What Can be Done to Reduce Inequality?

good evening my name is John Hills I'm from the Department Social Policy and co-director of the international inequalities Institute and I've been part of the Suntory and Toyota international centers for economics and related disciplines all three of which are hosting this evenings event we're here to celebrate the work of tony atkinson and i can see in the audience many people who are friends who are family who are disciples whose whole careers have been inspired by Tony's work we'll be talking later on during the reception that will take place afterwards more personally about Tony Nick Stern and one of the members of the of Tony's family will be will be speaking then afterwards but what we want to do this evening is to mark the way in which Tony's work was intensely practical it was a great theoretician but his work was always focused on the reality of people's lives and of what could be done to change them and we're we're focusing on his final book and the proposals in actually not his final book his most recent book I believe there will be some more publications from from Tony's work that will be that will be coming and his identification of rather than seeing inequality is something that nothing could be done about there were ways in which governments could make a difference and we're focusing this evenings discussion many of you who've read the book will be familiar with the agenda he sets out you can read on his website the the 15 proposals he makes and our speakers this evening are going to focus on that so we had to wind we're going to start the evening with with three speakers Rachel Lomax will start I'm welcoming Rachel back to the LSE as Alice LSE alumna she is somebody ideally placed to talk about the way in which Toni's agenda isn't just about things for government but she was permit secretary of the department working pensions and therefore knows a lot about the practicalities of making changes but also has experience from the World Bank and is currently a non-executive director of HS BC many other things as well ed miliband many of you will will know if you were in the country at the time Ed Miliband was leader of the Labour Party and since then and leader and leader of the Opposition and it's still very active MP but but more to the point has spent productively a lot of the time since the 2015 election working on inequality and many of you will be familiar and if you're not you probably should be with his with his podcasts under the title of reasons to be cheerful which I think many of us think we do need reasons to be cheerful David Willetts Lord Willits is now executive chair of the resolution foundation forgetting for many of us in the room we know his distinguished political career including being Minister for higher education but we are concentrating this evening on inequality rather than higher education and but you may have come across David's most recent book which is called a university education a university education thank you sorry I should have got that plug in earlier okay so what we can be doing is each of us speak is going to talk between 10 and 12 minutes around which of these the practicalities and the effects of each of these areas that Tony identified will have some follow-up discussion between the panel and then I hope shortly after 7 o'clock we'll turn it over to to questions and answers and we will be stopping at 7:25 to show a video tribute from Professor Amartya Sen who couldn't be here today but we thought you'd like to hear a Martius views on Tony and then weird thoughts about Tony and and his career and then we'll go outside for a reception and there will be there will be some speeches at the reception um so if you are tweeting the hashtag is it was not up there is hashtag LSE in capital letters Atkinson in equality but please turn your mobiles to silent and then under you will have a mobile like this but please turn your sophisticated electronic devices to silent this is being recorded and and videoed if the technology works this will be available as a video podcast afterwards so if you don't want anybody to know that you're here please don't ask a question afterwards right so Rachel would you like to [Applause] [Music] [Applause] well thank you for that introduction and thanking you thank you for inviting me to participate in this distinguished panel in memory of a great economist I'm neither an academic nor a politician never have been either but I was a policy maker back in the day and a near contemporary of Tony Atkinson so perhaps I could start this session off by offering some perspective on the subject of today's debate I first came across Tony atkinson's work in the mid nineteen seventies when I was a junior Treasury official working on taxation in those days the top marginal rate of tax was 83 percent 98 percent if you read within the investment income surcharge and that seemed entirely normal to someone of my age taxied had been at that level all my life we were looking at ways of reforming the tax a benefit system I recall working on an annual wealth tax and a negative income tax there was a white paper on the wealth tax which I worked on and my boss attended parliamentary hearings but alas it came to nothing to my bitter disappointment the ideas behind a negative income tax had a slightly longer shelf life and surfaced eventually in the truncated form of child benefit in the event the key tax reform of that era was the introduction of v80 which was driven by our recent membership of the common market that's how long ago it was I must have read the academic literature on optimal taxation at the time casting my mind back I can't really remember what I thought of it but I think I probably thought it was exciting but quite out of the box politically I stayed in the Treasury after 1979 because they were on the head of the time in allowing me to work part time on my children were little so I had first-hand experience of being involved in policy through the great inequality term as Tony åkesson it the Thatcher government's battles with the trade unions of course have become the stuff of song and legend and film and all the rest of it but you know Policy Priorities shifted dramatically on virtually every front an early iconic a change was our the slashing of top rates of income tax the 60% and it was quite a few years later before they were lowered again to 40% and over time they were far-reaching changes to welfare spending on almost every front a couple of decades later as John said in the new millennium they witnessed another less radical attempt to change policy I was in DWP by then and the landscape had changed utterly not just the economy but with technology and globalization mainstream political and social attitudes had shifted almost beyond recognition along with the distribution of income and wealth the super-rich were folk heroes rather than tax exiles meanwhile the corrosive effect of widespread means-testing had already become a parent with confiscatory withdrawal rates at the bottom of the income distribution acting as a severe disincentive to work and pitting the nearly poor against the poor the tabloid press were far more interested in in exposing benefit fraud and tax evasion this experience over three decades previous houses be predisposes me to agree with Tony Atkinson central arguments that government policy has a significant impact on inequality of course governments aren't in command of the massive changes that take place over such a long period of time but they are powerless either the policies can encourage and enable change and they can frustrate it too I think you know the results of government action in inaction are not always foreseen let alone fully intended and call me naive but I don't think that the Thatcher government deliberately set out to foster a more unequal society at least not on the scale that eventually occurred they were focused on galvanizing the British economy and it seemed to them at least to be in serious decline when their radical economic policies seemed to succeed they became mainstream the Blair government embraced the free market on the whatever works principle and tried to inject more social justice into the mix prioritizing more equality but focusing on equality of opportunity rather than promoting equality of outcomes so I think Tony Atkinson in his book is very clear-eyed about this this span of history and I like the approach that he takes which is to to tackling inequality which is very pragmatic you know he advocates traveling hopefully learning as you go along without fretting too much about the ultimate destination and that's a very sympathetic approach to someone who's hacked their way through the policy jungle as I have anyhow enough of the history let me say a few words about next set of questions do these proposals make sense are they workable and would they make much difference well my eyes pretty an expert these days but quite honestly very few of them seem to me at all outlandish many of them are familiar because they've been implemented or seriously considered either here or elsewhere in the world to my certain knowledge British governments have implemented far wackier ideas and maybe in the process of doing services more progressive tax policies less reliance on means-tested benefits increasing and then taxing child benefit why didn't Gordon Brown do that I never knew knew look Danny bonds child trust funds these are not new and they're not exotic nor are active labor market policies backed up by publicly funded employment schemes there are a number of ideas whose time has clearly come since this book was published a conservative Chancellor has announced the staged move to a living wage I see that this week's economist is arguing