1.
1913-1989 Top 1% income share – married couples and single adults
1990-2011 Top 1% income share – adults
Top Income Shares in the UK 1914-2011
Source: Alvaredo, F., Anthony B. Atkinson, A.B., Piketty, T. and Saez, E. The world top incomes database,
http://topincomes.g-mond.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/ , dd/mm/yyyy 16th April 2014

2.
Wealth concentration at the top
Collective wealth of the UK’s 1000 richest
people
1997 = £98 billion
2008 = £413 billion
2010 = £336 billion
2012 = £414 billion
2013 = £450 billion
2014 = £519 billion
Source: Sunday Times Rich List
Cost of the NHS, 2014 = £127bn
Office of National Statistics:
http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/fed_spending_2014UKbn

3.
Earned and Unearned Income
Earned: conditional on producing goods and services
Unearned and extracted - ‘because they can’: derived
from ownership of assets wanted by others, rather
than from contributions to the production and
distribution of goods and services (asset-based)
Recovering a lost vocabulary: ‘rentiers’, ‘property
without function’ (Tawney), ‘improperty’ (Hobson),
‘illth’ (Ruskin), ‘functionless investor’ (Keynes), ‘the
class of parasites’ (Marx)

4.
New Era v. Richard Benyon

5.
John Stuart Mill on Rentiers
"Landlords grow rich in their sleep
without working, risking or
economising.”
“If some of us grow rich in our sleep,
where do we think this wealth is
coming from? It doesn't materialize
out of thin air. It doesn't come
without costing someone, another
human being. It comes from the
fruits of others' labours, which they
don't receive.“
(1848) Principles of Political Economy,
Bk.v, Ch. II
Photo: Wikipedia commons
"John-stuart-mill 1". Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

6.
‘Investment’
• As wealth creation – focus on what is invested
in (e.g. infrastructure, equipment, training).
• As wealth extraction - focus on the financial
gains from any kind of lending, saving, trading
of financial assets or speculation – regardless
of whether it contributes to any objective
investment(wealth creation), or benefits
others.

7.
Billionaires’ Benefits Street:
Bishops’ Row, London

8.
Debt/usury

9.
Source: Kennedy, M. (2012) Occupy money, New Society Publishers

10.
Shares: a bizarre institution
• 97+% are bought in secondary market – money
doesn’t go to firm
• Entitles owner to dividends and speculative gains
– unearned income
• Why are absentee, uncommitted shareholders
the prime stakeholders in firms?
• Why are workers/employees (present, committed
and dependent), who produce the goods and
services on which the firm depends, not
stakeholders?

11.
What about ‘the working rich’?
• Salary earning – but from rentier organizations
(e.g. financial institutions, property firms) i.e.
rentiers-at-one-remove
• Markets are not meritocracies . . .
• ‘Because they can’
• Disempowered labour, empowered
management, shareholder value

12.
The Jobs/Dyson* defence: truly innovative
people deserve everything they get
• 1. how much would they
have got, if they hadn’t
owned (much of) their
firms?
• Working/entrepreneurial
capitalists: Owners take the
profit (financial and
symbolic) produced partly
by unacknowledged others.
*Steve Jobs (Apple) $8.3billion;
James Dyson (Dyson vacuum cleaners)
£1.45billion

13.
The Rule of the Rich
but plutocracy is about more than toffs . . .

14.
The rule of the rich
• Structural – control commanding heights
• Lobbying, thinktanks, political donations,
consultancies/jobs for politicians, ‘researchers’,
regulatory capture
• Tax havens
• TTIP – Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
• Legal corruption - ‘When plunder becomes a way of life
for a group of men living in society, they create for
themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that
authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.’ (Bastiat)
• Symbolic - philanthropy

15.
Ill-gotten and ill spent

16.
Christian Aid Poster

17.
A diabolical double crisis of economy
and climate

18.
Contraction and convergence
• Target C02 emissions per person =
Capacity of earth to absorb C02, divided by world’s
population
• Rich countries – rapid cuts in emissions to meet
target
• Poor countries – rise in emissions permissible up
to target
• Plus contraction and convergence within
countries

19.
Back to basics
• What’s an economy for?
• Fair, promoting well-being, sustainable
• What is wealth?
• The good news: the well-being threshold
• Different ways of life?

20.
Suggestions . . .
• Contract and converge
• Wealth taxes, land-value tax and other taxes on
unearned income
• Controls on movements of capital
• Reject TTIP
• State funding of political parties
• Nationalise energy companies. Green taxes.
• Workers/employees and consumer reps as chief
stakeholders in organizations
• Massive investment in low CO2 energy
• And many more . . .

21.
Diolch yn fawr
Andrew Sayer, Lancaster University
http://asayer25.com

22.
From the second, Citigroup Plutonomy Report Part 2
‘Rising Tides Lifting Yachts’ Mar 5 2006
”Our whole plutonomy thesis is based on the idea that the rich will keep
getting richer. This thesis is not without its risks. For example, a policy
error leading to asset deflation, would likely damage plutonomy.
Furthermore, the rising wealth gap between the rich and poor will
probably at some point lead to a political backlash. Whilst the rich are
getting a greater share of the wealth, and the poor a lesser share, political
enfranchisement remains as was -- one person, one vote (in the
plutonomies). At some point it is likely that labor will fight back against the
rising profit share of the rich and there will be a political backlash against
the rising wealth of the rich. This could be felt through higher taxation on
the rich (or indirectly through higher corporate taxes/regulation) or
through trying to protect indigenous laborers, in a push-back on
globalization -- either anti-immigration, or protectionism. We don’t see
this happening yet, though there are signs of rising political tensions.
However we are keeping a close eye on developments.”
[emphasis in original]
http://www.correntewire.com/sites/default/files/Citibank_Plutonomy_2.pdf

23.
UK Earnings and productivity
Source: Resolution Foundation (2012) Gaining from Growth: The Final Report of the Commission on Living Standards, p.24