Neoliberalism has eroded our economic rights over decades – equally aggressive action from the left is required to reverse it
In the TV series Are You Being Served?
staff grumbled about wages. But compared with today, workers at the Grave
Brothers department store were lucky. Photograph: BBC/PA
Well, at least we beat
Mexico. The new OECD
report on pensions reveals that for people on average earnings, Britain's
state pension is the least generous of all the 34 OECD members bar one. The
average Briton's state pension replaces 32.6% of their income when they retire.
Our state pension isn't just stingy compared with other prosperous western
European countries. The governments of Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia all give
their pensioners more, as does Turkey.
What an indictment of
neoliberal Britain. We have the lowest state pension of any major country in
Europe and also the highest rail fares. The country that comes top, or near the
top, in tables where it's better to come bottom, we also come bottom, or near
the bottom, in tables where it's better to come top. Inequality? We're right
there at the top. Another report by the OECD, published
in December 2011, said that income inequality among working age people had risen
faster in the UK than in any other OECD country since 1975. Social mobility?
We're right at the bottom: OECD figures in 2012 showed earnings in the UK were
more
likely to reflect our parents' earnings than any other country. It doesn't
have to be like this and wouldn't be if it weren't for the radical changes made
to our economy from May 1979 onwards.
Our high rail fares, like
our low pensions, are also the direct consequence of neoliberalism. A recent TUC-commissioned
report found that prices on Britain's privatised railways for long distance,
day return and season tickets, were around twice as much as the average fares in
France, Germany, Italy and Spain. "In France, a near fully publicly owned rail
system manages to give its passengers fares, which are far lower than the UK,
for almost exactly the same amount of public rail subsidy between 1996 and
2010", the report declared.
It's revealing to compare the situation now with 1978, the last year before our economic model was changed. In 1975 the "old" Labour government introduced Serps (state earnings related scheme), a generous scheme to top up the basic state pension. On returning to power in 1974 Labour also raised widows' and retirement pensions by a record real increase of 13%. This move meant that pensions as a proportion of average earnings matched their previous record, set in 1965 – also under a Labour government.
In 1978, pensioners were
not only getting an excellent deal from the government, with the value of the
state pension rising to 20.4% of average earnings, it was also the year that the
gap between the rich and poor reached its lowest
level in our history. Never before had the share of income of the bottom 90%
been so great and the share of the top 10% been so low.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather live in a country with the highest state pensions and the lowest rail fares. To achieve that mere tinkering of the present system won't do: the left in Britain needs its own Margaret Thatcher, as determined to rebuild the progressive postwar mixed economy model as Thatcher was to destroy it. Half measures won't get us anywhere: neoliberalism is deliberately designed to increase inequalities, destroy state provision and allow corporations to charge us much more for things than when they were in public ownership, like our utilities and our railways.
Coincidentally, BBC2 has
been showing repeats of the 1978 series of the classic sitcom Are You Being
Served?. The staff of Grace Brothers department store sometimes grumble at the
wages that young Mr Grace pays them, but if they knew what was going to happen
in the UK in the years ahead – the abolition of wages councils, the decline of
the state pension, the growth of zero-hours contracts and McJobs
– they'd probably have been much happier with their conditions.
Guardian