that the time has come to look again at property taxes and inheritance taxes both of which are right for reform I have to say I'm less convinced that these proposals would have much immediate impact on market income especially in the upper reaches to be honest I don't set much store on national conversations which rapidly turn into shouting matches the idea of introducing distributional contributions considerations into competition policy is intriguing I'm not quite sure I know what it means but good luck to any British governments hoping to influence the direction of technological change it might do better to focus on collecting tax from technology chance and ensuring that their activities are properly regulated there are some surprising emissions from this list which I guess will come to when we when we talk about it further for example I don't see much on housing or on childcare and preschool education both of which would help to address some of the marked intergenerational inequity inequalities that have emerged in recent years I'm sure we'll hear more about that from David so I'll leave it there but the fact that the list is not complete is not this is quibbling and nor I think should we be detained by the initiative feasibility of these proposals they could be made to work this slate of proposals is a good a good a place to begin there's any to me the more important issues are political I just don't buy the argument that it takes the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to achieve a major reduction in inequality whatever the historical record shows and much of it is pretty hard to read I don't believe in the laws of history however there is one timeless treat that needs to be taken very seriously societies winners don't disgorge their privileges easily a couple of decade yeah the feasibility of any political program to reduce inequality depends on how entrenched those privileges are and its success is going to require political leadership laced with plenty of low political garb the inescapable fact is that any meaningful redistribution involves both winners and losers winners are never grateful enough to offset the resentment of the of the losers which can be quite relentless any forming so that any reforming government needs a strategy for disarming its opponents as much as a vision to inspire the faithful on the vision thing fairness is a powerful rallying cry with broad-based support that appeal the old charge of the politics of envy I think has gotten a very dated feel I don't think it would stick these days when it comes to dealing with opponents however I think there are basically three tactics which need thinking through you could discredit them you could demoralize them and you can divide them I'm not in favor of open class warfare it seems to be a better approach is to build a broad base of support by being inclusive and by buying off potential opponents and it's just full of examples of how you do that beverage for example was eloquent about the need to provide benefits for middle class voters if the welfare state was to be politically sustainable and it's no accident that the National Health Service which we all use is a national treasure back in the 1930s and 40s there and I beveren famously had to stuff the doctors mouths with dolls in order to get it off the ground mrs. Thatcher's siddhu's potential labor voters by selling off council houses and privatizing utilities on very attractive terms in the name of popular capitalism I think it's also important to think very carefully about how you sequence policy changes you have to be prepared to take your time when it comes to implementing the most unpopular policies salami slicing as we used to call it in my Treasury days is a is a very good approach and it helps to wear down the opposition it took decades to get rid of mortgage interest tax relief for owner-occupiers decades it took almost as long to displace contribution based unemployment insurance by means-tested benefits for working age people and there are plenty of other examples the freezing of the state benefit for what 20 years which reduced it dramatically as a proportion of earnings is another example which brings me to a key point we shouldn't be thinking in terms of a policy BIGBANG specific policies can be improved in the light of experience what really matters what really matters is establishing a direction of policy that can be sustained over a period of time policies that can survive a change in government and nurture political attitudes that will support further change how do you do that good question essentially there are two broad approaches to achieving a radical change in the direction of policy in the British system the nice way is to build a political consensus upfront the classic example is the creation of the welfare state after World War two the post-war at the government was able to build on the Prem beverage report and some important measures which were passed by the wartime coalition such as the 1944 Education Act and the introduction of family allowances this approach to be honest has become very much more difficult in peacetime given our first-past-the-post system with its unpredictable short-term electoral cycle and its highly confrontational style a much more bruising approach but one with a proven track record is to design and implement policies that will be costly to reverse in political and in financial terms and the history of the Thatcher government is full of inspiration for those wanting to go down this road and I think some of Hatcher's sons and daughters have learnt the lesson in designing their approach to brexit to sum up making a real difference to people's lives takes time there are plenty of practical policies that would reduce inequality but they need to be thought of as part of a broad long-term strategy not a jumbo package and they need to be implemented in a way that makes them difficult to reverse and finally one final point tackling inequality is above all an exercise in political economy there will be trade-offs just because a policy is politically desirable doesn't make it economically costless conversely it may be worth paying an economic price to build a fairer society honest politicians will explore these trade-offs not pretend they don't exist unfortunately we've got to here today to help us [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you very much indeed Rachel and thank you for the mention of I think you were referring to waters idols book the great leveler which recently came out and you can you can see the lecture which he gave about that book on the inequalities Institute website if you want to catch up on that as you say somewhat depressing sequence a description of world events over a long period and I think Tony's work stood for exactly suggesting you do not need to have a war or plague or devastation in order to make a difference to to inequality let's move on [Applause] [Music] thanks so much John and everyone here can I just start by saying to Judith and to the Atkinson family what a privilege it is for me to be speaking at this event because Tony was not just an extraordinary academic not just somebody who was a pioneer in the study of inequality but he was a campaigner and he showed that you could combine those things and if I can put it this way and he's not a controversial statement he gave economics a good name which i think is I think is very important the title of this session ladies gentlemen is the practical politics of reducing inequality I don't think I was very good at this otherwise I wouldn't be standing here before you tonight so I'm not sure why John asked me to speak but there there it is look I want to I want to do three things in the 12 minutes I've got which is to say something about why we should care because I don't think we can just assume that people should care about this subject what we should do and how we should do it and I'm not going to cover all of Tony's proposals I hope we can do that in discussion what why should we care morally obviously we should care in my view we're the fifth or sixth richest it's going down the lead thanks the government but the fifth or sixth richest country in the world and we have a million people around a million people going to food banks we have homeless people in the streets that is a symptom of a deeply unequal and deeply shaming society I think but I think what is significant about the debate on inequality and I think would have warm Tony's heart and he was alive to see this is the way that the economics of inequality has dramatically changed in the last 10 or 15 years you know sort of lefty institutions like the IMF the OECD now say the inequality is a big problem and this is a remarkable transformation from where we were 20 or 25 years ago as Rachael reflected on because the whole argument then was well look inequality may be morally wrong but economically it's necessary and there's not really very much we can do about it because growth will be suppressed productivity will be lower actually the British economy is a living testimony to the fact that high inequality ends up with low productivity you're more prone to the boom and bust of the economic cycle because people get over leveraged as they did before the financial crisis if you exclude 30 or 40 percent of the population you're less productive you lose the spending power of low and middle income people inequality is not good for our economy it's bad for our economy but we need to make that argument and not assume that argument is one and then the third part of this and this is maybe why the people who think they benefit from inequality should care about it and I think this is gonna take some work and I'll come back to this at the end if you can draw a direct