london welcome to worlds apart it took a quarter of a century since the collapse of the soviet union for the issue of inequality to resurface at the center of political and economic debate this time in the west some would even argue that it has already sparked a populist revolution culminating for now with the bracks it was the election of donald trump well the western quest against inequality being more successful than the soviets one well to discuss that i'm now joined by jason hicks anthropologist at the university of london and author of the divide a brief guide to global inequality and its solutions dr he called it's good to talk

to you thank you very much for your time thanks for having me now you know i come from a country reach for seventy years had to run a massive experiment in their advocating inequality and many people here in russia believe that this fixation on inequality ultimately made the soviet system. incompatible with reality to what extent the opposite is true if you abandon any regulation and leave it all to the market forces can you have a harmonious well functioning society and i think it's quite clear that. you know extreme inequality has become a very serious problem around the world both within countries as well as between them and what's evidence is that it's creating not only economic crisis but also political ones in the sense of richer people are able to control political outcomes what is a very. poor people feel deeply disenfranchised and disaffected with with the government system so i think that it's quite important that we use it to address this problem as urgently as possible. well i'm not trying to draw any direct

comparisons between the soviet focus on inequality and the western one but i wonder if you see any historical continuity between the collapse of the soviet union and the triumph of neoliberal economics back in the early ninety's and such a sharp rise of inequality a quarter of a century later yes i think it's quite clear that with the collapse of the soviet union in the late and the late it is. there was a kind of ideological consensus around near liberal globalisation that was carried on through the night tonight is and is still with us today and the consequence of of of that sort of the imposition of free market globalization has been a dramatic increase in inequality. since the ninety's which is really rich kind of catastrophic historically unprecedented levels and so when we call for a reduction in inequality in western societies for example it doesn't need to be the kind of dramatic aggressive attempts to equalize that we might imagine the

soviet union attempted rather was calling for the kind of reduction in equality that was accomplished in fact in western societies like the us and britain during the post-war years during the forty's and fifty's and sixty's before the onset of new liberal globalization i think you would agree that inequality is often presented as a kind of a leftist preoccupation and the typical response to these kind of criticism is that inequality is natural look at the parada distribution or the matthew principle a large portion of wealth resources talents what have you has a tendency to be concentrated in the hands of a small minority and yet your argument from what i understand is that these kind of inequality that we observe in the world today is not natural it is deliberately constructed it is consciously montane do understand you correctly that's right that's the argument that i advance is that there's nothing natural about inequality on the contrary it's been effectively deliberately produced because the economic system is designed in such a way. so as to siphon. you know the vast majority of resources and value in the

economy up to a relatively few a small elite at the expense of most of the rest of the people right and we can see that happening very clearly now where if you look at wages in the us for example they've been in real terms stagnant since the one nine hundred seventy s. whereas the income of the top one percent of the effect of this got rocketed many times what they used to be and that's as a consequence of deregulation as a consequence of an attack on unions as a consequence of deindustrialization outsourcing labor it's a poor country is breaking the back of unions and a reduction of the tax of the top marginal tax rate on on the richest incomes you mentioned some of the statistics and i think the most stunning statistics as far as i'm concerned comes from oxfam which suggested last year that the world's eight wealthiest individuals now own as much as the three point six billion people who

make up the poorest half of humanity that disparity is very hard to comprehend but do you think it really meant yeah it is difficult to govern governance that it's an extraordinary again almost unprecedented the extent of inequality to. imagine. i think it's a limit no i mean it's clearly continuing to head in this direction despite all the talk about inequality that we've we've heard since the global financial crisis in two thousand and nine and the rise of occupy wall street and twenty twelve twenty eleven sort of twelve it's clear that no you know real substantive changes that made economic policy to make it fairer for for the majority of people not just in countries like the u.s. and western europe but also around the world. you know which is striking because we know precisely what allows for a reduction in equality giving workers more bargaining power improving minimum wages you know more progressive taxes on top incomes it's not rocket science it's you know we have very clear policy options on the table. now i know that some of

the policy options you suggest also include not only a global minimum wage but also putting at maximum cap on income and wealth to somebody who was born in the soviet union where redistribution was the bad drop off a can all make policy i think you would inevitably run into the question of motivation if you proceed with guaranteeing or limiting people's incomes once you also stripped from that sense of agency that i interpret no ship that initiative well so the argument for global minimum wage i think. you know the again there's nothing really radical about that we have minimum wages. most countries. as long as there are system where capital has the ability to flow freely around the world. similarly we also globalize the protections that are necessary to ensure that workers going to fair share. from the economy so there's only radical global

