Austerity for the many, riches for a few
Income inequality has been growing for decades in the UK, extensive evidence reveals. In recent years, so-called ‘austerity’ has served as a smokescreen for even more wealth to be transferred to a handful of millionaires.
An entertaining and informative two-part BBC documentary, The Super-Rich and Us, showed the widening gap on screen. Presenter Jacques Peretti also explained, in simple terms, how this took place.
He spoke with ordinary people concerned with making ends meet, as well as an elite faced with deciding what new purchases to add to their collection of classic cars or polo ponies.
Over the past year or so, researchers and journalists have exposed the ways in which growing inequality has been promoted by government policies.
Drawing on this, sections of the news and social media have highlighted the falsity of claims that "we are all in it together" and "there is no alternative", as large numbers suffer as a result of austerity policies.
Church leaders, trade unions and charities have focused attention to the most damaging effects, as well as raising questions about society’s values. It is not just the poorest who suffer: many experience insecurity, just a pay-cheque or two from disaster.
The loss of public services has affected many people, though damage to child protection, family support, adult social care and the NHS has had especially appalling consequences.
Yet privatisation, and the transfer of what used to belong to everyone into the hands of huge corporations and millionaires, continues. One scene in Peretti’s series showed cash-strapped local authorities trying to sell off land to property barons.
Even after the economic scandals of the past decade, some people still believe that government policies which lavishly reward the super-rich are just. Others either do not know or do not care about growing inequality or believe it is too powerful to resist. Some turn their anger instead against foreigners, unemployed and disabled people.
However, even within the ruling class, some have come to realise that an ever-widening gap – in which some splash out hundreds of thousands of pounds on luxury goods while others compete for a few hours’ work – is not sustainable.
Among the wider public, the hollowness of the practical and moral case for austerity measures and further privatisation may be becoming increasingly clear.
* The Super-Rich and Us is available on BBC i-player on http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04xw4rw.
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© Savitri Hensman is a widely published Christian commentator on politics, welfare, religion and more. An Ekklesia associate, she works in the equalities and care sector, and was born in Sri Lanka.