line in my view from inequality to Donald Trump and brexit the remarkable thing about the United States is not that Donald Trump was elected it's someone like Donald Trump wasn't elected earlier because look wages have been stagnating and the distinguished academics here will correct me if I'm wrong in America the median wages of each technique this is about 1973 Pat Buchanan ran a campaign as for in the Republican primary I think 1992 on exactly the Trump agenda he didn't win but and it's the same for my constituency who voted for seventy two percent for brexit as I said to the woman the day after the referendum who voted one of my constituents who voted for brexit why did you vote for brexit the first thing she said was immigration but the second thing she said is more significant she said I voted for a new beginning for my grandchildren I think it's really important to understand this and here's the irony and I'm gonna come back to this at the end as I say here is the great irony of this which is the British establishment resisted at every turn short term measures to tackle inequality and ended up with the disaster that is brexit and now they say it's a crisis they weren't saying was a crisis then and if they had recognized the crisis we would not be in this situation I was at a dinner when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister and the president of the CBI described the 50p tax rate as economic vandalism that is the extent to which these people do not get it and I'm afraid they still don't get it in my view I'm going to come back to that at the end second thing I want to say well what should we do and I'm not going to cover all of as I say Tony's extraordinarily comprehensive set of proposals and I read this a car when it came out and and was incredibly inspired by the book let me mention four things that he mentions the fourth maybe not so much but I think they're important first progressive taxation we don't have progressive taxation in our country I checked with John Hill's because he knows everything and it turns out that I'm right about this but the the the bottom fifth of earners in this country pay about the same proportion of their income is taxed as the top fifth of earners because of indirect taxation it would be nice to have progressive taxation we don't have progressive taxation I think Rachael is absolutely right that wealth taxation is a sort of thing that whose time is coming wealth is massively under taxed in in our country David has a fancy PowerPoint presentation that he's gonna deliver is it soon and that that that I've got Powerball in Envy and and and and that and I think the proposals around wealth taxation I think land tax is a possibility other property taxes are a possibility but I think wealth is massively under tax I'll also say though in this context and I don't think Tony has it in his 15 I think the fact that corporation tax is going down to 17 percent in this country is an absolute scandal it's an absolute scandal and by the way I take some responsibility here as the Labour government reduce capital gains tax for some people to ten percent I mean that's the outrageous and and the thing is it's not it's not sort of coincidental that we've ended up in this position but it's about a mentality which says that the wealth creators are the corporations and the entrepreneurs are not the ordinary working people and that's one of the things has got to change secondly predistribution matters as well as redistribution and I think this is really important Tony in proposal number two talks about power why has inequality gone up so much in the US and the UK because of the weakness of unions the weakness of workers I think it's important to talk about the living wage I care about that and it's important talk about zero hours contracts and all of those things because they partly change the balance of power but unless you work out a way in which unions can be remobilize I think it's gonna be really hard to get at this problem there's this proposal from the IPPR Institute in the UK to have auto enrolment for unions like we have for pensions so in other words it's not a closed shop but you are opted into being the union member and you can opt out now that is oba a big change in terms of what happens but I think we need something of that scale thirdly I think Tony is completely right that we need to shape the technological way that is coming for equalizing not unequal izing ends and I think ubi dividend income all of these things I think they should be totally on the agenda yes you can't get there straight away but you should start piloting it as other countries are doing because I think I curse do you think it addresses a lot of issues of people not having savings of the the problems of welfare that Rachel talked about them the means testing and the penal rates that people face and I think it addresses this issue of insecure the insecure work that may be coming the fourth thing that is maybe less prominent in his 15 is the non market sphere really matters the NHS social housing I'm part of a shelter Commission on social housing the fact that we have such a hopeless situation in terms of social housing I think is a real part of the inequality that people face at least if you couldn't build a bigger non market sphere you can protect people better from the inequality that there is as you tackle it the third and finally let me address the question of how do we tackle it and maybe I said at the beginning that I'm not the person to ask but I I just say a couple of things first of all I again I agree with Rachel it's got to be majoritarian because if it looks like this is simply this isn't a rich poor issue anymore this is the very top and everybody else and the proposals have to reflect this today the Institute physical studies came out with a report saying that homeownership among the young has completely collapsed that is a sign that this is middle-income young people this is a sign that this is not simply a rich poor question but I think you can build a bigger constituency for this I think it was encouraging when Theresa May said on the steps of Downing Street that she cared about this issue she hasn't I don't think lived up to it but I think it's good that she at least said that I think you need boldness equal to the scale of the problem if I'm self-critical about myself I think I was in some senses behind the public on where they were I think people are up for bigger change think about Trump and brexit their big change I mean they may not be the change in these people in this room want but they represent big change and I think people want a scale of offer equal to the scale of problem that they see but the last thing I just want to say about how we do it is this issue of business and people at the top because I think this is a real thing that we've paid insufficient attention to I do these podcasters John helpfully plugged and we interviewed somebody from something called the patriotic Millionaire's Club in the United States now I'm not saying the United States is doing great on this because the Trump tax bill is awful but where are the business progressive voices on this where are the business voices saying look we don't just think this is morally right to do something about this we don't just think it's economically right we actually think it's better for us if we do something of how this because look where we've ended up now that's more just a I'm just throwing this out there because I think this is such an important thing that we mobilize progressive business to be part of this coalition but I don't think you can just do this on your I do think you've got to build as people have done in the past a wider social movement for this and I think it does need to include progressive elements of business but I don't see them putting their head above the parapet at the moment I see them complaining about brexit for reasons I fully understand but the other half of that in my view has got to be to recognize the the causes of brexit last thing I'll say is this there's lots of reasons to be gloomy about the state of the world at the moment I hope Rachel when he's saying that she said she stopped listening to the news she listens to podcasts which i think is a good thing because it's sort of more cheerful and I sort of know that I think we all know I think we all know the feeling but but I think the thing I'd say particularly to the students and the young people who are here is that but but but obviously everybody to is that I think this is a moment that moments of crisis produce moments of opportunity and I actually think it's a moment of opportunity as well because I actually think and I think this is really important is to understand and I see this as a constituency MP as I've said I think it's to understand where this cry of pain is coming from and that we've got to be equal to it and I think if I may say I'm deeply sorry that Tony is not here to guide us but he is certainly going to inspire us thanks very much [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you very much the opportunity to join this session I got to know Tony Atkinson when I was a visiting fellow at Nuffield College at Oxford and where he was the warden and he was indeed as you've heard already he was tolerant he was benign he was incredibly knowledgeable in fact he was one of the people who influenced my thinking for example realizing that where you are relative to other people matters as much as what your absolute income is so he played a part in the long journey from when I worked for Margaret Thatcher worked for Nigel Lawson and indeed as a Keaton young free marketeer worked for Rachel so he's certainly an influence on all of our thinking but I'm also reading his book did I'm afraid bring