minimum wage can be implemented very easily simply by. a minimum wage an international say fifty percent. of the nation's needy and so that it fluctuates depending on the fortunes of the nation so that there's no massive disruptions to comparative advantage to something that's the international labor organization of the u.n. could do rosa but usually you don't stop there and you actually propose some sort of a cap on the income and i think. many people would say or it mean you wealthy people would say that in many countries wealthy individuals do invest in charity people like bill gates do amazing work around the world and if those individuals manage to accumulate that much money when they be more knowledgeable about how to spend it compared to the government's let's say. so i actually haven't proposed a cap on a cap on guns although it's an idea that's sympathetic to. having a gun. again not

a radical policy proposal on the sons of if you look at the united states even during the post-war years the top marginal tax rates was was about ninety plus percent which is effectively a cap on top incomes so you can earn above a certain level a certain very high level but the vast majority of that excess above that level will go back to. the states and be redirected into social spending on you know decent health care education you know public housing etc which which again you know a couple of countries in the west including britain the united states. you know how to redistribute a policies like that in the post-war decades up until the ninety eight is when all of that was dismantled and so it's truly not radical to ask for a kind of at the very least a return to those you know that was fairer more. more meaningfully distributed policies of the of the past i guess the point i was making is that those wealthy individuals the wealthiest individuals that we know of they already invest in

numerous social causes be it space exploration or eradication of malaria they're already involved around the world isn't it the better idea scilab them do that on their own accord rather than you know getting some resources forcefully from them and putting them in the hands of government speech you don't know how they would be using those resources i mean how effectively they would be using those resources well look at things the key principle here is that we once that kind of wealth to be democratically accountable if it's in the hands of billionaire philanthropist so there's really no way that we can have a say in how it's and how it benefits society right whereas at least with governments i mean hopefully the democratically democratic governments in which case we can have an actual say on how the yields of of the wealth in our economy is directed so i think that's again it's it's more it's more democratic to have it to have it in the hands of a kind of a cow. democratic body that is to have it in the hands of

a billionaire elites we have no idea what they're doing with it so maybe they do do some good things about another key problem here is that the very process by which billionaires accumulates their money. quite often is destructive to other people's lives so if you look at bill gates for example he has done a lot. to address keep up with health concerns but at the same time much of his money is made from from intellectual property regimes that he helped press through the world trade organization which of actually made it very difficult for poor people in poor countries to access the medicines that the needs to to live now you mention poor countries and i think one of the most unsettling conclusions in your research is that it's not a reach countries. being poor countries to develop but actually vice versa a young making the point that whatever goes into the developing countries in the form of loans are eight often comes back multiplied how does it work

so you know it's it's quite clear to us that during the colonial period of the world economic system was organized in a way that effectively siphoned you know resources and value from the periphery of the world that's the global south into the core of the world system western europe etc and realize imagine that in the post colonial era that no longer operates from the facts it's not true in fact today to the according to the most recent data that we have the global south has a net creditor to the global north more money flows from south to north than goes the other direction and that includes all money not just foreign direct investment but also. you know loans etc so. and that in the flow is extraordinary in size so the global south. receives about two trillion u.s. dollars per year from the north but at the same time the about five trillion dollars. the other direction so the south has

a net credit to the north in the region of three trillion us dollars per year if you can but if you compare that to the aid budget just for for argument's for every dollar of aid in the south receives they lose twenty four dollars and that out flows to the north and so really a disrupts this narrative that we have that the global north is sort of this benevolent giver of aid to the south and in fact the way the finances flow around the world is completely the opposite effect of the south is developing the north and has been doing so since at least the onset of colonialism five hundred years ago i wonder though if the if countries are the right level of analysis here because. it seems that you are talking really about private interests wrapped up in the flag and perhaps being insisted by national actors and national bureaucracies rather than national interests it is really is it really a you know a poor country versus a reach country all more like you know i businessmen from a rich country taking advantage of all the poor a country with dish out all for huge countries' bureaucracy yeah sure i mean if you

look at some of the major financial flows some of it is in the form of debt repayment. some of that is to private lenders most of it is to the world bank and the i.m.f. and creditors so the global south sends about two hundred billion dollars per year in interest payments on foreign that's alone which itself outstrips the budget if you also look at you know illicit financial flows the global south loses about one trillion u.s. dollars per year and it was the financial flows that go mostly through tax havens that are governed by rich countries like the city of london for example. which again dramatically outstripped the budget so of course i mean it's true that's what's happening because a private multinational companies that are effectively evading taxes in the global south countries by shifting it into tax havens. but what's crucial here is that that's only possible because of you know the structure of the global economy enables it to do right i mean this is because of w t o rules on trade this is

