November 2017

Meeting held on Monday 20th November 2017

11 people were present. Two sent their apologies.

In our opening remarks we considered how countries in Africa are rarely mentioned in the media, present Zimbabwe events being an exception. Africa provides examples societies based upon different assumptions regarding economics (eg the Kalahari Bushmen) and also governance (non-‘representative democratic’). Environmental issues (including wild life) are also relevant in different ways. Is there not much that we could learn from the continent, if only we were better informed?

Returning ‘home’ we commented that despite Tory shambles, Labour was only 2 points in the lead in polls. It appeared that the underlying economic assumptions of neoliberalism are proving extremely hard to shift. The Paradise Papers brings this to the fore, but we don’t expect it to lead to significant change in the prevailing models. Will a future Labour government really be able to shift this? Regarding the extreme wealth/poverty gap, would the power of the wealthy be shifted unless they are threatened: threatened by violence or by environmental collapse perhaps? Or could the super-rich come to understand that wealth does not necessarily bring happiness and a more equal society would be a happier one, even for them?

We considered the rise of alternative economic models that are being explored in theory but also practice as ‘alternatives’, but on a small scale (eg co-operatives, local currencies, exchange systems, etc). Would such ‘alternatives’ ever pose a threat to the dominance of neoliberalism?

It seems that only major catastrophes (in particular war) are sufficient to persuade people that we all need to pull together rather than compete. While environmental disaster could provide such a spur to co-operative action, it may be that the poor would simply be the ones who would suffer the physical and economic consequences of such disaster.

We thought it important to remind ourselves that when we talk about ‘the wealthy’ probably most of us fall within the top one percent. Questions of redistribution must therefore involve people like us giving up there wealth.

We discussed how housing was a particular consequence (and cause) of extremes of wealth and poverty and returned to consider the need for changed attitudes towards tax. There was some disagreement as to whether there was a strong current of opinion in favour of increasing taxation. It was noted that one of the few unquestioned forms of public expenditure was on bailing out the banks and quantitative easing, which was little more than a mechanism for further redistribution of wealth upwards.