The Dumb and Dumber Economy

There’s a memorable scene in the 1994 classic low-brow comedy film Dumb and Dumber where the character Lloyd asks his love interest Mary what the chances of him getting together with her are.  After being told that his chances are “not good…more like one out of a million” he takes a moment to process this shattering news, and with a big grin spreading across his face, responds with “…so you’re telling me there’s a chance…YEAH!”.  This got me thinking, are there other situations where people face equivalent hopelessly skewed odds of success, but enthusiastically cheer on the unfair and rigged game they face?  I believe that there is: the entire neoliberal economic set up of the western world.

Throughout the western world (broadly meaning North America, Western Europe, Australasia and Japan) during the eighty or so years since the end of World War II, a belief has been woven into the very foundations and fabric of these societies that striving to better yourself economically and materially is not only within reach, but is furthermore the solemn duty of all patriotic citizens.  The political phrases underpinning these attitudes have been with us for a long time: the American Dream; Two Cars in Every Garage; Things Can Only Get Better etc.  For a period of history (sometime called the ‘Postwar Miracle’, or the ‘Glorious 30’; roughly 1945-1975) there was some truth in this, as ordinary people’s lots did improve markedly (leaving aside the irreplaceable resources used up and persistent pollution generated to achieve this) with rising wages, improving social contracts, and hitherto unheard-of levels of material abundance and comfort becoming widespread.

Things however started to change from around the late 1970s onwards, with the emergence and embedding of an economic system called neoliberalism (largely displacing the Keynesian economics that had prevailed during the Glorious 30).  Contrary to common misconception, this has concept nothing to do with social liberalism, but is rather an economic philosophy founded on a pervasive, extreme laissez-faire attitude by governments and the general population towards market economics, property ownership, competition, and individualism; all combined with an aversion to almost any form of state intervention.  Put another way, it’s capitalism with the brakes not only eased off, but rather ripped out and tossed overboard, and the throttle leant on by private capital and compliant governments. Tellingly, some of its most vociferous cheerleaders have included some of the most important (and perhaps controversial to some) figures in modern political history (notably Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher).

From the late 70s through to now a major theme has run through western societies and economies as a direct consequence of the victory of neoliberalism (which coincided with the rise of globalisation, creating a potent mix): the growing capture of humanity’s total wealth by a tiny elite, at the expense of everyone else.  In the last few decades, the proportion of wealth generated by economic growth that has been captured by an ever-smaller slice of the population has steadily grown, and in just the last few years grotesque levels of wealth concentration have occurred.  During 2021-23, the richest 1% captured nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world put together, and now just eight individual billionaires have hoarded as much wealth as the poorest half of humanity (around four billion people…!).

So just how does a system which so nakedly favours the already-rich manage to remain in place?  How are there not massed crowds of ordinary citizens in every capital city worldwide baying for this system to be torn to pieces, and the spoils of the global industrial machine distributed more equally?  The reasons are of course highly complex, but it may be in no small part kept in place by a pervasive belief that you (meaning anyone born into this system) has a chance of ‘making it’.  This broadly means successfully amassing a fortune and joining the elite ranks of a globally mobile wealthy, and the central supporting belief underpinning this is that with just the right attitude to hard work, an eye for opportunity, and a bit of luck, there is an appreciable chance of anyone achieving this.

The media and advertising landscape of recent decades has supercharged the material aspiration aspects of western culture, and the mirage-like dreams of days spent lounging on the sun decks of yachts is merely the endpoint of this.  Of course, this does happen and some people, through some hard graft and/or good luck, do make their fortune and get to join this global meta-society (which is highly stratified and hierarchical, but becoming a US dollar multimillionaire is usually the entry-level requirement). But compared with the swelling ranks of just-getting-by people of the western world (many of whom until quite recently were part of a secure and comfortable middle class), not to mention the billions of people living on meagre incomes in many parts of the developing world, these upwardly mobile people represent a mere trickle.

However small the numbers of the newly-wealthy are, it is the central myth of universal and equal opportunity that this economic system offers, that matters.  But really, for the vast majority of people it is little more than a ruse, and the already-rich have heavily gamed the system to ensure they continue to hoover up the lion’s share of global wealth, with room having to be made for only a tiny new membership every year.  The tools of this entrenchment include elite private schools, offshore tax havens (which combined hold around 10% of global GDP), venture capital funds and stock portfolios, property empires, party-political donations, and networks fostered by closed social circles.

Whilst people continue to believe in this system which works so starkly against the interests of them and the many, the global wealthy elite will remain safe in the knowledge that they are unchallenged in any serious way.  Ultimately, our economic system appears to have created a Stockholm Syndrome-type situation, where the hostages start to sympathise with, and eventually defend, their captors.  In short, we collectively cheer on and admire a ‘reverse Robin Hood’ system in which wealth is extracted from societies on a systemic basis and funnelled toward a thin stratum of globalised billionaires.

If this continues indefinitely, it will increasingly take on the form of a negative sum race between global economic and social collapse driven by capitalism reaching its conclusion (of basically all the wealth being sucked into a single black hole-like vortex) or environmental collapse driven by the extreme pollution generated by the lifestyles of the global elite (the top 10% wealthiest account for half of global carbon emissions).  And so long as like Lloyd, so many of us trustingly believe that the wealthy are “…telling me there’s a chance…YEAH!”, this deeply unfair, absurd economic system isn’t going anywhere.  But it doesn’t have to be this way; there is a huge, mostly-untapped opportunity to spread the word about the true destructiveness and injustice of this system.  If critical masses of people could recognise this fully, and join forces to finally say ‘enough!’ to this misleading belief about ‘making it’, perhaps there would be a real chance that something better could arise in its place.