because of this is because of the taxation system which is controlled by western governments and so on so so yes it's true that you know you know many of these flows happen between private companies and private individuals but but if the architecture of the global economy that's really that's really at stake here and that's what we need to examine we think about why poor countries are very poor and how rich countries you know continue to get so rich well dr hill we have to take a very short break now but we will be back in just a few moments stay tuned. with make this manufacture consent to public will. when the ruling classes protect themselves. with the famous larry go

round be the one percent of. the room sick. welcome back to worlds apart but jason haykel anthropologist at the university of london and author of the divide and brief guide to global inequality and its solutions dr he before the break i think you sounded somewhat skeptical of the aids paradigm and. i also saw in some of your articles that he you believe that these narrative is kind of exploitative of empathy and the the better angels of our

nature so to say even road that it makes the takers seem like givers granting them a kind of moral high ground i wonder if you personally encountered any pushbacks in the early encountered any pushback for saying that the do gooders are not as selfless as they would like to appear so i love somebody for their good or as a means to be involved in the development of this or most of. and i think it's fantastic to have the sense of compassion that people have that leads them to try to try to help people who are. suffering and so on but the important thing i want to emphasize here is that is that quite often the efforts of mr acted in the sense that it fails to address the actual structural driver as of the concerns that that are at stake here right and so if you take global poverty for example you know it might seem like a reasonable thing to go to saigon or under us and set up an orphanage you know really well and so on i mean celebrate that that's fantastic but ultimately it's

not solving the structural problem which at stake which is the fact that we have a global economic system that is fundamentally designed in a manner that siphons wealth and value from the periphery you know into the core the global north you seem to be attributing that only to structural reasons but if you look for example at afghanistan the country that's been reliant on for many decades already if you see the structure of that aid a lot of that money goes into consultancy fees and private contracts so do you think there's any private interest involved in helping the world's poor oh absolutely i mean there's no question the industry is a booming business. and most of the well a good deal of the yields from it in this are not going back to private companies in the west or even local private companies. without really addressing the key needs that they seem to address in the first place but but but i really do want to

emphasize you know the importance of thinking about the way the global economy is structured because if you think about you know simply the way the voting power works in the key institutions of global governance take the world bank and the i.m.f. ok these are key institutions in determining macroeconomic policy around the world the u.s. has a veto power over all major decisions and. a small handful of wealthy countries basically control most of the votes the global south which has eighty five percent of the world's population has less than fifty percent of the vote in these key institutions of macro economic governance so even if it even if the majority of the world got together and disagreed with a policy. impose structural adjustments you know privatization whatever it might be they would not be able to resist because that's where these institutions of design there's a kind of a kind of global apartheid that's right at the center of the way that the global economy is organized that we're not actually addressing effectively the same is true of the world trade organization in the world trade organization there's a kind of one country one vote system but in fact in reality countries with larger

economies have much more bargaining power and almost always get their way with smaller economy and can do very little to stop. the policies of their counterparts from being railroaded through and so again and again here we see a kind of a fundamental lack of sovereignty that global south nations have when it comes to determining their own economic policies now i sense you are not the very big fan of i don't know a chump and yet though one of his consistent grudges is against the world trade organization and numerous international institutions and he seems to be very unhappy of it the imam he seems to be very unhappy that the existing aid paradigm as much as you may dislike him personally do you ever catch yourself agreeing with him so this isn't done from scratch it is really bizarre to me because. because he has been arguing about things like you know free trade agreements like nafta or whatever it might be the world trade organization i have a cetera are somehow bad for the united states unfair to the united states and in

fact the reality is completely the opposite the u.s. has benefited tremendously economically through the clutter that it wields to the world bank and the i.m.f. effectively giving of the power to impose structural adjustment on global south countries that are that it is in line is where the men's benefit to american corporations enough to has been a tremendous benefit similar to american corporations so trying fundamentally doesn't understand how these are these are useful tools of us imperialism of in fact right so it's not clear to me what his growth is i mean it's true that these institutions are deeply unfair but they're not unfair to the u.s. they're unfair to the mage. the world to the global south and that's really the reason we need to reform them but regardless of how mr trump arrives at his conclusions do you thing him putting pressure on those existing international and that existing international framework the united nations the world bank the i.m.f. the w.t. all with very skewed powers as you mentioned do you think he may how address some of the imbalances and injustices that you have been writing about on the country i

think that it's having exactly the opposite effect because what's happening is that as trump attacks the multilateral institutions progressives come out of the woodwork to defend them bizarrely. sure of the i.m.f. some of the i.m.f. is the hero of the world trade relations hero because they're bastions against trump or something like that because some of those like them and so there's been a withering of the progressive critique of these institutions because of them taken out by someone who has arguments and sort of very unclear right so. you know there's really no reason for us to go about defending his incision simply because trump is attacking them trumps arguments or relevance the point is that what remains of these institutions are unfair not to the u.s. but to the majority world and that's what we need to address one thing that i'm sorry for continued this angle but i think one thing that you guys share is skepticism of the notion of green growth this idea that humanity can continue boosting its g.d.p. without expanding its toll on the environment and chumps strategy here is to pursue

