the traditionally left parties have moved towards the centre
  - most significantly in the US with the Democratic Party (which was never very left-wing to begin with, tbh)
  - but here in the UK as well, despite the Labour party’s grounding in the labour movement
  - during the Blair years and even more in the Brown years of New Labour
  - the result was that these left parties gave up ground on economic issues
  - failed to challenge neoliberal policy, completely bought into the idea that there is no alternative
  - and so if they couldnt really compete on economic issues with the right, they ended up differing on cultural issues
  - i would say this is worse in the US than in the UK, and maybe that’s why
  - basically the democratic party offered so little
  - esp with clinton: classic liberal offer of everything is mostly fine just need to be nicer
- distinguish from left-wing populism, which is what we’ve seen in latin america (rodrik)
branko milanovic inequality possibility frontier
- as more is produced due to technological development
- industrial revolution -> can produce so much more thus inequality goes up (since more is possible)

Public Policy and Inequality - week 20

Readings

Inequality: What can be done?
Good Times, Bad Times
Oxfam’s Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index 2016

Lecture

John Hills

compensating for the market (ie taxes: progressive, wealth, avoidance, inheritance, etc. but also benefits, assistance)
- (an overview of existing policies, nothing really new)
random thoughts from this lecture while looking at graphs showing effects of increasing benefits on poverty headcount
- using the wrong tool? so invested in the current system, constantly trying to work within the system
- when you really need is to reimagine it entirely
on the tax-free allowance and problems with that
- basically useless since it’s above poverty line
- and other problem with that is that it’s essentially a gift to the rich (unless you make it progressive)
- it’s ideological, disguised as a progressive measure
tilting the market
- education/training
- regulating things like finance (socially useless, tobin tax)
  - thought here: obvs everyone is offended by the idea that you can make so much money through slightly faster algorithmic trading etc but where do you stop? surely you have to take that to its logical conclusion & see the problems inherent in finance as a whole. moderation and being reasonable/sensible is just being irrational and unwilling to see the bigger picture
- workers’ rights (collective bargaining, min wage)
- govt investment in tech (defense, etc). market regulations, trade unions, etc
- he said something about pensions & how if you are expected to live longer (gender etc) you should pay more
  - i get that he’s trying to make a point about regulating away discriminating behaviour, but that is actually the worst logic & just highlights the ideological bankruptcy of current discussions around pensions etc
replacing the market
- decommodification
- expropriation
- pooled resources (utopia)
- revolution
looking at graph of how much they receive vs how much they pay in:
- you’re already making a mistake by accepting the idea that income is fairly earned
- framing mistake, buying into that narrative
- “implication: mitt romney was wrong?” which is already ceding ground in terms of the moral debate - people literally only make the incomes they do because of other people
- me: have to be careful about uncritically accepting what people “want” governments to do about inequality, when the whole point of capitalist realism is that the majority of people are meant to not understand how things work
- spending a lot of time looking at graphs (over time, across countries) measuring attitudes towards redistribution etc. most of this is explaining exactly why this is a waste of time so why are we doing it??
reasons for UBI:
- ends poverty trap + welfare stigma
- can address inequalities in social secrity provision (gender)
- empowers people to find better jobs
- tax robots?
- supporters: MLK, charles murray (and more recently: Silicon valley overlords)
obvs things to think about: citizenship/immigration and how that works globally
list of potential problems
- philip van parijs: surfers

The New Global Public Good & Inequality - week 21

Readings

The Normativity of Numbers: World Bank and IMF Conditionality
The Marketization of HIV/AIDS Governance: Public-Private Partnerships and Bureaucratic Culture in Pakistan
Making a River of Gold: speculative state planning, informality and neo-liberal governance on the Hooghly
Visible fists, clandestine kicks, and invisible elbows: three forms of regulating neoliberal poverty

