Selfishness, Greed and Capitalism

9 INEQUALITY IS RISING IN BRITAINBritain is suffering from ‘colossal, and still growing, inequality’,according to Michael Meacher, writing in TheGuardian (Meacher 2013). Deborah Hargreaves, director ofThe High Pay Centre, insists that ‘Inequality has been risingrapidly in Britain for the past 30 years … If the growthin inequality continues at its current rate, we are headingtowards Victorian extremes in the next 20 years’ (Hargreaves2013). Headlines such as ‘Income inequality growingfaster in UK than any other rich country, says OECD’(Ramesh 2011) and ‘Wage inequality rises across the UK’(King 2011) are likely to give readers the impression thatwe are living through a time of rising inequality.All of these claims are misleading, at best. Those whoclaim that the gap between rich and poor is widening canonly credibly do so if they use a timeframe that stretchesback several decades. Even if we start the clock in 1985,as the OECD did in the report cited above, it is not truethat the UK has seen the largest growth in inequality. Anumber of rich countries, including Sweden, Finland,New Zealand, Israel, the United States and Germanyhave seen the gap between rich and poor grow wider inthe last thirty years (OECD 2011: 24). The truth is that121