growth with very little concern for the environment i think you know oprah's if you're proposing the exact exact opposite abandoning growth goals pursuing the environment and i stayed in your argument. since two thousand and twelve there's been this. extension of this interest in the idea of green growth the idea that we can continue growing forever right as long as we can find ways of decoupling environmental impact from g.d.p. growth but in the years to twelve when this idea was for. sort of the we've had a number of studies showing that this is america the pinnacle evidence for this doesn't exist and the models that we have. projected in the future so that it's quite clear that green growth is not really possible especially you know if we consider the fact that we're it already in an era of ecological overshoot in terms of resource use in terms of climate change in terms of biodiversity loss we're

facing an ecological emergency right now and the main driver of that. is the expansion of our economic activity as g.d.p. growth. and so we need to fundamentally rethink our dependence in rich countries on g.d.p. growth because pursuing this exponential expansion of economic activity is going to quickly drive us to the point of a kind of uninhabitable planets incompatible with the continuation of human civilization so what argue for my work is that we need to shift our economies away from a dependence on and less exponential g.d.p. growth towards towards a kind of the states where we're we're able to improve people's lives but without focusing on. expanding g.d.p. and all of the destructive entailments of that house well you've also suggested a pretty radical solution to climate change and that is opening borders to a climate refugees he argued that only when the breach nations finally start to feel the heat so to say and are forced to deal with the climate consequences of

their policies will they act fast in your own calculus what i'd be chances of that happening so that the article they're citing was meant to be a provocation the idea being that if you look at the major contributors to historical emissions they are there rich countries like the us western europe etc but the vast majority of the damage of the damage from climate change is happening in the global south. ninety percent of the deaths that occur due to climate change each year in the global fight of you know the global south loses about five hundred billion. dollars per year and costs associated with climate change which is vastly more than. the global north suffering so the real effects of quite a breakdown are happening in the global south but but the problem is that the global moore has no real sense of of that issue right because because it's happening elsewhere. some a provocation was that if there was free movement of people then people who were in

affected areas deeply affected areas if they were to move to move towards safer areas which happen to be in the global north it would force a kind of reckoning in the global north that look. our contributions to climate breakdown are causing mass chaos and destruction and we need to urgently do something about it it wasn't for proposal although i do believe in open borders as a provocation to force the points that we need to sue to face up to the fact that. the causes and consequences of climate change are on opposite sides of the border now. i also want to ask the question about the united kingdom where your base right now because. you mentioned before they structure of the global economy allowing the exploitation to take place and fostering those inequalities and for many years the united kingdom has been allowing illicit funds from foreign countries to come into the united kingdom it has changed its policy all flayed there is now

a new legislation. allowing for the possible seizure of a paid for in the wealth do you think there is in the west or in the u.k. particular finally serious about putting an end to this practice. that is a very small measure compared to the scale of the problem so what really needs to happen is the status of the city of london is the fundamentally renegotiated so the no longer serves a secrecy jurisdiction or are effectively as a tax haven but it's not just the city of london the city of london is of the very center of a kind of a global network of tax havens that effectively controls. so you know and this is not just i mean this is primarily british overseas territories. right and the u.k. has jurisdiction over those tax havens over there because it was the actions it has the power to close them down the power to introduce radical transparency so that we know where illicit wealth is coming from. and effectively effectively put an end to those flows. but that's not a step that it has proven to be willing to take even though this has been

a massive public scandal for some time we're not seeing any real movement on this despite its politicians saying that they want to address that so i'm skeptical that there is any progress but let's hope that if there's a labor government in the near future that will be something that's high on their agenda well from what i understand the u.k. thirty is for now it's just intend to seize the assets whose origins cannot be explained looks like to me at least like a very good way of filling your own budget but i wonder if we proceed from this option that. is illicit that it was stolen from the people wouldn't it be more fair to transfer. money back to the countries of origin so in the case of in the case of illicit wealth that's kind of stuffed in london housing for example i mean. you know what's at stake there is there's a kind of there's a part of the tax evasion happening and the question is where is up where is that tax being effectively taken from the majority of illicit financial flows coming from the global south and so what needs to happen as

a repatriation of the trillions of dollars stashed intoxicants back to the countries of origin so they can be properly taxed and benefits the local population where the problem or the production happen in the first place that's something we'll argue for. well let's help the. devise but for the time being we have to leave it there thank you very much dr he go for sharing your insights tonight on a problem thanks for having me on i encourage our viewers to keep this conversation going in our social media pages and help desir again same place same time here on multiple.

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