Abstract
Social inequality is one of the urgent global issues that world community has to pay a great deal of attention. This paper concerns social inequality problems from the perspectives of theoretical scholars and the practical implementation of ways to prevent this problem. In this paper, social inequality is interlinked with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as it is core to carry out these tasks. I argue that social inequality is increasing and there are certain consequences such as populism, protests and accumulation of wealth and suggest proposals to reverse it.
Introduction
I would like to begin the research paper with the statement of Oxfam that said during the World Economic Forum in Davos, 2019 claiming that “world’s 26 richest people own as much as poorest 50 percent”. Moreover, it was stated by the Oxfam that while 2200 billionaires’ wealth has increased by 12 percent or 2.5 billion dollars a day last year, the poorest half of the world’s wealth decreased by 11 percent. Social inequality is one of the crucial issues in the world that should be lowered by all possible means to achieve stable sustainability. I would like to consider the social inequality globally and based on the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals as I am convinced that these development goals are based on solving current crucial issues in the world “meeting the needs of people without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. I can state with confidence that reversing social inequality which causes all these issues such as poverty, hunger, gender inequality, climate inequality, education, etc. we can implement all the 17 SDGs by 2030 as all these goals positively correlated with the social inequality.
Moreover, I believe that theoretical knowledge is as important as practical usage and it should be considered equally. Therefore, I have divided my work into two sections: theoretical and practical. In the theoretical section, I briefly review the main philosophical thoughts and scholars’ works on social inequality from the ancient to the current time. In the practical part of research paper, I will briefly define the types of social inequality and study the social inequality on the global scale evolving my proposal to reverse it based on the current suggested schemes.
Theoretical Part
One of the ancient Greek philosophers was Plato who wrote about the notion and situations of social inequality in his society in the work “Republic”. Plato, in general, divided his society into three classes: the guardians, the soldiers, and the producers. The guardians were divided into two subcategories such as the complete guardians who were rulers or philosopher-kings and the auxiliaries who were city soldiers. The last group that we consider as producers included farmers and craftsmen. Plato justifies his society saying these words: “and this is equally true of imitation; no one man can imitate many things as well as he would imitate a single one?”. He explains that society should be divided in this way as every person has its duties before the society and rulers cannot do the works of farmers, farmers cannot do the work of craftsmen. Another Greek philosopher who concerned about the social inequality in his society was Aristotle who wrote the book “Politics”. In his book, also Aristotle divided the society into three socioeconomic classes such as the richest people, the poorest people, and the middle class. Consequently, he preferred the last class as a driving force of economy and society as the middle-class people are eager to follow rationality. In his book, “Politics” it was delivered by the words “many things are best to those who are in the mean; …‘The middle class have many advantages.” He stated that the government should support the poor people and he was against to have many poor people and the rich in the society. He urged that if there are a lot of poor people then the state inevitably will have a lot of enemies consequently creating riots and unstable society. Therefore, I believe that his ideas about the middle class are also actual to our current society. Heading to the past periods of Renaissance, I can state that there were also lots of thinkers, politicians, philosophers who were concerned about the social division of society. One of the representatives of that time was an Italian thinker, philosopher, and politician N. Machiavelli. He wrote the famous book “The Prince” and the term “Machiavellian” connoted negatively to the politicians who allegedly apply immoral behaviours and deceit. Machiavelli believed that the conflict between the “nobility” and the people will cause social inequality. He advised the prince saying that “princes ought to leave affairs of reproach to the management of others and keep those of grace in their own hands. … I consider that a prince ought to cherish the nobles, but not so as to make himself hated by the people”. Therefore, he divided the state into two dispositions such as populous and upper-class where all conflicts and clashes take between them. Machiavelli preferred the rulings of upper-class and middle-class people who own properties and pay taxes. He urged to prevent rough inequality as such a situation may lead to the corrupted rich people and desperately poor people.
One of the founders of political philosophy was an English philosopher T. Hobbes who formulated social contract theory. According to T. Hobbes, people should be all equal in their natural liberty rights. People will come to the social contract mutually transferring their rights to one person to make effective decisions for the interests of all. T. Hobbes praises the role of the state, which he recognizes as an absolute sovereign and in this way an “ideal society” cannot have privileged classes since it degrades the equality of rights provided by the ruler.
