Orwell Was Right, Inequality Has Fallen Like A Stone

The Blair who was useful that is

Eric Blair, the useful one, once pointed out that:

In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction.

That’s from Chris Snowdon’s new intro to 1984 - you should buy a copy.

Not that Eric knew enough economics to know this but what he’s talking about is consumption inequality.

Sure, we’ve Oxfam squealing that wealth inequality is rising summat fearsome. It ain’t - they fail to account for what we already do to reduce wealth inequality. Many tell us that income inequality is rising summat fearsome. It ain’t. Global income inequality has been falling this past 40 years and as all men are indeed brothers it’s the global number that matters.

But the one that’s really fallen like a stone is that consumption inequality. Consumption is also really the only one of the three that matters. Sure, a world in which there are those without three squares and a crib is not a good one. But once all do have three squares etc then whatever other inequality there is is, well, it’s not actually all that important is it?

Say, housing in London. Sure, it’s not solved yet, it’s still not right. But if all who live in London have a bedroom each, kitchen that works, bathroom ditto, sitting room large enough for a sofa and TV then, well, we’ve largely solved housing in London. That there are then some who spend £10 million to live near Eaton Square and £50 million to live on it is an interesting little insight into positional goods but it’s not actually important. That the St Giles Rookery is gone is and was the important thing. That the average Brit can get on a ‘plane to Benidorm (though fuck knows why, plenty of better places to go) without really breaking fiscal sweat means we’ve solved that problem. That others spend 100x the amount to be able to go there on a private plane is, again, interesting but not important.

Modern wealth, modern income inequality leads to consumption inequality, sure, just as it always did. But the consumption inequality these days is in positional goods. OK, not wholly, but very largely. And inequality in positional goods just doesn’t matter a damn.

We really have got to what Orwell thought would be equality. In 1930s England (which was his mental reference point) all of these things - all - were signifiers of significant wealth or income:

As a poorer country the UK was a little behind on these things but my best guess would be that we’re ahead of the US on washing machines today (the US still has a habit of communal machines in apartment blocks). And it amuses that central heating isn’t even on the list. This was something very middle class indeed in the 1960s, really only became "normal” in the UK in the late 70s into the 80s. As with double glazing. These days you’re defined as being in fuel poverty if you cannot heat your house, always and all of it, to a level that no one at all could before that central heating. No, really, coal fire heated houses might average 10oC in winter and that would only be in rooms with an actual fire - others would be at 0oC.

This is not to get into a Four Yorkshiremen but people would be astonished at how cold houses were 1970s and earlier. My own arrival in the US in 1981 had me wondering how they had heating systems that heated all the house, properly, all winter. How could anyone afford that?

Inequality, as it actually matters, is over. Well, among us it is, there’s still aiding that other few billion up into that petit bourgeois of the three squares etc. But that’s doable, as the reduction in absolute poverty these past few decades shows.

That this is true is probably best proven by the way that positional goods have become so much more important. Humans do like their social status and distinctions so, as the access to the basics of life are available to all so things that, by definition cannot be available to all become more important.