Instead, Social Democrats, perhaps reluctantly, embraced conservative parties’ populist appeals for low taxes on incomes, inheritances and, particularly, on corporates profits. Thomas Piketty has shown how far taxes on top incomes and wealth have been reduced over decades from rates over 90 percent on incomes in the USA, Germany, Britain and France in the 1950s to less than half of that today. There was also a pronounced shift to more regressive taxes on consumption. This impacted the poor most – traditional SD supporters. Industrial-scale tax avoidance and evasion enabled by hyper-globalisation went unaddressed effectively, angering supporters.[...]
Wages have fallen as profits soared over recent decades, hurting workers. The growing imbalance between capital and labour, shown in the rapid decline in labour’s share of national income (GDP) in many European countries, demonstrates unequivocally how workers have been losing out in the market economy for many decades. This has not gone unnoticed by workers, many of whom struggle to make ends meet, with some having to hold more than one job. It is a reason for rising inequality in the market. The skew in the balance between labour and capital in recent years has been due to these changes. [...]
However, increasingly, fractured politics has allowed this purpose to be diluted into many single issue agendas, impacting on the overarching collective identity of equal protection for all. Thus, identity politics has weakened the collective appeal of broad left parties. Had SD parties paid greater attention to rising inequality and protecting the collective safety net for all, they might have reduced the impact of this fracture in politics.
No comments:
Post a Comment