A report has concluded that wealth inequality poses a systematic threat to British social security, with senior figures across the political, academic and business worlds contributing to its findings.
The report, entitled Inequality Knocks, draws on the results of a roundtable held at King’s College London, co-authored by the Fairness Foundation, Future Threats Lab, Policy Institute, and Department of War Studies at the Russell Group university.
The panel argued that the government’s failure to tax wealth effectively meant it lacked the means to “uphold the social contract,” leading to a vicious cycle: underfunded public services, deteriorating living standards, and a consequent transfer of power to populists allied to the wealthy.
The roundtable reasoned that wealth inequality could lead to a dangerous double- bind, making the public more vulnerable to threats to national security – like climate impacts and challenges posed by AI – while simultaneously eroding our ability to retaliate.
It cautioned: “Without decisive action to address wealth inequality and its consequences in the coming years, the UK risks entering a period of deep social deterioration that will affect everyone.”
These warnings arrive shortly after the Faculty and Institute of Actuaries released a report indicating a forthcoming collapse in worldwide GDP, with accompanying grave social consequences, should carbon emissions maintain their current trajectory.
That report, Planetary Solvency, argued for an immediate mobilisation of finance and policy to stave off social collapse, noting that the effects of climate breakdown are generally excluded from economic forecasts: the new King’s College London report likewise questions presuppositions about our future, challenging “traditional assumptions that social stability will prevail.”
“We’re dealing with a nexus of risks and crises,” suggests Dr Michael Albert, a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Social and Political Science.
Albert argued that risks could conglomerate into a polycrisis: “The climate crisis, health care, public services, cost of living… it’s a nexus of problems.”
Speaking in reaction to the reports, Albert was frank in his assessment: “I think a lot of people have some kind of felt sense, in their bones, that we are headed for some deep crises in our way of life and in our politics. And that belief exists across the political spectrum.”
“The UK imports something like 40-50 per cent of its food,” Albert noted. “Escalating food prices leading to social unrest and instability is a real risk.”
Albert also pointed to the dangers of disinformation and fresh pandemics. “We had the riots last year in England and Northern Ireland triggered by anti-immigrant sentiment.”
“Among the mainstream political class and economists, and all the major political parties, there is a tendency to ignore or downplay these risks – and faith in managerial capacity, and technocratic ability, of governments to manage and ‘muddle through’,” says Albert, reflecting on a sense of political complacency.
His conclusion? That crises must be confronted with a “’whatever it takes’ mentality” – echoing the words of Mario Draghi in response to the Eurozone crisis in 2012 – arguing that “the idea that there is no money to tackle these problems is a political, ideological construction.”
Otherwise, the academic warned, “We’re on a one-way trip into the unknown of escalating risks.”
“London Riots Clapham Junction morning after DSC_7327” by Ben Tilley is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.