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Monday, December 20, 2010

Animal Farm

“All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others” a very famous line from George Orwell’s Animal Farm a book I was forced to read at high school, however unlike some of the other compulsory reads this one was quite interesting albeit my interest in social constructs and politics was still fairly low at that time.


For those that haven’t read the book it is George’s commentary on Communism, where the animals on a farm revolt and throw off the oppression of the human farmer and run the farm themselves. I can’t recall how the book ends but given that George was not a fan of communism it probably ends badly for the animals.

I was reminded of this line for a couple of reasons but principally because I was listening to a radio article on poverty in America. The setting is only of passing interest as the commentary was probably applicable to most developed western economies. They were discussing the outcomes of various assistance programs, who were the clients, how they could be helped and if that help worked long term after the programs were withdrawn.

In part they were talking about LBJ’s (Lyndon Johnston) “war on poverty” which was a group of programs he initiated. It seems that US Presidents are keen on “wars” as another one had the “war on want” and of course we have had the “war on terror”. War is a very emotive term of course but it also carries connotations of direct, goal focused action with certain outcomes. LBJ’s war was really a skirmish as he lost the next election with his opponents attacking the idea of big government versus personal responsibility, a fairly constant battle ground in US and other democracies, and dismantled a lot of his programs.

The idea of poverty as a personal responsibility is relatively recent and arose with the erosion of the class system in England on the back of the industrial revolution. Previously you were either born poor or rich and as there was no movement between the classes it clearly wasn’t your fault you were born poor, it was just your burden lot to bear. Once we had the rise of commerce and “self made men” then the conclusion became “if they can do it so can you” This idea is very powerful today and we all have a bit of “if they just got their act together” thinking in our attitude to the poor.

So what struck me about the tone of the conversation was the mostly unspoken but implied contrasting views on what constituted poor. This lead me to consider my own definition and the one that sprang to mind was the media sound bit phrase that anyone earning less than X% of the average wage was “in poverty”. But this isn’t a real definition of poverty is it, it is really a statement about a standard of living expectation.

Given that the basis for the measure is a statistical normal curve of income levels what this really argues for is a narrowing (?) of the bell curve. i.e. a taller curve so that everyone is more closely aligned to the centre. In fact the logical conclusion of this type of measure is that we should all earn the average and hey presto no poverty.

But are all animals created equal should we all be paid the same. I suspect most people would answer no we shouldn’t all be paid the same (especially those on higher incomes). So that means the pigs (the authors of the opening quote in the book) were right some animals are more equal than others. If one person is “worth” more than another it is hard to argue we are all equal. And if we are not equal what does that say about some other ideas founded on the basis we are all equal, like universal suffrage for example.

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