out some of my residual Thatcherism and I just like to share with you one or two slides I'm not going to get into the equity efficiency trade-off but we're talking about the political feasibility and the political environment in which change might happen and this is as you can see this is real weekly pay now of course in the fetcher period you did have growing inequality and we know that if you look at household incomes as well it's the period when that was the significant shift in increase in inequality but look at the where the vast majority of people were with their pay rising in real terms two percent a year that is an environment in which government's win landslide election victories and look at the bottom line for pay since the crash now we are all in it together in fact I know there's a learning going about that we'd better at the moment in the last few years because of the taxation and diminution of bankers bonuses if anything some of the figures show the high-end they've done particularly badly and there was some protection for benefits when they're rising with prices and wages were completely flat but I think the most important feature of the political environment for the last few years has been - 1% pay a year that is a completely different environment and that incidentally is an environment where people are very sensitive to inequality because everybody is feeling the pinch and indeed I should add on our own forecasts a resolution we think we're about to ender appeared where it will remain negative like this but with not those helpful tweaks at either end with the rich contributing a bit more and the lowest incomes having a bit of protection and this reminds us that we're you're doing in absolute terms does also matter and shape the environment within which politicians have to take decisions now Tony has lots of proposals about labour market I briefly like to comment on those I have to say I think the problem there is a lot of it does sound as if we are to go back to the old regime for trade unions when I have to say I think the role of trade unions in Britain is being changed and particularly being changed by the technologies which he wants governments to steer we certainly need to hope that technologies can help the most disadvantaged but the people who are really losing out this chart brings out the picture I'm not going to take you through every one of the points from my book the pinch but this is a classic example of what's happening this tells us that since the crash it is the incomes of young workers non-unionized young workers and in whom to be frank a lot of trade unions are not very interested there are the ones whose wages have suffered the most and the older you are the greater the likelihood that your wages will have been at least partially protected since the crash that's why some of my colleagues at resolution notably Gavin Kelly I ratchet on to find ways in which technological innovation can be put to serve and strengthen the power of labour in the modern they market and these type of initiatives that people in this room may be familiar with are actually doing more to help younger workers in the gig economy than the conventional structure of trade unions are doing so I'm a bit more of an optimist about technology than than tony is in some of his comments I actually think we are beginning to see the ways in which at last we can use the power of technology to help younger people in particular get organized and negotiate a better deal for themselves so that's my first point look at the look at the look at the generational issue and the failure of some older collective institutions including trade unions to engage with changes in the pattern of the labor market let me secondly make a point about the kind of political narrative behind all this and look I have been persuaded by people like Tony and indeed John and we should remember and respect John's fantastic contributions in this era I understand the importance of where people are relative I think it's most vivid form today is actually the position of younger people relative to older people and if I were trying to make a majoritarian argument that appealed across class it would be saying don't we want our kids and grandkids all to have a better deal than we've had and we're failing to deliver it and then I would argue not directly we need more equality I would say we face a massive challenge where the baby booms we've gone through this benign period when we had a surge in the number of people of working age with a large lower labor force relative to the number of children and older people dependent on them we've had the the Python swallowing the pig with the pig in the middle those are circumstances where tax receipts a buoyant where pressures for public spending programs are limited the exactly the right demographic environment in which you can deliver Thatcherism all for that matter bleurgh ism but that is changing just to maintain the welfare state we are already familiar with that we still have just to maintain those commitments per person in real terms in health care and pensions in this demographic backdrop will require a massive will will promote a massive fiscal challenge and now this chart lists only one way in which you do it holds taxes broadly constant feeds in the increases in public spending pressures just from demographic change and allows the the variable to be debt it shows what a massive challenge this demographic and fiscal prospect is if I were trying to make the case for more taxes therefore I wouldn't say we need more equality this is how to do it I would say all of us want to benefit from this welfare state and we're gain if we want to carry on with the kind of welfare state we've still got even after the 30 years of attrition that John and others have described it's going to cost us more and what is the fair way in which we all chip in so as to ensure we continue to afford this welfare state and those measures in turn should be fair measures which are indeed the kind of measures that promote equality my personal view as a conservative is that that is an argument that is actually I think a more winnable argument than the direct pursuit of equality that is how I would make equality the means or a side effect of the pursuit of a continuing the viable welfare state if we are to raise taxes pointing out the coalition government in which I served the coalition government did actually raise quite a few taxes and if you look at all this George Osborne was quite imaginative in raising new taxes the interesting thing is how much of the tax increases were then offset by very different tax reductions I have to say although the conventional wisdom is it's an excellent thing to keep on raising the personal that tax allowance and taking people out of income tax I personally that is an incredibly expensive policy which isn't as progressive as people believe it to be because of course everyone bake games all taxpayers gain from the increases in the tax lands and that policy imagine that we had kept a broad income tax base instead of the incredibly expensive increases in the personal tax allowance we'd have been closed we wouldn't have had to worry about austerity fatigue or whatever we would have got them if you just kept every all other policies constant you got pretty close to a balanced budget and a completely different environment now for a debate on tax and public spending the cost of the fuel duty policy so what I take from this is indeed a kind of message of opportunity yes one can raise taxes but if you look at the tax cuts some of them were I think unnecessary and poorly designed if you were not to have had such a big increase in the tax lands person if you were to freeze it now you would of course be having a wider and larger number of people still paying income tax I think that's a good thing I think it's part of the feature of a modern participative democracy that people do make their contribution and that's the way that we need to make the case for tax time so the thing that strikes me about Jeremy Corbyn is how different it is from what I think of as a kind of a plea case for the welfare state what strikes me about Jeremy Corbyn is the attempt to say there's a very small number of rich people that we can tax who can finance all the things that we want to do I personally think it has to be a very different type of narrative we're going to have a fair tax system which will involve everybody paying their bit and that way we can all participate in a welfare state when you look at where the biggest opportunity is and it's fascinating I think there's a convergence of opinion on this it is capital taxes above all where I think the biggest political itical debate is going to go over the next few years because it's not just that we face a fiscal challenge because of the aging of the baby boomers as they age that we can observe they are sitting on quite extraordinary levels of personal wealth and the question will be to what extent can that personal wealth be used to help finance services notably Health and Social Care from which they themselves benefit now my party tried to make this argument in the last election I think perhaps John has got ed and me here as two representatives of kind of different ways of losing because we tried my party in 2017 was the first time a conservative party for a generation had not gone into an election promising tax cuts some of the arguments that I've just been saying said yeah I think were percolating through to my former colleagues my friends in the upper echelon of the Conservative Party and the 2017 manifest it was an attempt to make this kind of case and look at the way it failed partly of course because of defects in the way that the social care policy was constructed