Peak inequality?

Don’t forget that most people are stuck with stagnant or falling real wages. Upward mobility for a few hollows out the middle class and causes the social pyramid to become top-heavy. Too many elites relative to the general population (a condition I call ‘elite overproduction’) leads to ever-stiffer rivalry in the upper echelons. And then you get trouble...

...Three years ago I published a short article in the science journal Nature. I pointed out that several leading indicators of political instability look set to peak around 2020. In other words, we are rapidly approaching a historical cusp, at which the US will be particularly vulnerable to violent upheaval. 

Peter Turchin, thinks he sees a regular cyclical pattern in wealth distribution in the US, with inequality peaking at intervals of roughly a century and periods more evenly distributed well-being* peaking at a similar frequency in the troughs of minimal inequality, leading to reversals every half century or so. If he's right, the US is due to hit peak inequality in around seven years.

*As measured by the following indicators of well-being, economic (the fraction of economic growth that is paid to workers as wages), health (life expectancy and the average height of native-born population), and social optimism (the average age of first marriage).

Iain Duncan Smith on work experience

I don't think I'm above working in shops like Poundland. I now work part-time in a supermarket. It's just that I expect to get paid for working.

... said Cait Reilley. That statement doesn't seem too complicated for somebody on a work and pensions secretary's pay grade to understand, but Iain Duncan Smith has responded by criticising 'people who think they're too good to stack supermarket shelves', suggesting that Cait's statement is way too hard for him to understand. The poor old codger must be getting a bit past it. As the the soon-to-be-ex-Pope almost said:

Strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognise my incapacity to adequately fulfil the ministerial responsibilities entrusted to me.

Time for Iain to step aside in favour of someone younger, I think. Since Cait Reilly seems able to express her thoughts far more clearly than IDS, perhaps she'd benefit from a work experience placement as work and pensions secretary - she could hardly do a worse job than the present incumbent.

And as for poor old IDS, his failing strength of mind may rule out anything too challenging, but I'm sure that, with the right support and careful monitoring, he might still be capable of stacking a few supermarket shelves without making too much of a hash of it.

Moderate religious extremists

A while ago, I was listening to the In Our Time programme about Epicureanism when this quote (which I've shared before) popped back into my head:

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

Stephen Roberts

The Epicureans accepted the notion of gods. They were cool with the contemporary pantheon of divinities, but they had some radical ideas about the nature of those gods. Their ideas show how 'other possible gods' can be almost completely unlike the single, all-powerful, all-wise, loving, interventionist, moralistic creator/saviour God worshipped by the vast majority of today's believers.

Here's a taste of how wildly different 'possible gods' can be:

Monotheistic God	Epicurean gods
He created the universe	They didn't create the universe
He is made of some sort of spiritual essence that's different from the matter we know about	They are made of atoms (like everything else in the atomist universe posited by philosophers like Democritus)
He is all powerful	Their powers are finite
He cares about humanity, rewarding and punishing individuals according to merit	They are non-interventionist beings, blissfully indifferent to human affairs
He can offer eternal life to humans	They are immortal, but are unable and unwilling to bestow eternal life on humans

The relevant Wikipedia entries on Epicurean views of religion and philosophy are a good place to start, if you want to put a bit more meat on the bare bones of my summary.

The Epicureans, with their do-nothing small gods, occupied one extreme of the theistic spectrum. Today's most successful and influential religions have staked out their theological position at the other extreme, with a Big God who created everything, can do anything and cares about everybody.

Because the Epicureans' gods lived in their own distant, blissful realm, neither blessing or punishing humans in this life or in the hereafter (which the Epicureans didn't believe in, anyway), Epicurean philosophy concentrated on the here and now, in maximising pleasure and minimising pain in this life.

