Why bother about economic inequality?
By Frank Stilwell Frank Stilwell introduces our Breakfast Seminar on equality. Fred Argy’s book, Where to from here? Australian Egalitarianism in Retreat, is a welcome publication, because economic inequality matters. Inequality has significant consequences for economic efficiency, social justice and environmental sustainability. Its sources are properly a central concern for political economic analysis. Its reduction is properly a concern for public policy. That these points even have to be argued is symptomatic of the recent influence of what is known variously as economic rationalism, economic fundamentalism and neoliberalism. It is a viewpoint that has subordinated the concern with economic inequality to narrower concerns with efficiency and growth, even ignoring the ways in which egalitarian policies can contribute to efficiency and growth. John Howard seems to have stopped using the term ‘incentivation’ to justify the abandonment of an egalitarian commitment in public policy, per