Moreover, great minds such as J. Locke, J. Bentham, J. Rousseau, F. Hegel, and other thinkers studied questions on social inequality concluding that it will cause problems for the state.
The next stage was during the industrial development of society in the XVIII century. At that time, society developed in a new way of having bourgeoisie who consisted of merchants, feudal lords, and elites. During this period A. Smith divided the society into three classes: capitalists owning capital, landlords owning land and getting their income as rent and workers obtaining their income as a wage selling their labor to the market. Consequently, he reveals a new factor of inequality – economic, contrasting it with the traditional factor – class.
A. Comte was a French philosopher who lived in the XIX century and “a father of sociology” who used the term sociology first in his works. He believed that society should be regulated by scientific knowledge based on facts and evidence rather than beliefs and superstitions. He divides society into two categories such as patricians and proletariats. He believes that the “holders of material force would not abuse their power” explaining it with indirect social and moral control by people along with direct political control. He saw the society within the solidaristic leanings of patricians to proletariats supporting each other to achieve economic goals.
K. Marx was one of the thinkers who develop the idea of social inequality in the meanings of economic inequality of society. According to Marx, even if he has never finished the “Class” chapter of his work can be delivered that the main classes are the capitalists and the proletariats who had different economic and political interests. Here, he makes it more clearly stating that “classes ‘arise out of’ production relations because the latter creates ‘masses with a common situation, common interests”. He believed that history is produced as a result of a clash between social classes. Consequently, the class conflict will lead to the abolition of private ownership, the means of production and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Marx concludes that these outcomes lead the society to become classless and “with the revolution, the production processes that were developed under the spur of capital accumulation will be harnessed to serve broad human needs rather than the needs of a few capitalists” fully destroying the power of capitalists.
In comparison with K. Marx, M. Weber described social inequality in a more complex and evolved concept. The social inequality based on economic inequality is further evolved by him including status and party belonging. M. Weber described the “three dimensions of stratification”: class, status, and party and differentiated the class from the status group stating that “’ classes’ are stratified according to their relations to the production and acquisition of goods; whereas ‘status groups’ are stratified according to the principles of their consumption of goods as represented by special ‘styles of life’”. He explained class power as an economic advantage of one from another while social power can be identified by lifestyle, culture, and conscience in general by status. Moreover, political power can be exercised with the participation of the life of political parties and interest groups.
The recent thoughts on the division of society into classes can be found in the works of R. Dahrendorf and P. Bourdieu. R. Dahrendorf, in contrast to Marx who made a possession/non-possession of private ownership and means of production as a central point to the class formation, he stressed an authority as a core to the formation of a class. He says that the authority may not arise from the wealth but wealth can accompany it and for groups who have authority, it is not important having the wealth as they can rule without them. It is stated by him that the authority is exerted by the dominating groups over subordinate groups leading to the conflict in imperatively coordinated associations. To sum up, the source of social stratification due to R. Dahrendorf is a having/not-having of authority which means the legitimate power relationship between superordination and subordination.
Another todays thinker, the sociologist P. Bourdieu (1930-2002) who has introduced the term “habitus” into sociology arguing that the class theory should not be applied in determining social inequality in society. Mainly, there are 4 central concepts in Bourdieu’s sociology: capital, habitus, fields and symbolic power. He argued that the only economic capital of a person cannot be enough to define and explain the formation of social stratification of society: therefore, other capitals such as social and cultural that person posses should be considered in the formation of social structure. Moreover, he sums up his work stating that a person’s capital “produces a character structure (habitus) that generates particular sorts of behavior in the contexts of particular social games (fields)”. The links between capital, habitus, and field create cause and effect, conditioner and conditioned relations causing symbolic power that means an unequal distribution of resources.
As we have analyzed from the works of great minds, I can state with confidence that social inequality is not just separately economic or social or cultural properties of a person it can be their cause and effect relations between them and even can vary due to the different criteria in the society. However, the economic property can be considered as one of the most crucial factors that are happening in our world. Therefore, in the second part of a research paper, I will consider briefly the different types of inequality with its measurement indexes and analyze its consequences with the reversion ways suggested by scholars evolving my proposal to reverse it.
