But global inequality has fallen, is falling and, as far as anyone knows, is going to continue to fall

Why do we require a global organisation to reduce inequality if inequality is reducing without a global organisation?

Forty prominent progressive academics are urging Andy Burnham’s government to join a new global push to tackle inequality.

The experts include Nobel winner Joseph Stiglitz, University College London professor Mariana Mazzucato, vice-chancellor of the London School of Economics Larry Kramer, and Kate Pickett, co-author of The Spirit Level.

In an open letter, they call on Burnham to sign the UK up to help create a new International Panel on Inequality (IPI), which is being developed at the UN.

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“The organising principle of the prime minister’s policy agenda – the Makerfield test – aims to ensure that places forgotten by Westminster finally receive fairness after decades of neglect,” they say in the letter.

“While these efforts are commendable, inequality is also a global issue, becoming more entrenched as the geopolitical climate destabilises.”

Here’s the thing. Global inequality of income has been falling this past forty and fifty years. No, it’s not all about China either. The poor countries have been growing faster than the rich countries - inequality is falling. As Branko Milanovic has proven, this is also true if we consider inequality directly between people, not just as national units. This is even true of capital - as Milanovic again has proven, capital incomes are becoming more equally distributed. Agreed, agreed, from a very high level but still, that direction of travel is there.

So, we know how to do global inequality reduction. Exactly what we’ve been doing. The Washington Consensus stops poor country governments doing stupid things, globalisation distributes the work and the incomes and, Tadah! global inequality reduces. Great, get really neoliberal on that global economy and Bob’s your parent’s sibling of choice.

The usual suspects are demanding that all of this stop of course. Absolutely none of the signatories are going to roll with what has demonstrably be working. They all want to go back to the system before that, of closely managed economies that fail to reduce global inequality. But which do reduce local, within nation, inequality. And, well, within nation inequality might be a thing to worry about. We don’t think so, others do and all that. But we do not require a global body to manage within nation anything now, do we? That’s righteously the province of national governments.

So, why the push for such a global body? Our own supposition is that this is just colonialism re-arriving. As with the Fabians telling Nehru and Nkrumah how not to grow an economy we’ve now Stiglitz, Mazzucato, Kramer and Pickett demanding that all those naughty foreigners do what they say. Because, you know, global elite who know etc.

We’re really very certain we prefer it that everyone gets to try it their own way. Both on the grounds that the last four decades prove it works but also on those anti-colonial grounds. That the colonialists are now activists in academia rather than Empire officials does not improve matters for us.

Tim Worstall