but I think for a wider reason that why this wider wrong that I've been trying to put I think all of us believe was not being made if you want to carry on enjoying the NHS if you want improvements in Social Care someone has to pay for it and the assets of older people are manifestly a source of those revenues these are the kind of charts we could use it resolution showing what's happening to people as well incidentally we're one of Tony's proposals which I disagree with another part of the conventional wisdom is that we should tax reduce the tax relief on pension contributions it is a classic example of how boomers design policies having built up massive pension savings of our own we then decide that the younger generation saving for their pension should pay more tax on it now the challenge is not that we have to increase the tax or reduce the tax reliefs enjoyed by younger workers who are at least saving in the nest scheme but one relatively modest scale it's the accumulated pension assets that the boomers themselves enjoyed which should be a source of revenues by for example annex attention of national insurance more widely at least to their earnings and perhaps beyond that when you look at the overall statistics and this is my this is my my final slide but when you look at the overall statistics of course if you look just look at the headline oacd figures it looks as if britain does quite well in terms of the proportion of our GDP which is collected in capital taxes the trouble is the capital tax that we have above all is council tax it's barely a capital tax its construction is so regressive it's very odd it's even defined as a capital tax so what we need to do is we need to reform council tax so it is much more a progressive tax on the value of local properties you know we could even call it a mansion tax set we need we need a more progressive council tax and we need to look at other ways in which we can reform capital taxes inheritance tax is the very heart is a classic bad tax at a very high rate but with a very high round so that it's paid by very small number of people but at a rate which sounds punishing and then I think we would open up a debate that led into equalizing measures but as a means for something else so I indeed want a communitarian argument about a a welfare state that serves all of us I want an appeal to fans between the generations arguing the moment it's the younger generation that are losing out relative to the older generation I want to know we wish to carry on looking after the needs of older people's who have the health service and social care but as it's so obvious that they are sitting on assets way beyond those which are ever going to be achieved by the younger generation using some of those assets themselves to fund the services that they wish to benefit from is a fair way of function of funding public services and of course it also promotes equality thank you very much [Applause] [Music] proposal slide back um well thank you all very much I can now let you into a secret if you would like you're extremely experienced and eloquent speakers to talk for 15 minutes each you tell them to talk for 12 minutes each and thank you very much indeed for doing precisely 15 minutes all three of you and setting setting the evening off so well they're just a couple of points I think it's worth talking about between between the three of you but before we open this up the first is this issue Tony talks in his very first proposal going back even before pre distribution in terms of who gets what in terms of bending technology he points out in the book the huge role that the state plays in countries like the US and the UK in terms of technological advance and he points to if I remember correctly to the potential effects of the direction we're going in at the moment and so we see at the moment not just Ober but driverless cars and anybody has looked at the ethnic distribution of employment but by ethnicity will will realize that the people who are going to be displaced by driverless cars are disproportionately people of men of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage that's an example of a technology which is taking itself in a particular direction which will be very unhelpful for this agenda Tony was optimistic that the states in its different manifestations could bend that Rachel you were very uh knocked mystic about that edu mentioned it in passing that this is something that could be done so can I put Rachel's point to you ed and then then to David then we'll come back to Rachel easy it possible for the state to do things that okay the UK state well okay let's come back and which states so erred and David remember I mean I would say three brief things on this I mean I don't I don't have all the answers I'm sure people in the audience will know more about this to me it's three three things that strike me first I think government has been asleep at the wheel on the monopoly power of these tech companies and I think they have been we they have been beguiled by all of this and I think in a in a slightly odd way because of what happened in 2016 presidential election the shine has come off them but I think just like there was anti monopolistic measures against AT&T in the I think was the middle of the last century I do I mean maybe at the European level it may be a even higher supranational level I think you've got to think about how do we stop these companies become incredibly dominant secondly there is obviously an issue about and this goes more widely in the economy but it's particularly true in the technology sector of that where the balance of risk lies but it seems to me that what's happened is that risk is just getting loaded more and more on to employees and away from government and in this case employ something you've got to think about how you redistribute that risk and security and then and then what happens to the proceeds and that's why I think while I know why people are skeptical I think universal basic income citizens income like the Alaska fund you know imagine if we'd put North Sea oil and notwithstanding David's sort of paean of praise for the 1979 government um imagine if we put North Sea oil in a Norwegian style sovereign wealth fund and/or an Alaskan style fund and we've been distributing the dividend to people imagine what kind of different society we would have been in terms of what people had to fall back on the choices people had to make so I think this isn't a complete answer and I'm not an expert in this area but those will be three thoughts that I have on that actually one of the tennis players that I didn't agree with was the sort of sovereign wealth fund proposal I can see the case where sovereign wealth fund if you're a small country with a sort of extraordinary natural set and you want to extract it but then invest the proceeds globally I think for Britain and for other larger economies it the the form that the investment takes isn't the government owning lots of shares its infrastructure and education and the other things you need to grow your economy I also don't I'm less of a pessimist on technology I do I think I don't believe this time it's going to be different I do think that we will find that people are doing new and different jobs which we may not be able to envisage in advance but I think human wants are so infinite that I don't believe we're going to finally end up in terik Ainsley's imagined world where we're sitting around because there isn't enough work to be done well I would focus on therefore is not the labor input element I would focus on universal service obligations I would focus on trying to make these new services available as wily as well so the perspective of driverless cars John has a valid point about a specific group but I wouldn't try to stop the arrival of driverless cars I want to embrace them as an opportunity to ensure disabled people young people older people people who don't have access in any way to driving their own car and may not be able to always afford a taxi whenever they need to get around instead get access to a new universally available for transport and I'll do the deal with the providers if you want to come in and do these type of things on what terms will they be accessible as well I would see them I've saved it through the perspective of the consumer therefore and I would hope that a flexible labor market with good training would find alternative occupations took me down a trip down memory lane actually I you know I I remember in the late 70s there was a white paper published called the benefits of North Sea oil and we had a massive ideas inside government into various wheezes that we might do and I think thinking about something like a sovereign wealth fund like I definitely can remember as something we looked at I'm at a Norwegian economist a few months ago who said to me hahaha are you sorry you didn't set up a sovereign wealth fund that they had come over at the stage when we were thinking about all this and we had talked about them pluses and minuses of it and they had gone ahead and we hadn't I mean it when I was it's true that I mean I think that was a unparalleled opportunity actually to do it if you wanted to do it and we did come back to the time when the exchange rate went up just stratospheric levels and thought this would be a very good excuse for intervening in the foreign exchange market and building something up that we might do no doubt the Thatcher government would have done something different with it than the labor government but it was actively considered at the time when we had North Sea oil and if it had been Scotland's oil it would have made a lot of sense actually because the amount of oil that would have been huge in relation to the Scottish economy just