Inequality - Another Metaphor

Societies like America can now much more easily be grasped as deeply class divided, represented by the large inequalities of income and wealth and by receding avenues for upwards social mobility. America and many other advanced capitalist nations are like floating communities in the high tide era of the great ocean liners. A small dominant or ruling class occupies the upper decks and frequents the captain’s dining room. A somewhat larger but still small upper middle class dwells on the deck below and dines with the ship’s junior officers, occasionally catching a glimpse of what goes on above them. Moving down towards the bowels of the ship an increasingly anxious middle class occupies decks that seem less and less salubrious as the cruise continues. Below them an increasingly alarmed, diverse and fragmented lower middle class struggles to maintain their occupancy of decks prone to flooding. Even further down and equally fragmented an increasingly desperate working class scrambles for whatever accommodation is left, dealing with chronic seasickness occasioned by life in a vessel tossed about in stormy seas. Last of all, a lumpen proletariat of the dispossessed, homeless and mentally ill is left out on the lowest, most exposed deck clinging onto the rails until flung into the unforgiving waves.

(This passage is taken from the final chapter of my book Morality and Power: On Ethics, Economics and Public Policy. For a full critical discussion of the debates swirling around the challenges s of growing inequality, see chapter 13 of that book.)