During the last few days I have heard Downton Abbey mentioned twice in relation to current levels of inequality in contemporary society. The first was a negative connotation and appeared in an article written by economist and former US Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers, for the FT. In his piece, entitled America risks becoming a Downton Abbey economy, Summers says:
The share of income going to the top 1 per cent of earners has increased sharply. A rising share of output is going to profits. Real wages are stagnant. Family incomes have not risen as fast as productivity. The cumulative effect of all these developments is that the US may well be on the way to becoming a Downton Abbey economy. It is very likely that these issues will be with us long after the cyclical conditions have normalised and budget deficits have at last been addressed.
Summers is clear that rising inequality is a bad thing that needs redressing. I say this because the second time I heard Downton Abbey mentioned in relation to inequality it was by someone making the point that maybe current levels of inequality aren't something we need to be so worried about. It came in what I imagined was an unguarded remark by journalist and former Tory advisor Danny Finkelstein. Baron Finkelstein of Pinner was appearing in a episode of BBC R4's A Good Read. For those not familiar with this programme, the format is that the presenter, Harriet Gilbert, and two guests talk about a book that each has chosen and then the others are invited to comment. Finkelstein had his 'Downton' moment when he was having to talk about the book choice of his fellow guest, the writer Jill Paton Walsh. This was What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael Sandel.
In this book Sandel argues that the market has intruded into more and more areas of life such that activities which once stood outside of ordinary commerce have now become market transactions. The result is that the exchange of money dehumanises people as it drives out altruism and legitimises the pursuit of profit and self interest. In this way the community mindedness that existed and which produced social good from human interactions, is diminished as we become rational, amoral agents acting in an economist's free market model. Sandel offers many examples of this creeping market economy. My favourite is that of the small Swiss village of Wolfenschiessen that was designated as a potential site for the storing of nuclear waste. When surveyed the residents voted marginally in favour of the proposal. Their sense of public duty just outweighed their concern about the risk. After this result, the residents were asked what their view would be if they were each offered a annual sum of money by way of compensation for the risk they were willing to bear for the greater good of the nation. The result was that support for the proposal went from 51% to 25%. Even when the sum offered was increased, support didn't increase. This result goes against basic free market theory. What appears to have happened is that what people would be prepared to accept on moral grounds for no reward, they turned against when offered a financial inducement. Cash appears to have driven out public-spiritedness. Indeed when asked, 83% of those who rejected the financial compensation, said they did so because they could not be bribed.
Finkelstein was clearly uncomfortable dealing with this subject, which perhaps was to be expected as he is a former Director of the Conservative Research Department and the current Chairman of Policy Exchange, a centre-right think tank. Sandel's academic record makes him someone whose views can not easily be dismissed. It was as Paton Walsh and Gilbert moved the discussion on to the subject of the increasing inequality that had followed the invasion of the market economy into more and more areas of life, that his guard slipped. As the other participants pressed in on him, in order to stem the flow he blurted out, 'It's also not the case that now we live in a society that is radically less equal than the society that people were living in a hundred years ago as anyone watching Downton Abbey can attest.' It's no worse than it was in 1914.
Well that's alright then.
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