‘Social mobility is what characterises a fair society, rather than a particular level of income equality.’ (Nick Clegg, Guardian 24.11.2010) Do you agree with Nick?

28/03/2012

In analysing whether it is essential for a concept of fairness that social mobility outrules income equality as if they were totally incompatible with one-another, this paper will analyse the points in Nick Clegg’s statement that led him to the conclusions of the title. In particular, the focus will be on his assumptions about what constitutes poverty and on the limits that the economical recession is posing on public policy. An analysis of the nature and extent of social mobility in Britain, accompanied by a very brief historical overview of discourses concerning it, is also due in order to contextualise how relevant is the claim that this view of justice is, as new and progressive as advocated (Clegg 2010). Comparing and contrasting philosophical views of distributive justice will eventually facilitate a coherent conclusion on the virtues and faults of the initial statement.  Research highlighted by the book ‘The spirit level’ (Wilkinson and Pickett 2010), regarding the outcomes of income equality, will also be discussed before final conclusions are drawn.

Nick Clegg’s statement about social mobility is part of a wider reflection that starts with a discourse about poverty and ends with considerations about the role of institutions during economic recession. He sees poverty as constituted by both financial and non-financial components (2010). He identifies the financial ones as being portrayed by the traditional ‘poverty line’ that draws a distinction between the better off and the vulnerable. And he describes the non-financial relative identifiers of poverty as a spatially deprived geography where poor health care, security and education influence individuals’ ability to raise above certain standards of income (2010). His criticism towards the precedent government’s aim to get people above the poverty line is grounded in two different directions: one economical and one philosophical. The first addresses the moral responsibility of intergenerational equity where future generations do not deserve to suffer from the actual generation’s failure to address deficit in the short term. This stance allows him to defend the decision towards austerity measures and cuts. The second consists in analysing what the state role is and concluding from a liberal point of view that the state interference (and expenditure) should be minimal in allocating resources to individuals and should rather focus on maximising opportunities and ‘life-chances’ in the long run. He somehow identifies the direct allocation of resources to individuals as a weakness, both because of the costs involved and because he doesn’t believe that inequality (no matter the extent) equals injustice unless it is intergenerational  (2010). Social mobility, therefore, provides the optimal time-span and relative amount of spending necessary for the indirect effects that the coalition government aims to achieve.

Clegg’s very definition of poverty is debatable, Amartya Sen, economist and nobel prize famous for his economic and philosophical research about poverty and justice, offers strong arguments in opposition to Clegg’s discourses. Although they both agree that poverty is not only an economic issue, their views are quite different in focus and in substance. While Clegg discusses how trivial is being just above the ‘poverty line’ in term of life chances (2010), Sen points out that it is essential to know both the extent of the gap below it and the amount of those in poverty (2000:102). They both agree that income can be just partially responsible in determining poverty, but Sen asserts that poverty is a state of deprivation of individual capabilities (2000:111) while Clegg focuses on deprivation of equality of access to public resources and deprivation of security (2010). Sen provides a practical starting point by considering how effectively capable poor would be of climbing the social ladder, regardless of their income, health, disposition or attitude (2006:480-481). Clegg seems to totally dismiss this aspect as relevant, failing to acknowledge how unequal, equality of access might become where a lack of capability applies. Sen is also very critical towards policy makers who, due to lack of resources, accommodate their definition of poverty and the aims of policy in order to stir the few resources available away from it. He clearly warns that the very definition of poverty marks how poverty is or is not addressed. And despite recognising that policy ultimately has to be achievable, he argues that failing to target poverty is not justifiable by the mere scarcity of means (2000:107).

