“Toward a New Radical Reformism”
“Inequality: What Can Be Done? by Anthony B. Atkinson”
“Anthony Atkinson occupies a unique place among economists. During the past half-century, in defiance of prevailing trends, he managed to place the question of inequality at the center of his work while demonstrating that economics is first and foremost a social and moral science.”
“In his new book, Inequality: What Can Be Done?—more personal than his previous ones and wholly focused on a plan of action—he provides us with the broad outlines of a new radical reformism.”
“Together with Simon Kuznets, Atkinson more or less single-handedly originated a new discipline within the social sciences and political economy: the study of historical trends in the distribution of income and property.”
“Of course, the question of distribution and long-term trends already lay at the heart of nineteenth-century political economy, particularly in the work of Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx. But these writers could draw only on limited data, and were frequently obliged to limit themselves to purely theoretical speculation.”
“It was not until the second half of the twentieth century and the research of Kuznets and Atkinson that analyses of distribution of income and property could actually be based on historical sources.”
“In his 1953 masterwork, Shares of Upper Income Groups in Income and Savings, Kuznets combined the first systematic records of American national income and property (records that he himself had helped to create) and the data produced by the federal income tax (established in 1913, in the aftermath of a prolonged political battle), to establish the very first historical account of year-by-year income distribution.”
“In 1978, in Distribution of Personal Wealth in Britain, a fundamental book (cowritten with Allan Harrison), Atkinson outstripped and overtook Kuznets: he made systematic use of British probate records from the 1910s to the 1970s to analyze in magisterial fashion the extent to which different economic, social, and political forces can help us understand the developments observed in the distribution of income, a distribution that was particularly under scrutiny during this period of exceptional turbulence.”
“All subsequent work on historic trends in income and property inequality to a certain extent follow in the wake of Kuznets’s and Atkinson’s groundbreaking studies.”
“In Inequality: What Can Be Done?, Atkinson leaves the terrain of scholarly research and ventures into the realm of action and public intervention.”
“By so doing, he returns to the role of public intellectual that he has never really abandoned since the beginning of his career.”
“In particular, we can mention Poverty in Britain and the Reform of Social Security (1969) and Unequal Shares—Wealth in Britain (1972).”
“With Atkinson, the dividing lines between history, economics, and politics have never been strict: he has always tried to reconcile the scholar with the citizen, often discreetly, occasionally in a more forthright manner.”
“This is the central goal of Atkinson’s first set of proposals: you can’t expect everything from fiscal redistribution, but that nonetheless is where you have to begin.”
“But Atkinson’s plan of action hardly stops there. At the core of his program is a series of proposals that aim to transform the very operation of the markets for labor and capital, introducing new rights for those who now have the fewest rights.”
“His proposals include guaranteed minimum-wage public jobs for the unemployed, new rights for organized labor, public regulation of technological change, and democratization of access to capital.”
“Instead of saying more in detail about these proposals, I’d like to focus particularly on the question of wider access to capital and ownership. Atkinson here makes two especially innovative suggestions.”
“On the one hand, he calls for the establishment of a national savings program allowing each depositor to receive a guaranteed return on her capital (below a certain threshold of individual capital).”
“On the other hand, alongside this national guaranteed and insured savings program, Atkinson proposes establishing an “inheritance for all” program. This would take the form of a capital endowment assigned to each young citizen as he or she reached adulthood, at the age of eighteen.”
“The only criticism that can be brought to bear on Atkinson’s plan of action is its excessive concentration on Great Britain. All of his social, fiscal, and budgetary proposals are conceived for a British government, and the space devoted to international matters is relatively limited.”
“This same criticism, however, also constitutes the book’s main strength. Basically, Atkinson is telling us that timorous governments have no real excuse for inaction, because it’s still possible to act on a national basis.”
“The heart of the plan of action that Atkinson sets forth could be implemented in Britain without bothering to wait for elusive prospects of international cooperation. For that matter, they could also be adapted and applied to other countries.”
“—Translated from the French by Antony Shugaar”