Practical Part
Generally, in economics and social sciences, inequality is divided into two main classes such as economic inequality and inequality of opportunity. The economic inequality includes the notions such as income inequality, wealth inequality and inequality of consumption while the inequality of opportunities includes such subcategories as gender, ethnicity, religion, political, and the recent evolving type of inequality is climate inequality. The different forms of inequalities are interrelated and refer to the term “social inequality” in the country. Now, we have differentiated and determined these types of inequalities and we need the measurement tools to define the level of social inequality within the country and world. There are different metrics for the inequality that used by scholars such as the Gini coefficient, Palma ratio, the Hoover index, the Theil index, Kuznets ratio, Lorenz curve, Division by quantiles. Among these inequality metrics, the most popular ones are the Gini coefficient and the Palma ratio. The Gini index is the most widely applied metric of inequality and it scores the distribution of wealth and income within the country where the score 0 shows total equality in contrast the score 100 shows the total inequality. The Gini index is mostly criticized because of its sensitivity to the middle-class income as some scholars believe that the inequality issue is at the bottom. The Palma ratio is one of the alternatives to the Gini coefficient that represents the ratio of the share of the richest 10% of the population from the GNI divided by the poorest 40% of the population’s share. The next, let’s consider the current situation in the world applying our tools and knowledge that we have reviewed and prepared.
The inequality between states has grown dramatically during the end of XIX and within the XX century with the industrial and technological advancements took place during this period. We observed the great inequality gap between developed, developing and third world countries. The advanced economies such as the USA, the UK, France, Germany, etc. became more powerful in terms of economic and political positions in the world in comparison with African, Asian and South American states. According to the World Bank database formulated by the Guardian (pic.1), Scandinavian countries incline to have the lowest levels of income inequality while African states have a high degree of income inequality.
As it is shown by the statistics, the GDP of the country cannot guarantee the equal distribution of income within the society. The countries such as the USA and China with a high GDP are not the leading countries with equal income distribution. Therefore, social inequality should not be considered only by countries but must be considered encompassing the whole world. For these reasons, we have the 17 SDGs that all states, organizations, and corporations should commit themselves to implement them. If we do not consider it as a whole, then it will lead the political, economic and social instabilities in certain countries causing economic crisis and political instability in the world. Moreover, before the opening of the World Economic Forum in Davos 2020, the head of IMF K. Georgieva stated that “excessive inequality hinders growth and (…) can fuel populism and political upheaval” For these reasons, here I would like to describe and evolve this statement briefly, as the consequences of increasing social inequality, with the recent elections influenced by the rise of populism and protests held.
The polarization of politics can be seen, first of all, with the new political movements affected by populism such as the referendum for the withdrawal of the UK from the EU, the presidential election in the USA and the Catalonia referendum, etc. The new leaders appearing and to some extent, they are exploiting the issues of social inequality within the country to achieve in most cases their interests. It can be seen from the statements of D. Trump where he addresses the matters of the bottom people as unemployment, inequalities of opportunity, migration issues gaining the votes from the bottom people too. Moreover, another presidential election held in 2019 was the Ukrainian election where the new leader V. Zelensky who was far from politics has become the president of Ukraine. V. Zelensky before becoming the president was a comedian who represented the populist, anti-corruption messages against his opponent P. Poroshenko. Another good example is the exit of Britain from the EU where the citizens voted for the Brexit not only once but twice: the first during the national referendum; the second during the early general election called by B. Johnson to fast up the frozen Brexit. Along with the populist ideas, there were protests in the world in 2019 having mostly social characters as the increase of fuel price, an increase of fare to the public transport, climate change etc. that describe the increasing inequality and poverty in the world states. For me, 2019 was the year of protests as we have observed many demonstrations with various motives and demands. These 2019 protests can be divided into three groups: 1. Protests against the cuttings of public spending and policies (Iran, Chile, Brazil, Sudan, India, Ecuador, etc.); 2. Protests against political regimes (Algeria, Colombia, Bolivia, Russia, Hong-Kong, etc.); 3. The newly arising wave of protest is climate protests where more than 7.6 mln. participated (Fridays For Future, Extinction Rebellion) and sometimes it is positively interlinked with inequality as preventing global warming and climate change is likely contributing to solving the inequality.