Hostile writers from the big monotheisms later misrepresented this 'hedonism' as a weak-willed, mindless chase after fleeting sensual pleasures. Epicurean writings, though, didn't recommend the endless pursuit of such instant gratification. The real Epicurean philosophy of life stressed avoiding excess and the proliferation of unnecessary and artificially produced desires,* whilst cultivating moderation, friendship, mental tranquillity and the mental discipline needed to banish fear and pain.

The caricature hedonist might sound like Peter Stringfellow, but the real deal probably had more in common with a Buddhist monk (Epicureans were, according to some scholars, vegetarians and Epicurus himself was celibate, although he didn't impose this particular form of self-denial on his followers).

The two extremes of the theistic spectrum have fared very differently over the last millennium and a half.  It'd be hard (although worth the effort) to ignore the three and a half billion-odd Christians and Muslim believers on the planet today, but you'd have to search hard to find a single Epicurean these days. In fact, you'd have to search pretty damn hard to find somebody who could actually define Epicureanism properly - if pressed, a lot of people would tell you that it had something to do with a love of fine dining and vintage champagne (no wonder people get confused when "Epicurious" is the name of a foodie site and "Epicure" a brand name for deli products).

Part of this is down to the suppression of Epicureanism, which was seen as heretical by the dominant monotheistic religions, along with the deliberate misrepresentation of Epicurean ideas by various spin doctors of divinity. But that still leaves the question of why the 'possible gods' at one extreme of the theistic spectrum gained so few adherents, whilst the all-powerful monotheistic conception of God attracted so many followers.

Well, having the ear of the powerful can't have done monotheism any harm, but I think that the underlying reason why Big God decisively beat the Epicureans' small gods is even more obvious. Big God (allegedly) does far more stuff for His followers.

The small gods do sod all for believers. It's pointless praying to them, because they never answer your prayers. If you want to master the troubles of this life, you're on your own with whatever strength of mind and philosophical attitude you can get together. And when this life is over, well, there may nothing to fear because your consciousness will be gone, but that's less attractive to creatures with a hard-wired survival instinct than the inducement of eternal life in a state of bliss.

You can't accuse the small gods of is over-promising and under performing - they're never going to do anything for you, and that's made perfectly clear from the start.

Contrast this with the promises of eternal joy and infallible justice held out by Big God and you can see who's got the more compelling election manifesto.

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.
And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.

Revelation 21:4-6

Of course, the things people promise in order to get elected aren't always precisely the same as the things they actually deliver once your vote's in the bag, although it's hard to check whether an ineffable entity who moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform, has actually delivered, especially when one of His key deliverables can only be verified once you're dead.

Of all the possible gods, people of faith seem to overwhelmingly favour the one who (via His representatives on earth) promises to do the most for them. Who'd have thought it?

Call me a nasty old cynic if you like, but this seems to sit rather uncomfortably with the idea that Big God's followers are selflessly displaying 'submission to the will of God.'  After all, Big God makes big promises, promises that - if true - would fulfil humans' deepest existential desires. Would humans really love Him for Himself and submit to his will if He didn't? Maybe the faithful have gradually dismissed all the possible gods who wouldn't deliver the things that humans most want to be true and retained only the one who faithfully submits to the will of humankind.

It'd be ironic if the unpopular, limited gods of Epicurus actually exist and Big God, with His huge fan base, doesn't. I've no reason to believe in gods, but I'm agnostic about the idea of intelligent aliens existing somewhere else in the universe. Entities belonging to a civilisation millions of years in advance of our own might seem like gods - like the limited gods of the Epicureans, anyway. Intelligence may be mind-bogglingly rare, but space is mind-bogglingly big, so who knows?  Real aliens might resemble the Epicurean gods in another way.

The Fermi paradox asks, 'if there are many planets in the galaxy capable of supporting life, and a few intelligent species who've had millions of years' head start to explore the galaxy, then how come they're not here already?' There are plenty of possible answers to that question - for example, that it's wrong to posit more than one intelligent species (intelligent life was such an unlikely freak accident that, even in a galaxy of billion of stars, we're the only example). But, just maybe, they are out there, living what we earthlings would consider a blessed existence, with powers we can only dream of, capable of contacting us, but, like the Epicurean gods, pretty much indifferent to our boring little Type I-minus civilisation.