as it was in relation to the Norwegian economy I mean at the time you know I can remember people saying it was just a much better investment to get the deficit down and reduce taxes and that's how they used it I don't think the other moment when you might have done it was when you flogged off all the utilities that would have given you a sort of [Laughter] I just think this is an idea you know it seemed to me sort of that ideas time had passed the opportunity for building at one of these things isn't there at the moment and I I'm not convinced by ask for the you know bending technology thing I mean a lot of the examples in the book can make sense in relation to the US government because they've funded so much of this stuff through the Department of Defense you know you can imagine that they might have thought a bit about the direction in which technology was going I'm in the British government particularly outside the EU we don't really have much leverage over these people and then I'm not sure we're even going to have the leverage you know the Edwards which I have quite a lot of sympathy with which is looking at the you know the monopoly power that they're exerting I think we will I just felt we'd lost leverage over them I do think that getting some sensible regulatory framework and making them pay taxes thing is the way forward and the other problem about technology you really don't know which way it's going to go I mean I sit on these boards you know and we talk about disruptive change people have the first clue really even though they've got financially every incentive to understand where technology is going these are awfully difficult to know ahead of thank you very much for that I think actually we have just discovered a new revenue raising source which is if if the sovereign wealth fund was the treasurer's idea surely in the UK surely we should get a percentage from our patent rights on having suggested to the Norwegians an obscenity of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund we worth something and also I'm wonderful that you reminded us of Keynes's economic possibilities for our grandchildren I think that was the piece in which he argued that in this future wonderful world economists will be thought of like dentists very few people around at the moment to who would want there to feel their same way about the dentist as they feel about economists can I just before we open it up just one thing which I think you know way I think some people might say get real on this we are at the moment in an environment where as a result of the policy changes taken particularly in 2015 we are going in the exact opposite direction to many of these things we were had workshop this afternoon and one of the slides from the Institute for Fiscal Studies was put up for the distributional effects of the effects of freezing benefits in cash so that every piece of inflation between 2015 and 2020 is a reduction in the real living standards of people who receive benefits the tax changes you put up the exactly the balance of where all of the money went this agenda is a very long way away from today's politics does that where do you see the reasons to be cheerful so maybe I'll come back to it at the end of this given that we're facing potentially this continuing slow growth that the resolution foundation of pointer to or decline in living standards the effects of brexit you know this and people are spending their time doing very different things from worrying about this is that something that just means that this agenda is is is irrelevant to what's going on or are these problems the opportunity that that I think Edie and maybe David Winton yet can I start with you David and then yeah I mean we at resolution I mean our analysis and you referred to ifs which is very similar shows that indeed the freeze in the cash freeze in the value of universal credit especially now that we've got inflation at a higher rate than was forecasting he's going to hit a group of low-income working families and others very hard and we think that it's a priority try to help them more widely I'm trying to just repeat what I said earlier the yeah I think the leverage comes from the desire of parents and grandparents to see their kids doing better and when so when ineluctably the british political debate starts become how do we raise the taxes to fund the services that we want saying that older people sitting in houses that are worth a lot of money are going to have instead think that the taxes should be paid by their children and grandchildren so - in order to pay for their NHS I think they themselves I'm sometimes accusing a generation of warriors energy but I believe in general I think there are powerful feelings of obligation between the generations that's that's the emotion I want to leverage yes we want to pass some better opportunities on to our kids so they should not be the first group we turn to for either the cuts in benefits or the increases in taxes when there are other groups that can afford it better particularly a large slice of the baby boomer population that's the argument and then you do it in an equal way but I think it is a more persuasive political argument than saying we believe in equality and we therefore going to tax people who are rich saying we all want to benefit from a service and these are the people that can most afford to contribute to its cost I think is a better way into the arm but I am an optimist I think that is a winnable argument Rachel David says but I think undoubtedly right but I mean this is a what you know this agenda is a mark changing directional from the one that's been implemented since the financial crisis but I think that agenda is in the way that Ed suggested is you know in the process of hitting the buffer buffers I mean any you sit through any I mean the rational way of looking at it is any ifs presentation will show you how completely unsustainable the whole thing is it really it doesn't work I mean Paul Johnson has been giving this presentation for several years now but we've actually we're actually living living through it it doesn't work if sums don't add up and the and the approach that you know we're going to use the financial crisis there's an excuse for screwing down the size of the welfare state and you know has led to point that you know where we really have to confront the issues that David plugged up about the NHS and education I think in higher education housing and I think those problems bubble up there there will be a change in direction and if brexit is a sort of cry of frustration I don't think it's a cry for station to be young by the way I think it's a crustacean from the old ones and I mean you know I'm all this stuff that I'm doing it for my grandchildren I mean you know but they there was a wonderful old woman just before the referendum who'd been let out were nursing him to to vote and she said I want Great Britain back again you need to remember her as well but I think there is but no I think we've reached the end of the road in the in the post financial crisis fiscal policy and they will have to be a change in direction I mean just very briefly to bring the audience in so one I think the the debate has moved even in the last two or three years I think things that were controversial three or four years ago are just no longer controversial inequality is a big problem that stagnant wages are a big problem that predatory companies are a big problem I mean that's sort of part of the political discourse in a way even wasn't in 2010 or 2012 or 2013 and I think that is significant I also think and this is sort of not being mentioned about from briefly by David I mean if you'd had this panel and experts in inverted commas and mean that in a good sense from from Britain a year ago and you'd said to them they'll be a general election in 2017 what percentage of the poll is labour going to get I guarantee you nobody in this room would have said forty percent now you know I think it's true what David implied which was it was a useless campaign by the Tories but but but but I'm just kidding but um but Bert okay fine a was he was useless but but I think there's something deeper which is that Jeremy call been tapped into something which is that people wanted change and they weren't exactly sure the change they wanted but they wanted something different and I think and I think there is you know I don't know how exactly it's gonna happen but I think there is that appetite there right thank you very much now we have people with roving microphones if you would like to ask a question wait till the microphones have got to you could you say who you are and could you make sure that what you're asking is a question and a short and succinct question which the panel can can can talk about rather than we could we could all talk about all of this for several hours so I'll take about three of you at once starting there and then hi Steve shivers from City University I just wanted to return to the question of whether sovereign wealth funds still has contemporary relevance even if we don't have North Sea oil and particularly in relation to David's point about what we could do about intergenerational fairness it seems to me that with we did use some of the receipts from wealth taxation to build a trust fund for example to fund the NHS this would both be politically popular and give us a bigger return because we'd be capitalizing those reserves and as a concern said basically shifting more wealth into the public sector but getting the returns on capital that normally the private sector gets thank you and then with the lady in the front row like to identify herself Elysee so I my question is I think people have lost confidence in the state being the mechanism to mediate revenue