Whatever their political orientation, most people agree that there is such a thing as too much inequality. 84% of people in the UK think the gap between rich and poor is too large right now, even though most also underestimate how big it really is. Despite this broad agreement, there’s very little discussion of the most obvious solution, which would be to restrain incomes at the top. Productive political debate seems almost impossible, hamstrung by vested interests and failure of the imagination.
Into this impasse comes Ingrid Robeyns, an academic based in the Netherlands who has spent the last ten years researching economic inequality and what to do about it. This decade of analysis has resulted in a word and a book to explain it: limitarianism. “We must create a world in which no one is super-rich,” she writes. “There must be a cap on the amount of wealth any one person can have.”
Don’t get hung up on where the draw the ‘enough’ line. The important thing to do first is to agree that if inequality matters and has already gone too far, then surely there is such a thing as enough. If there is, then we ought to be able to find ways to keep incomes within it, so that nobody ever acquires vast fortunes out of all proportion to the rest of society.
In a series of clear and practical chapters, Robeyns explains why this is necessary. The first reason, and one that I’ve written about myself plenty of times, is that the global economy is designed to stack more and more on the plates of those who already have too much, while the poorest get very little. The trite justifications of trickledown or rising tides are myths that protect the wealthy.
This imbalance is morally wrong, but it’s also deeply futile. Economists identified the ‘declining marginal value of money’ 150 years ago, giving a fancy name to the common sense observation that more money means less to those who already have lots of it. An extra thousand pounds a year would make a big difference to millions of underpaid workers, and absolutely nothing to people who earn millions already. So more money for the rich is essentially waste, a pointless hoarding of resources that others could put to good use.
Limitarianism is about preventing runaway accumulation beyond ‘the riches line’ – “the level at which additional money cannot increase your standard of living.” Because it only targets the excess, there are billions of winners from such a policy and no genuine losers. “There is so much good our governments could do with the excess money of the super-rich. And taking it from them would probably not affect their welfare at all – not in any meaningful sense.”
Robeyns goes on to describe the connection between extreme wealth and climate change, how democracy is undermined by inequality, and why philanthrophy doesn’t solve the problem. She also shows why reducing extreme inequality is better for the rich in a variety of ways, and this isn’t speculative. As part of her research, Robeyns has spoken to many very rich people, some anonymously, some named in the book. Plenty of them think the economy is tilted far too much in their favour and want to do something about it.
If you’re among the 16% of people in the UK who have no problem with current levels of inequality, you will of course have your pre-written excuses ready to go: sounds like communism, the rich deserve their wealth, politics of envy, etc. The author has heard all of these before – haven’t we all – and addresses them in anticipation.
What really impressed me about Limitarianism is that Robeyns presents her case without party politics and old ideological divides. It’s rigorously researched and well balanced, giving weight to something that a lot of people feel intuitively. Appropriately, the books knows its own limits too. It’s not a manifesto for a new world order or a detailed solution. It’s a well explained idea, dropped into a wider debate. “The limitarian project contributes one clear demand to our quest for a new economic system.” A vital demand it is too, and I hope the book is widely read.
- Limitarianism is available from Earthbound Books UK or US (both built on the Bookshop platform, which pays its taxes and isn’t owned by a bajillionaire)
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