The variations in the understanding and definition of poverty consequentially apply to the complexity of social mobility. Statistics of social mobility in Britain tend to focus either on income mobility or on occupational stratification mobility, stressing intergenerational and intragenerational differences (Wilkinson and Pickett 2010:157, Savage 2000). This account fails to consider cultural components of one’s place in society and of one’s actual chances of changes. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu unveiled a very complex intersection of measurable and non-measurable influences in one’s position in society. He advocated that one is not only the product of one’s own social, cultural and economic capital. The ‘habitus’, an unconscious internalisation of the limitations posed by our capitals and by society’s reactions to it (very similar to Focault’s panopticon), dictates our tastes and needs ultimately influencing our social position too. (Wilkinson and Pickett 2010:163-165, Butler and Watt 2007:173). Yet social mobility is often advocated either as a first step towards ‘life chances’ or as constituting a life-chance in itself.  Even when ruling out all of the non-economic aspects of mobility and relying exclusively on statistics, total mobility rates clearly fail to account for total life chances. In fact, total mobility rates are composed of vertical and non-vertical mobility, the latter being mobility within jobs or incomes that do not shift significantly one’s position in society. Vertical mobility, moreover, is constituted by both upward and downward mobility (Savage 2000:78). When advocating mobility in order to increase life chances, Clegg was supposedly talking about intra-generational upward mobility only. He clearly failed to identify the extent of the necessary time-span for mobility to operate such changes. And he also failed to describe how social mobility alone would be determining life opportunities in a period of recession when unemployment rates are rising despite the rise in jobs (BBC 2012).

Although deeply rooted popular wisdom still sees social mobility as the logical prize for the performance of the right abilities, aspirations and behaviours such as ‘hard work, effort and talent’ (Savage 2000:73), statistics seem to suggest that the logical connection of behaviour and effective mobility is not as straightforward as it seems. Quite on the contrary, researchers highlight a trend of stability (when they don’t highlight a decline) for mobility in the UK  (Osberg and Smeeding 2006:453, Goldthorpe and Jackson 2007:541,Wilkinson and Pickett 2010:159-161). Research shows that mobility increases only for the lowest classes, but not for the better. Analysing the type of mobility patterns of horizontal, downward mobility and mobility in and out of employment seems to prevail (Savage 2000:92-93). It might be questioned then, why the use of social mobility as a political tool to gain consensus is quite common in Britain and has become a ‘recurrent theme in speeches by government ministers’(Goldthorpe and Jackson 2007:526). While in the Tatcherite era, the aspiration of the working classes to social mobility was encouraged through policies which promoted  status like property ownership (Jones 2011:60) but never mentioned the term, New Labour has made extensive use of it. Tony Blair himself advocated the necessity of promoting social mobility and described it as being ‘The great force for social equality in dynamic market economies’ (cited in Goldthorpe and Jackson 2007:526). The Labour Secretary of State for Education in 2005 described it as basic to a ‘just society’ (Kelly cited in Goldthorpe and Jackson 2007:526). The only substantial news in Clegg’s claims is that he opposes social mobility to income equality denying the ‘fairness’ of the latter and that he advocates that an unequal society is fair provided there is intergenerational mobility (2010).

In order to understand where Clegg’s statement stands and how justifiable it is, the most common philosophical stances in distributional justice will be compared. Natural liberty (Sandel 1998:68) will be deliberately left out both because it advocates entitlements that even Clegg refuses and due to lack of space. Utilitarianism targets the maximisation of the total-sum utility in order to maximise everyone’s increase in share, focusing on the added value that one would have in case of total-sum increase. This approach does not provide factual data and does not address distribution, needs or initial endowments (Sen 2006:474-476). Total utility egalitarianism, instead, pursues the equality in the share of the total that each component gets. Those like Clegg, who advocate equality of opportunity (Sandel 1998:68) and hold meritocratic views usually oppose this approach. Since they consider the losses and gains that each individual gets from competition in a free market as deserved (provided there’s an equal start), they find total utility unjust towards those who, pursuing virtue, are not entitled to their achievements (Sandel 1998:72-73). This view that total utility might be biased appears irrespectively of the assumption that it is feasible its absolute form, which would require continuous adjustments by the state to level inequality (Sen 2006:478). Meritocracy, though, is not free from controversy. John Rawls, while analysing desert, objects that people don’t deserve their initial endowments as they are arbitrarily provided by birth. He goes further to say that even if a society was to succeed in providing an equal start for everyone (a goal that is equally difficult to achieve in reality), people would still not deserve the fruits of their labour. (Sandel 2009:154). He doesn’t recognise a moral ground for desert because he fails to recognize virtue or ownership in both efforts and skills that justify virtue or ownership in their results (Sandel 1998:71). Virtue, in particular, is a label that is attached to the endowment by the very institution that promotes and appreciates it, and it doesn’t hold any value in itself (Sandel 1998:76, Sandel 2009:163-164). The solution for Rawls consists in considering the totality of natural endowments as a common pool for society, from which the better endowed are allowed to take their advantage only if and to the extent in which they benefit the less endowed (Sen 2006:479, Sandel 1998:77, Sandel 2009:156). Sen, despite recognizing that Rawls’ theory  is powerful, claims that his portrayal of advantage fails to account for the relationship between the specific advantage or disadvantage and the person (Sen 2006:480). He claims that a form of utilitarianism that focuses on ‘basic capabilities’ rather than on total-sum utility could account for the processing of possessions into resources. This would equip the policy maker with a wider picture on the subjects of policy, provided that there is clarity on the cultural context and that capabilities could be listed in an index (Sen 2006:481).