raising and redistribution across generations so on the revenue side we've now got to a place where tax rates have been lowered substantially and we glorify philanthropy so we sort of gone back to the Victorian age where we've got philanthropists who with their own income can choose which causes as opposed to having a democratic process to allocate where money is spent on this on the intergenerational side that older person sitting in the very expensive house I would they can leave that house directly to their own grandchildren rather than to generic grandchildren of for society and so my question is how do we get people to care again about the de-stresses the decision-making of the democratic process to allocate resources and to care about other people's grandchildren okay thank you for those let's take let's take those two together different issues there could one take some of the potential revenues from greater wealth taxation and use them in some way whirring fenced Tony's suggestion with that part of this will be used for an endowment given at the age of eighteen we've had some discussion of that but then Manutius point is that this tension that we can all feel a generic wish to support grandchildren in general but actually at the way the system set up the moment it's a very particular group of grandchildren that are going to be inheriting that wealth David so let's stop with you David and then the yeah I mean uh um on Manutius point I I think and of course John himself has written about this and I think very persuasively I think there is oddly enough if I may say part of that part of the there are some there are some very powerful non-socialist arguments for the state and public spending the state is the largest pool of risk that we have the bearer of risks that are too great for individuals or smaller organizations to take and a an a shifter of income and expenditure across the lifecycle and I'm a bit more optimistic than minutia I think it's not that there is massive opposition to the NHS or public funding of education I think there's strong support for those so I think that is so that that was my that was my concern I keep on coming back to this about focusing in terms of rich people who should pay more tax and equality there is a wider different a rather different type of Tory account that I think has considerable emotional purchase still and on the on the Trust Fund yet I think again one of the interest raise the asset debate is going is the trust fund one of these successive public policy is not always a failure nest is a fantastic example of cross-party consensus delivering a new way of auto enrollment into pensions small personal pension pops we've got a mechanism in place that you could do things like put some more have a high level of Exchequer contributions for the under forties or something like that and say that's the kind of thing we want to do if there are extra revenue some capital taxes why I thought Steve's point was bang on and I I agree with it just on Manisha's point I think this is partly cyclical and I think again john was the authority and everything the British social attitudes survey I think is showing an increase in support for taxation and spending and I think we are you know if you take the NHS I think you could win an argument around a hypothecated tax for the NHS now sure it's got to be directed that it is going into the NHS I think the problem on the May proposal on on Social Care was not the sort of fundamentals of whether Social Care was a problem that needs to be tackled it was did people trust her to do it in a way that was fair and she sort of you know unveiled it to an unsuspecting world in the middle of an election campaign without having prepared the grant in any way to convince people it was going to be fair so I'm not sure you can take that the point about philanthropy is good but I mean you can take either of those things as saying look there is just no appetite for things but but I think it's crucial because I think people have this really in their misers where I slightly disagree with David but I do think he he pits the generations a little bit against each other without a sort of rich poor dimension to it I think you need that dimension to it if you're going to convince people in the world that we're in [Music] on Manutius point I'm not I think dual refined philanthropy is a more American thing than it is a British thing I mean there isn't really an equivalent to Bill Gates and what is flagship you look like is kimchi well things like the Roundtree Foundation which know and knows about you know the face of the face of this philanthropy is either slightly dodgy foreigners trying to wash their reputations by being very philanthropic in the UK they always then created the LSE that sort of thing yeah absolutely but I think there is a point about people which I think came up on the earlier question about people wanting to know where their money is going and I you know the world has really turned when the last permanent secretary of the Treasury writes articles in the FT saying let's cut nets to have hypothecation for the NHS and I I have found myself saying something similar and private as well I mean that is that is you know something about having to repackage taxation so people want to to pay it I mean hypothecation is frightful idea actually and you know we can have a private conversation as to why it's private but in terms of making people happy to pay willingness to pay it does have something to offer at the moment I mean I think none of these guys said it so I will I do think we're slightly living through a crisis and representative democracy at the moment and a lot of what goes on is people simply don't trust politicians and the vehicles of representative democracy and he all needs a bit of reform but that is a separate a separate session thank you very much well I think both David may come back again if they're gonna plug my book in front of my boss whereas I'm not sure about Rachel I'm given that we're internally grateful to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation which supports quite quite a lot of our work I'm sorry it's good pop cars so a couple more questions before we move so over on that side yeah and anybody and and yeah and then in yep yes and then and then behind and then in front and then we'll and we'll take the last round so we'll take these three questions please and hi I'm a former student at the LSE um you spoke a bit about pre distribution as opposed to redistribution so I was wondering what policies the panel had ideas or how to rebalance the power between employees and employers my question was particularly around education what what do you think is the role education plays and in the efforts to reduce inequality I come in from a developing country we know that that's one of the tools that can be used to raise people from the bottom up but then we know that there is also a revolution in the kind of education we needed revolution in the kind of education we will give to people now giving that the world of work and technologies has changed dramatically so it would be nice the gay of views on that and then I had another question in relation to the mansion tax okay one person and then we've just got three minutes for the replies so just in front [Music] how what did the team think about using fairness when we think when we've got a society in which the Fuxi a hundred boss earns more than a thousand pounds an hour and takes less than three days to reach the median 24,000 what do they think we could do given the degree of tax of audience we spotted with the Panama papers that which have sort of seemed to have died after the initial sauce Rachel footsie bosses we're in a world where bosses do yeah take home in a few seconds what other people today come on change the morality of those people who currently think it's respectable to do that I think one of the points that Tony makes is that you know this is about social norms as much as it is about market power and so some of this is about you know and I I wondered whether to talk about this I think it's quite complicated I think shining a light a bit more of a light on top pay would help because if you actually had to justify in in a much more open way than it's done at the moment why people think it's reasonable to be paid these extraordinary sums of money I think you would that's the sense in which you might begin to make some progress and the only you know I do remember when top pay started taking off some of the recipients or it seemed to be rather ashamed about it I mean what has been remarkable over the last twenty years is people don't submit to be so ashamed about it anymore and so I think there is some social pressure that that needs to be brought to bear over the time I think high rates of tax would mean that some of these income I didn't necessarily go abroad because I think one of the things that has happened since the financial crisis has been a fairly determined effort to try and clamp down the the sort of I mean the things you are objecting to the panel paper basically legal but I'm tracking I'm starting with the American FATCA stuff and the OECD agreements I think there is a quite reasonable attempt through the OECD to try and close some of these loopholes but I don't think it's easy but I think I think it's you know you could turn the corner with a bit of social pressure most to make the term predistribution popular on everyone's lips um would you like to take that question please I would but I'm gonna ignore you for a second but I want to just talk about this house I think I think what Rachel just said about social norms and what Malcolm asked is absolutely fundamental fundamental question but but I suppose the thing I've learned it does relate