*One of the less attractive aspects of the Epicureans' otherwise moderate and civilised philosophy of life (IMHO) was a mistrust of learning, culture and social and political engagement, on the grounds that these things would give rise to desires that would be hard to satisfy and therefore disturb a person's peace of mind (see the Athenian definition of an idiot).

'I expect to get paid for working' shock statement by pauper

I don't think I am above working in shops like Poundland. I now work part-time in a supermarket. It is just that I expect to get paid for working.

Cait Reilly, who thinks that being ordered ro work for nothing in a Poundland store breaches laws against forced labour, a point of view apparently shared by Apppeal Court judges.

She expects to be paid for working? Did you ever hear of such a thing? The undeserving poor have become shockingly impudent of late.

'Olivia Twist has asked for more!'

There was a general start. Horror was depicted on every countenance.

A Department of Work and Pensions spokesweasel was on hand to reassure respectable members of society that, whatever the judges may think, workhouse regulations will be amended to ensure that no urchin will receive an extra serving of thin gruel.

'It is ridiculous to say this is forced labour. This ruling ensures we can continue with these important schemes,' added Mr. Bumble Employment Minister Mark Hoban.

To be serious for a moment, Cait's clear and simple statement nails the lie about so-called 'job snobs' being too picky to do any work within reason. She walks the talk and stacks the shelves.

Unlike, say, highly the privileged pontificators on the front benches who have, more often than not, benefited from expensive private educations designed to ensure they never had to decide between an entry-level job and penury. People who would never wish such a choice on their own expensively-educated progeny. People with the means to parachute their little Tarquins and Jocastas into unpaid internships in professions that are now effectively beyond the reach of the bright kid from the local comp who isn't being subsidised by the bank of mum and dad. If you want to see job snobs, that's where you should start looking.

Happily, I find myself in complete disagreement with contrary Mary, Brendan O'Neill, who is reliably wrong about almost everything.
 

Knutsford city limits

The tacking and positioning here isn't that surprising, but this story just goes to prove that local news sometimes gets a bit bigger than stories about cats being recued from trees:

In the statement he said "Your MPs George Osborne, Edward Timpson and I, have fought hard to keep the [HS2] line away from Knutsford and Tatton, which we have been successful in achieving. Throughout the process we raised concerns about the line of route and raised the profile for a common sense solution, which I believe we have achieved."

The following day Cheshire East Council issued a retraction saying:

"In a press release issued yesterday (January 28) Cheshire East Council stated that George Osborne had fought hard to keep the HS2 rail link out of his constituency in Knutsford and Tatton.
"In fact, this is not the case and MP George Osborne had no say whatsoever over the proposed route of the HS2 link. We are happy to set the record straight."

From Wilmslow dot co dot uk

All together now:

You have to watch what you're putting down
In old Knutsford, oh Knutsford

Modern life is rubbish

Here's some vintage advertising, spotted in a side street off Church Street, Wolverton:

We want the daintiest breads available to humanity, we want them here, and we want them now!

Projection

Last word on the debate surrounding the equal marriage bill. Conservative MP Gerald Howarth summed up social conservatives' objections to gay marriage when he warned, obscurely, of 'huge potential consequences.'

But what are these unspecified 'consequences'? The opponents of equal marriage talked for hours yesterday, but I haven't heard, reported in any of the news media, a single, plausible, scenario in which anybody, gay, straight, married or unmarried would be significantly damaged by this measure. How, for example, would letting gay people get married possibly hurt straight people who wanted to get married?

It's not as if gay people would increase pressure on the marriage supply until there weren't enough weddings to go around. This is not a zero sum game. Gay marriage won't rob anyone of their slice of the pie. It just makes the pie bigger, at no appreciable cost to anybody.  And if some religious bodies don't want to bless the big pie, they don't have to. What's not to like?

