Whose economy is it anyway?

Tweet

 

It has been calculated that people in the UK, on average, are living a ‘three planet lifestyle’, which is to say that if the entire population of the world lived the same lifestyle we would need three times the amount of resources available to us on Earth. Now there are, of course, a number of estimates and assumptions used to arrive at that conclusion, at least some of which are inevitably open to challenge. But, even if we quibble about the detail, the conclusion that some of the world’s population are using resources at a rate which could not be sustained if everyone lived the same lifestyle seems a reasonable one. There are choices we can make: we could reduce the population, we could reduce current living standards in the richest countries, we could find a way of sustaining the same living standards whilst using fewer resources, or we could prevent the rest of the world from ever attaining a similar living standard to our own. The third of those is likely to be more acceptable than the rest, although there are questions about how easy it will be to achieve. And the default position of the richest seems, by and large, to be about holding on to what we have.

The 'three-planet' analysis, surely, makes it clear that the debate about sustainability cannot be divorced from considering the size of the human population. As far as I’m aware, no one is suggesting, or ever likely to suggest, thankfully, a cull – although the appalling propensity of mankind for armed conflict might inadvertently have that effect, and unchecked climate change is also likely to add to the human death rate, along with misery and grief. There is, though, a much more benign effect of growing affluence which is likely to check overall human population growth at some future date, and which is already impacting the richest countries. Growing affluence and lower infant mortality lead to a falling birth rate, and some of the richest countries are already seeing a birth rate running below the replacement rate, leading to predictions of falling populations.

From a global and sustainability perspective, this is surely good news, even if the impact is still some way away. It’s not the way that capitalist economics sees the situation though. An economic system predicated on the necessity for growth in order to perpetuate capital accumulation requires a permanently growing population. And an economic system which assumes that wealth belongs to those who are economically active, whilst the rest of us are a ‘burden’ on the economically active cannot see a way of carrying the cost of that burden without a growing working age population, especially as the age profile of societies changes. Supporters of the system can only imagine responses which involve a higher birth rate, more immigration, increasing retirement ages, or higher taxes on those who work.

But what if we instead reimagine the economic system in different terms? An economic system is a human construct; there is no ‘invisible hand’, only a set of rules drawn up and operated by humans. Current rules work first and foremost for the benefit of those who own and accumulate capital and rent-seekers. That’s exactly what they were designed to do (and it’s no coincidence that capital accumulation and rentier income are taxed less highly than wages and salaries). The alternative is to see the economic system as a social construct, and design it to meet the needs of society as a whole. Human society isn’t only composed of workers and capitalists; there are also some unable to work, including the young, the old, the sick and the disabled. Those groups aren’t a ‘burden’; they are part of a complex social structure, and the productive output of any economy needs to meet the needs of all of its members, including those groups. It might be argued that taxation is simply the practical mechanism by which that is achieved, but capitalist ideology has created a belief that starts with an assumption that the productive output belongs primarily to those who are being taxed, and that taxation means that it is somehow being taken from them. The demand for lower taxes – and in consequence for less expenditure on meeting the needs of those considered to be a ‘burden’ – is a direct result of that ideological economic perspective. And those who claim that we are in a post-ideological politics have bought into that perspective, hook, line, and sinker.