to pre distribution is that the why were those social norms why have those social norms changed partly because of the signal government sent in its decisions about taxation because if you reduce it I mean you make it worth people's while if you reduce the top marginal rate from 98 to 40 I'm not proposing to go back to 98 but I think so the last Labour manifesto had a some kind of excess levy on on top pay I actually think the time has come for something like that but I think I think you're completely right Rachel about transparency but unless some kind of signal is sent at some kind of disincentive is introduced into the system people will take the opprobrium and take the money and and and in a way you know you've got the so you know I think so I think because I do I suspect transparency will get you so far they think no one will pretend they need this it's it's a sort of evidence of success and you need to change the power of the signal in some way yeah well I think look I think you're I think you're totally right just very quickly but I think this education question is important I think one of the points that Tony makes which is an education really matters and it doesn't just matter in developing countries of course it does matters here early years education is fundamental social mobility but and this is really important as one of the key insights of this of this book which you all must go out and buy it is this false division between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome is a false division because one generations outcome is the next generations opportunity and it is much harder to climb the rungs of the ladder if the rungs are much further apart and Annie you know Tony makes the point very eloquently in this book and so so it's an education and I mean education matters but and and then on predistribution I mean there's lots of things that to be done but but the two things I think are legislative action so things like living wages minimum wages they make a difference to the original distribution of income action at the top top pay would make a difference but then it goes back to what I said about power and unions and I think if I can praise what David's organization is doing on unions I think you know absolutely find creative ways in which unions can be remobilize fit for the 21st century but unless you do that you're not going to shift the the the original distribution of income it seems to me David you can plug your new book very briefly but at the moment take the education question institutions like this are in many ways an engine of inequality and you will have seen with devastating analysis by people like Raj Chetty of the incomes of the rate at which people with high incomes in America go to college and the much lower rate with a little straight line in between depending on your parents incomes so how do you turn the education system from being an engine of inequality into being what we all thought it was in the first place which was an engine of equality well if you want that by far the most vivid stark social and economic divide now is between people who had the opportunity of having tertiary education and people who haven't and it's it's very vivid which one of the reasons why I think that more people I'm a shameless believer in growth I think more people should have the opportunity to go into university and although you said we're not going to argue tonight that the changes controversial changes I brought through part of logic of them was students don't pay and because it's not public spending sure either we can get rid of number control so more people go the I actually think our education stories under successive governments and labor played a role in this is actually one of modest success state schools getting better particularly in London universities making more efforts than they did to recruit more widely increase in participation in higher education by kids from disadvantaged backgrounds it's that's if anything we're doing a bit better the reason why we still have a problem John and it's a dispiriting bit is meanwhile the connection between educational attainment and subsequent earnings in the labor market is weakening so what you find is and it's in my area I worked on you I was focused on trying to ensure more kids from disadvantaged backgrounds went to university and went to elite universities what you then found frustratingly was forever any given level of degree qualification i'm imagine this to be true of LSE it was true in general the social capital you brought before you went university meant that for any given level of educational attainment there was a widening gap between the subsequent labor market performance of people depending on their social background that whatever their education attainment and so that's why the debate is shifted between helping people out into the jobs market funding the internships in the summer break all that type of stuff that's the real prom the education employment link has weakened and I would I would just say more well I completely agree with all this stuff on attitudes can I report end with a conversation with that I had with Margit fetcher about income tax rates and we're talking about whether or not you should lower income tax rates and she thought she genuinely believed if you lowered the rate of income tax that would mean people who were well-paid would need to have such a big headline salary because they would be able to take home more of the pay that they earn and the reason she thought that pay was going up was because the tax rates were so high now that shows I think how values have shifted and I think that she would have been shocked by some of the pay rates that people have now and I don't think that and I think the publicity the new regulations requiring public publishing the gap between top pay and average pay I hope will have the same kind of effect as the transparency we've now got about the gender gap in many organizations thank you all three of you very much we're going to move now to this short video but and maybe I think our speakers would like to move to the to the front row there to watch it but could we all could we thank all three of our contributors [Music] [Applause] okay is that not to be able to be present on this location but appreciate very much the opportunity of saying a few words Tony Atkinson was one of the greatest persons I have been privileged to know his brilliant intellect an exceptional creativity combined beautifully which is worn and is extraordinary moral priorities WB Gates has came in one of his fourth the intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of life all of the work Tony provided the proof what mathematicians would call a constructive proof that needs might have been wrong to need a perfect work in a life that came as close as possible to be morally perfect reinforced by a remarkable partnership with his wife Julie Tony did everything he thought he should do to help others and to help the world one being one being robustly engaged in solving the difficult problems that could tempt and engage an outstanding economist when he talked of Tony's contribution to economics can be seen in a great many different areas in the subject our understanding of inequality in particular has been totally transformed by his foundational work then we keep yourself covered at least three different fields within the study of inequality first the theory behind the evaluation and measurement quality second declaration and use of empirical information to generate practical understanding of the extent of and indeed the penalty resulting from economic inequality and guidance to policymaking to reduce and when possible to eradicate inequalities in the economy and society and in addition to the doing his own work Tony provided definite of guidance to the work of others particularly on inequality and poverty several of my own writings where what I would call askance on eyes that is radically improved by Tony's constructively different and guidance support for inequality often even of gross inequality typically survival to a belief that the removal of inequality would all rather than helping all dr. Samuel Johnson made the famous remark I could is better that some should be unhappy than that none should be happy which will be the case very not being happy in a general state of equality in addition to with contributions to policies that generate more equality an underlying team of Tony far-reaching intellectual investigation is that there is no reason whatsoever why we should make that John Sounion reduction in Tony's if Tony's life was based on the conviction that our happiness need not depend on their sake little others and that we can be happier together his work provided solid intellectual support for that powerful understanding which guided his life I end by adding my voice to the celebration of the fact that the world of theory as well as practice has greatly benefited from being at Kim's own eyes and other more does not not one of the greatest is that I have received in my own life is the opportunity to know Tony our concern well the best things in life mainly be free [Applause] [Music] that just leaves me to thank you all for coming please join us for a reception outside where there will be a few more words celebrating the man who - to paraphrase the great Julia Donaldson I've always thought of as being the kindest intellectual giant in town see you outside

Channel: LSE

Views: 2,407

Rating: 4.7419353 out of 5

Keywords: LSE, London School of Economics and Political Science, London School of Economics, University, College, Rachel Lomax, Ed Miliband, Lord Willetts.

Id: NfB-HebWrv8

Length: 89min 47sec (5387 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 27 2018