Lecture

Laura Bear of the anthropology dept

some of the readings are from two parallel worlds, juxtapose claims of powerful orgs (public-private partnerships) vs what actually happens (acc to activists etc)
what is the global new public good?
- seen as politically neutral (not left or right) instead technocratic best practice (should link to andy merrifield’s book The Amateur)
- changes in public debt regimes, treated as if it’s regular financial debt (lined to markets by sovereign debt bonds)
- public good reduced to the idea of effiicency by a very narrow measure (not inequality but instead financial/quantitative targets)
results in entrepreneurial/flexible state where bureaucrats have ambiguous power
- speculative state, amplifying effects of volatile markets
- accumulation by dispossesion by private sector from public resources
  - public private partnerships (PFI ex)
  - also guaranteeing of profits by taxpayers (privatise gains socialise losses)
this global “new public good” seen in IFI debt regimes in global south + austerity in global north
the old public good: political relation, socialist state
- debts treated as political, for collective long-term investment in future
- funded by one-off loans from banks to state (fixed low rates) or central bank, repaid by taxpayer
- based around central planing (5-year + plans)
in the new public good, neoliberal ideology propagated by IMF and WB
- if state is holding onto a large amount of capital then it’s seen as fundamentally unproductive
- state starvation thesis (assuming markets are efficient)
- central bank independence, commercial bank expansion
- sovereign debt bonds, financial market trading in derivatives
- public-private partnerships
- so taxpayers subsiding financial firms + PPP firms
shifting to a model where citizen is seen as a consumer, purpose of govt is to provide value in terms of cost-benefit
- third-world politics, based on idea that old forms of govt were fundamentally corupt in third world
result of this new model (from anthro perspctive): precarious citizenship, democratic deficit
financial debt regimes change the state
- normativity of numbers in goals and targets (the specific kinds collected are problematic)
results in brokerage and acccumulation from public sector
- flexible bureaucracy more responsive to citizens needs + entrepreneurial governance more suited to creation of growth in markets
- which really just results in new kinds of brokers, NGOs and management consultancies
- also reduced transparency: complex structure, regulations, secrecy
- hidden accumulation from public resources
- dispossesion of citizens rights and taxpayesr resources
- speculative planning: bureaucrats given leeway to attract investors/entrepeneurs in the short term (behind the scenes negotations)
democratic deficit
- national institutions captured by global IFIs and markets
- bureaucracies guided by audit practices
- commons of public sectors enclosed
alternatives
- sovereign debt jubilee along with dissolving IMF/WB (which i can get behind tbh)
- new forms of government financing w/o marketisation
- challenge technocratic model of central banking
- social movements to challenge status quo politics
- other things in this vein
arguing against technocratic form of power that is quite recent

seminar

ultimately it’s accountability that is of concern, not necessary the professionalisation aspect (obviously)
like lack of institutions and professionalism isnt necessary a good thing …
me on higher education TEF marketisation, sometimes you need industrial action to reverse direction

SO478: Social Scientific Analysis of Inequalities

Assessments

Lecture notes

Introduction - week 1

Reading

What’s wrong with inequality? – The Conversation

Defending the One Percent by N. Gregory Mankiw

The 4 biggest reasons why inequality is bad for society – ideas.ted.com

Inequality by Anthony B. Atkinson (chapters 1-2)

Global Inequality by Branko Milanović (chapter 1)

Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty (chapter 5)

Lecture

Seminar

Global inequalities - week 2

Readings

Income inequality in the developing world by Martin Ravallion

Who are the Global Top 1% by Sudhir Anand and Paul Segal

Global Income Distribution by Christoph Lakner and Branko Milanovic

Lecture

Different methodological approaches

Seminar

Global inequalities and migration - week 3

Readings

Towards a new politics of migration? by Bridget Anderson

Global Inequality by Branko Milanović (chapter 3)

Strategic Gendering by Saskia Sassen

Lecture

Seminar

Inequality dynamics in developing nations since 1980 - week 4

Readings

Global Inequality by Branko Milanović (chapter 2)

Falling Inequality in Latin America by Giovanni Andrea Cornia (chapters 1, 3)

Lecture

The project

What drives decreases in inequality?

Inequality decline in Latin America since 2000

Inequality trends in Asia since the 1980s

Inequality trends in Africa since the 1980s

On measurement

Some personal thoughts on neoliberalism

Seminar

Marx and beyond - week 5

Readings

Class, Status, Party by Max Weber

The Forms of Capital (scanned PDF) by Pierre Bourdieu

Capitals, assets, and resources by Mike Savage et al

Lecture

The orthodox economic approach

The sociological approach

The interdisciplinary approach

Seminar

- week 6

Capabilities, poverty and inequality - week 7

Readings

The Capability Approach by David A. Clark

Collective Capabilities, Culture, and Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom by Peter Evans

Assessing global poverty and inequality by Ingrid Robeyns

Lecture

Seminar

Social mobility and inequality - week 8

Readings

Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite by Shamus Khan (introduction)

Social Class in the 21st Century by Mike Savage (chapter 6)

The Price of the Ticket (PDF) by Sam Friedman

Lecture

Seminar

Algorithmic inequality - week 9

Readings

Lecture and seminar

Capitalism, inequality and conjugated oppression - week 10

Reading

Class Racism by Etienne Balibar

Conjugated Oppression by Philippe Bourgois

Lecture

Inequality and Austerity - week 11

Readings

Can Society be Commodities All the Way Down (PDF) by Nancy Fraser

Rethinking Capitalism by Mariana Mazzucato and Michael Jacobs (introduction)

Austerity Measures in Developing Countries by Isabel Ortiz and Matthew Cummins

Lecture