"It's insecurity stupid!" A five minute provocation about wealth.

I was invited to give a five minute "provocation" about wealth inequality at the London School of Economics, and this is (more or less) what I said....

Before saying anything, I want to acknowledge how useful it is that the LSE and JRF have completed such an extensive literature review of the research into how wealth inequality is framed. It's so helpful and great starting point for anyone looking to campaign on this issue.

There are many aspects of the research I could speak to, but I only have five minutes and I've been asked to provoke, which is apt because in this context, to provoke means to give a speech act that makes listeners angry.

Anger is, of course, an emotion. I want to talk to you about insecurity. Because in all the focus group work on wealth I've done with the British people, it was that emotion, that feeling of insecurity that was always the elephant in the room.

• "Rational" messages don't cut through to people living insecure lives

In 2019 / 2020 I travelled up and down the country with Tax Justice UK holding focus groups on wealth and taxation. Cast your mind back to that period in early 2020. It was a strange time. I remember one occasion late at night, post focus group walking around Manchester's China town and wondering out loud "why are all the Chinese restaurants closed" and speculating if it was anything to do with the reports of that strange flu people were talking about. It was an unsettling time.It leads me to the first observation I want to share:

• People who feel unsettled or insecure, people living through crises are really hard to reach through rational argument about abstract things like "wealth inequality."

This matters because the most striking question raised by the JRF / LSE research is this:

"If wealth inequality is rising, why aren't people angry about it?"

Sometimes I wonder if we are asking the right question. In our focus groups we asked people about wealth inequality, and nearly everyone agreed it was a bad thing. But if many agree inequality is not a good thing, why aren't they more exorcised about it? This leads me to a second observation I want to share with you. In comms we have a messaging rule of thumb that roughly states this:

• "if everyone agrees with a message, it's probably a dud message."

An effective message should mobilise people who already agree with us. More importantly it should engage and persuade people who have yet to make up their mind too. But an effective message should also provoke and antagonise some people, it should push some people away. A message that everyone can agree with is most likely a "meh” message. I wonder if the public’s apparent lack of anger about wealth inequality speaks to something similar? If we want to raise concerns about wealth inequality then perhaps we need to antagonise some people about wealth inequality. And that probably means posing a different question about wealth inequality, but what? One way, kind of suggested by the JRF/ LSE literature review is to take a “fragmentary” approach to the issue,* to unpack what the activity of accumulating wealth is, if necessary as a “way in” to a bigger conversation about wealth. In essence we need to break down what the component parts of wealth inequality are and communicate about them in words that the public cannot fail to understand, something I think that progressives and liberals are very bad at. As an aside, when I say "communicate with the public in words they will understand?" I mean by using language approximate to the average reading age of the UK, which is 12-years-old.

Everyday wealth

Our approach to problematising wealth might start by unpacking the different ways wealth is accumulated and being sensitive to the complicated feelings people have about those different ways of accumulating wealth. For example, I recently worked on a report that explained three simple ways that wealth is accumulated:

"Wealth is accumulated when your income is higher than your expenses. This can arise from different means including: inheritance, asset appreciation and earning more from work than you spend day to day."

Being in a position where one earns more than one spends day-to-day is the simplest way most people can come to experience what wealth means. For many, the knowledge of that simple surplus of wealth is what security feels like. There is some excellent research on how much wealth is enough. But in the focus groups I worked on, it was more often this feeling of security that was front of mind for people. People’s aspired to not have to worry anymore. It was often easier for people to speak to this feeling than it was for them to put a figure on wealth.

When we are campaigning about wealth inequality we must be aware of this feeling and the role of simple, everyday wealth in contributing to it. In our messaging we must be crystal clear that it is not this kind of wealth that is problematic. The stores of wealth that are problematic and that we should be unpacking are the store of wealth protected by firms, shareholders and the ultra rich and enabled by politicians and policy elites, particularly in times of crisis. We should be demanding to know why the instinctive reaction of those with power in a cost of living crisis, is to institute policies that harm less well off people in the name of “price stability” while the wealthy and corporations protect and even expand their margins.

Inheritance

When we focus grouped people about wealth we didn't intend to talk about inheritance. But it quickly became apparent that inheritance was something that people REALLY, REALLY DID want to talk about. In particular people really seemed to dislike inheritance taxation.

Progressive guy that I am, at first I have to admit, I found this attitude hard to accept. My frustration was further reinforced by the fact that, in the course of 13 or so three hour focus groups, not one participant fully understood how inheritance tax worked.

Now, the classic mistake I feel we make when confronted with this kind of situation, is to simply assume:

"well we just need to do a better job of explaining the tax system to people, don't we?"

But this is a mistake. If facts were all that were needed to combat catastrophic climate change, for example, then we wouldn’t be hurtling towards 2 C+ global warming. Anyway, we are in the business of persuasion not education. People are complicated, they aren't just simple fact processing machines.

One thing I’ve learned since those focus groups, is that attitudes to inheritance are tied intimately to feelings about work and, crucially, to family and feelings of insecurity have a tendency to short circuit rational thinking. Families on the median income of £31,000 aren't about to understand the minutiae of the inheritance tax system if they are worried for their financial future. And boy are people worried about the future.

Living in fear

For 40 years or so our society has progressively privatised the cost of the welfare safety net, dumping the costs onto the family or household. From council housing to pensions, from pensions to social care, from social care to health. For decades politicians have privatised away whilst insisting that households take responsibility for themselves. In these circumstances it should be no surprise that people dislike inheritance tax. A mortgage-free home and the wealth in it, is most peoples' best shot at financial security. The idea that 40% of that estate will be taken as a "death tax" is obviously going to be unpopular.

Point the finger of blame

We have to point a finger at the people, the system and the beneficiaries that engineer wealth inequality. And for a lesson in this I'd recommend you read the speeches of that great frothing communist, the US President Joe Biden. His State of the Union speeches - often better on paper than in delivery - are a masterclass in the rhetoric of positioning and finger pointing. Of saying to the American people “I get it” and then pointing over their shoulder at the corporations and the ultra wealthy who are his real targets.

This president has many flaws, but he’s also the president who took out an advert in the middle of the Super Bowl to call out “shrinkflation” and the “greedflation” of corporations. It's hard to imagine a UK politician adopting this kind of rhetoric, but I encourage you to read his State of Union speeches in particular.

In conclusion, and with this admittedly tricky and often contradictory set of observations in mind, my challenge to you is to ask:

• what are you going to do to make wealth inequality a problem?

• What are you going to do to raise the reputational cost on the wealthy, on businesses and most importantly on politicians of failing to tackle wealth inequality?

• How are you going to unpack and fragment this complex issue into pieces that a 12 year old can understand? AND

• How are you going to take those fragments and problematise a grander story about how we tackle wealth inequality while proving to those families that you are on their side?

*I’ve subsequently learned that there is a significant and contested debate about “fragmentation” within the academic discourse about poverty. And I need to clarify that this isn’t what I’m talking about. In using the word “fragmentary” I’m speaking more to an unpacking of wealth inequality into its simpler component parts, as an entry point to a wider, more “upstream” conversation about wealth.