I am convinced that these protests and populist movements along with the accumulation of wealth in the top 1% of people’s hands are the main consequences of social inequality in the world. Therefore, we have to reverse the social inequality to maintain sustainable development. For this, we have to take certain steps and policies worldwide. We have to remember that the perfect equal society is not achievable; however, certain actions can decrease the level of inequality. There are different suggestions and policies offered by scholars. I will sum up these popular suggestions and stress the best option due to my opinion. These solutions: 1.Global wealth tax suggested by T. Piketty, 2.Progressive income tax by Jacobson (1976) 3.Higher inheritance tax by OECD, 4.Universal basic income(UBI) firstly offered by M. Luther King, 5.Predistrubution of wealth before taxation by J. Hacker, 6.Universal basic services (UBS), 7.Creation of shared ownership funds, 8.Flourishing middle-class, 9. Encouraging companies to publish gender pay gap, 10. Capital endowment (minimum inheritance) paid to all at adulthood by T. Atkinson. T. Atkinson in his famous book “Inequality – What can be done?” suggested 15 proposals and several ideas for further developments. Among these proposals, the other ways that I have counted are restated. Therefore, I did not rewrite them, however, one of the prominent ideas was a capital endowment which meant a minimum inheritance that will be paid by the state for all young people who reach the age of 18 as some people inherit very little and some inherit a lot creating more inequality in the society. Therefore, as a starting point, people should own a minimum inheritance.
I have captured 10 prominent proposals that are more attractive and seemed to be practical in our current world. However, I would like to develop my proposal on Universal Basic Income (UBI) resolution. Moreover, I would like to state that the application of global wealth tax at least 1% on wealth offered by Oxfam and the inheritance tax suggested by OECD will be an additional instrument to decrease the inequality along with the Universal Basic Income. However, the wealth tax and inheritance taxes seem to be more politically sensitive as countries attempts to attract more rich investors and keep rich people within the country by internal taxation. Therefore, I am convinced that UBI will be one of the practical solutions that could be introduced to decrease income inequality. Firstly, the idea of UBI in the form of “guaranteed income” was stated by M. Luther King in 1967 and the basic idea was to encourage states to pay a guaranteed unconditional income for all citizens that will be sufficient to live above the poverty level. However, this idea was challenged by a lot of scholars and sociologists. According to the International Labor Office analyses (pic.2), the implementation of this scheme will require about 20-30% of state GDP in most countries.
They offered 2 scenarios: the first scenario was the introduction of UBI at the poverty line level and the second one was introduction UBI in exchange for cuts employer’s social security benefits. Although these scenarios represent the states’ unwillingness to spend a huge amount of money just for the UBI, it showed its effectiveness in practice where such schemes applied by several states as an experiment. For example, experiments have funded in India by Unicef and in Kenya, by Give Directly charity organization represented the positive correlation between UBI and living standards of people and health improvements. Moreover, the co-founder of Facebook, C. Huges developed this idea considering the US market in his book “Fair Shot”. He argued that workers and students who earn less than $50,000 should receive $500 guaranteed income in cash every month and argued that it is the best thing that government can do to eliminate social inequality. In addition, Elon Musk argues that robots will take many jobs in the future and the only solution for the governments will be to pay a UBI. B. Obama stated that whether a universal income is a right model or not will be a debate that we’ll be having over the next 10 or 20 years. In addition to these thoughts, I would like to suggest my evolution and reformulation for the UBI in the global range giving the leading role to the UN.
As I mentioned before, the implementation of 17 SDGs by all states is very important to maintain a healthy condition of the world. Therefore, I would like to suggest that every member state to the UN should contribute its 1% of GDP to the UN fund voluntarily. Consequently, the UN should redistribute the collected economic resource among the states beginning from the third world countries to developing and developed countries every year. For the distribution of this economic resources, the UN should follow the principle offered by C. Huges state by state where, for instance, in the USA only people who earn less than $50,000 should get a monthly stipend $500, while people who earn more than this should be considered sufficiently secured. I am convinced that this would work better in the future to implement SDGs worldwide and prevent sharply increasing income inequality due to advanced technologies in the future.
Conclusion
To conclude, I would like to restate again that with solving the social inequality in general, we can fulfil surely the SDGs of the UN by 2030 even tackling issues as a climate change and the restoration of peace. Therefore, I believe that inequality is inevitable; however, the reduction of inequality should be carried out worldwide applying the suggested 10 ways of tackling this issue. Especially, I would like to highlight the paramount importance of Universal Basic Income (UBI) and its mechanism that I have reformulated based on the 1% GDP contribution to the UN by world states in preventing increasing income inequality in the world and redistribution of wealth worldwide.
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