Opponents of the bill are in danger of looking as if they're motivated by prejudice and spite.

Which is probably why, in the absence of a convincing argument, Howarth fell back on the line that we shouldn't do this because there are far more important things to worry about ('the nation faces much more serious challenges which the government needs to address').

This all-purpose argument against anything you don't particularly want to happen at least has a germ of truth. There are always other vital issues out there competing for legislators' time and attention and you can't hope to change everything at once. In the real world, you need to prioritise and compromise. Up to a (very limited) point, Gerald Howarth could agree with the pro-equal marriage Nelson Jones, writing in The New Statesman:

But at a time when poverty is rising, the economy - to put it politely - becalmed and the NHS, the education system and the police in organisational chaos, you have to wonder precisely why for so many people same sex marriage has become such a big deal.

But I do tend to suspect that, when social conservatives insist that we can't possibly do x, because there are far more important things to worry about, their real motives have more to do with foot-dragging than prioritisation.

Here's an example of social conservative priorities, from outside the Westminster bubble. Posh sandwich purveyor Pret a Manger has been involved in a couple of controversies recently. Pret's management makes its low-paid employees jump, grinning inanely, through demeaning hoops for the privilege of a sub-living wage. The Wikipedia article gives a short summary of the company's intrusive management style:

Pret a Manger has been cited as being particularly vigorous in extracting affective labor from its employees. Affective labor (or emotional labor) is work which involves manipulating a person's emotional state. Pret a Manger demands go beyond traditional requirements for fast-food workers (such as courtesy, efficiency, and reliability) to such tasks as having "presence", demonstrating a quirky sense of fun, and exhibiting behavior consistent with being inwardly happy with oneself. Pret A Manger uses mystery shoppers to ensure that employees deploy markers of a positive emotional state.

There's a more in-depth look at life within the sandwich Stasi's quirky gulag of fun here. It would be hard to argue with Nick Cohen's assertion that 'whenever we go to work we leave a democracy and enter a dictatorship' in Pret's case.

You could say that Pret has issues. Treating its employees like the citizens of a police state run by clowns is issue one. A fairly big issue, in my opinion.

Issue two is comparatively tiny, (again, in my opinion - others are available). Pret got a few complaints about the branding of some of its crisp packets. The crisps in question were spicy tomato flavour, so the team of creatives Pret used decided to name this particular crisp brand the "Virgin Mary", after the non-alcoholic version of  the tomato-based Bloody Mary cocktail. This branding decision might, possibly, strike you as a tiny bit disrespectful if you were an incredibly devout, painfully thin-skinned Christian, unfamiliar with the terminology of non-alcoholic cocktails.

If you were of a campaigning frame of mind, which issue would you prioritise, complain about and try to get changed? A moment's possible offence caused to a very few people might be an issue, but I'd say, in the words of Gerald Howarth, that the company 'faces much more serious challenges' that it needs to address. People spend a good portion of their lives at work and their working conditions, (in particular feelings of autonomy, of being treated with a reasonable level of respect and of being in control of some aspect of their role) contribute to their general well being. Conversely, the absence of these things (not to mention a living wage) contributes to the unrelenting misery of the daily grind in an oppressive workplace.

No prize for guessing which issue was prioritised by campaigning social conservatives and God-heads with a social conscience (clue - it wasn't the big one). The unending day to day petty humiliations in the working lives of hard-working, low-paid employees, trumped by a bit of arguably tasteless branding on a crisp packet? When social conservatives accuse liberals of wasting time on unimportant issues to the detriment of 'much more serious challenges' I think there's a more than a bit of projection going on.

By the way, well done to David Cameron and George Osborne for sticking to their guns on equal marriage. I just had to write that down, because I'll probably never again be in the novel position of wholeheartedly agreeing with anything important those two do or say. 'Hurry while stocks last,' as they say (which is more than anyone can reasonably say about marriage).