Clegg’s statement, all in all, doesn’t seem as progressive and fair in aims as Rawls or Sen’s as he only recognises injustice in a form of protracted inequality in time rather than in inequality itself (Clegg 2010). But let’s consider how relevant is his claim that the pursue of income equality fails to ‘liberate and empower’ individuals (Clegg 2010). Wilkinson and Pickett researched official statistics for the EU and US to see if there were any correlations between the spectrum of income equality/inequality with various psychological and practical aspects that would make life better or worse. The aspects were: ‘level of trust, mental illness, life expectancy, obesity, children’s educational performance, teenage births, homicides, imprisonment rates and social mobility’ (Wilkinson and Pickett 2010:19). The results of the research are extremely interesting. While national average income does not show any particular correlation with any of the aspects cited earlier, when researching different levels of income equality the correlation is evident and findings regarding both European and American states are consistent in showing a trend (Wilkinson and Pickett 2010). The trend is that inequality in income affects negatively everybody’s lives, even those who are relatively better off. Death rates comparison across classes between Sweden and England and Wales showed that there is still a considerable difference between the two countries even at highest income levels. Infant mortality comparison showed the same trend (Wilkinson and Pickett 2010:178-179). And what might come as a surprise to Clegg is that countries where income equality gaps are minimal show the highest levels of social mobility (Wilkinson and Pickett 2010:160). The widening of gaps might explain for the difficulty to move upwards (Blanden, Gregg and Machin cited in Wilkinson and Pickett 2010:161). But even wanting to consider the non-economical aspects of mobility cited by Clegg, like education, health and the sense of safety we can see that countries where income equality is higher have better educational achievement, better life expectancy, better physical and mental health and better levels of trust (Wilkinson and Pickett 2010). Since education is regarded as the primary source of mobility it is worth noting that state investment in education is strongly correlated to income differences (Wilkinson and Pickett 2010:161). The coalition government’s choice of raising university fees by reducing funding, seem highly irrational and irresponsible under this light, whether we look at the immediate consequences or at the long-term ones.

Concluding, Clegg seems to underestimate, in his unjustifiably optimistic defence of equality of opportunity, the power that politics and politicians have in changing the state of facts instead of delegating contingent responsibilities to the next government or generation. While he is very conscientious in stating that deficit should not be passed on (Clegg 2010), he’s not so keen to advocate that the negative effects of competition and inequality that a free market inevitably generates, are to be avoided or counterbalanced. His idea of social mobility is romanticised to fit common sense rather than grounded in evidence and takes the form of a justification for lack of investments. His future projections of minimal investment and maximal gain in the long run, appear, at best, fictional. All in all, the political discourse takes the form of an excuse to delegate the responsibility for inequality and injustice to the very recipients of inequality and injustice. Social mobility in itself does not account for fairness in a given society. Dignity, trust, health, knowledge, well-being and satisfaction do. Phenomenon like ‘displaced aggression’ (Marcus-Newhall et al cited in Wilkinson and Pickett 2010: 166) and labour exploitation are results of competition and inequality. By failing to recognise them as unfair in order to utter a blind faith in fictional entities like so called ‘free’ markets, politicians fail to acknowledge the centrality of humanity in democracies, their power as policy makers to change the status quo by setting fair aims in the first place and their representational role of the community as a whole.

References

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Jones, O. (2011) Chavs: the demonisation of the working class, London: Verso.

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Sen, A. (2000) ‘Poverty and affluence’ in Inequality reexamined, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 102-116.

Sen, A. (2006) ‘Equality of what?’ in Goodin, R. and Petit, P., eds., Contemporary Political Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 473-483.

Wilkinson, R. G. and Pickett, K. (2010) The spirit level : why equality is better for everyone, New [ed.]. ed., London: Penguin.