Grandstand. Let’s not repeat with the question of inequalities the fault of blindness committed with the environment and immigration in the years 1970-1980. Inequalities call into question the place of the middle and working classes, which form the backbone of our societies. They are crushed between the Asian catch-up which has eroded their productive jobs and the “winners” of globalization who, again, “take everything” or almost.
Without even stopping at the “ultra-rich” of the digital revolution, the wealthiest 10% receive 52% of global income, hold 76% of wealth and emit 48% of CO2 (“Global Inequality Report 2022”, World Inequality Lab). While the great democratic cycle of the XXand century had created more egalitarian societies, between 1988 and 2008, 44% of the increase in global income went to the richest 5% (Branko Milanovic, Global inequalities, Discovery, 2019). Added to this is another inequality: the eviction of territories, in favor of metropolisation.
Even more than material, the crisis is moral. Our societies are once again becoming hereditary and are dominated by an ideology of success, as false as it is deadly. The situation in the United States announces the crisis that awaits us. The powers are in the hands of those who have gone through the great Ivy League universities. Coming from the most affluent backgrounds, they marry more and more among themselves and benefit from the soaring salaries of the leaders. Then, they overinvest in the education of their children. The unequal machine is unstoppable. The “winners” think that they owe their success only to themselves and regard the “losers” as “deplorables”, as the frightening Hillary Clinton called them.
Stunned by the ideology of success, the middle and working classes are affected in their dignity. Life expectancy has dropped in the United States due to deaths of despair: alcohol, drugs, suicides. Those who are most affected are not the poorest but those who have not completed higher education. As Michael Sandel has shown, it is a real Tyranny of merit (Albin Michel, 2021) which is destroying American social cohesion.
Politics gave way to the market
France is less unequal, but our social elevator is blocked. We help the poorest to live but they “stay in their place”. It takes six generations to move from the working classes to the middle class according to the OECD report “Is the social elevator broken down? (2018). In 2016, children from very privileged backgrounds made up 73% of the workforce at Sciences Po Paris or the Ecole Normale Supérieure on rue d’Ulm, 89% at HEC and 92% at Polytechnique; those from modest backgrounds represent less than 8% of the enrollment in these schools (“What democratization of the Grandes Ecoles?”, Institute of Public Policies, 2021).
You have 72.56% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.