I have a new article just published in the journal, Standpoint:
John Constable, "The poor need the rich to be always with us", Standpoint 103 (July/August 2018), 30–33.
As an indication of its content I reproduce here the first paragraph, which is an abstract of the whole:
A narrow emphasis on the short-run, personal and hedonistic benefits of economically liberal policies has impeded their uptake and is encouraging growing resistance worldwide. – Corbynism is not an isolated phenomenon, but part of a global trend. Addressing this threat does not require new liberal economic theory, the underlying principles of which, though poorly applied, are well understood and known to be robust. What is needed is a change in the psychological framing and language of liberal economic policies. Specifically, it is futile to deny that the wealth differentials produced by liberal markets are as a matter of fact disadvantageous to worse off individuals even in the presence of the rising incomes for all. The worse off know this to be true, and are contemptuous of arguments to the contrary by liberal economists. The evolved human organism gathers resources to secure reproduction, and in that process it is genetically functional to resent and attempt to prevent competitors acquiring differential levels of available resources. Bluntly, rich people secure the future of their families more effectively, and this is obvious to all of us. Given that reality, political effort should be concentrated on the equally valid but less manifest truth that individual lifetime wealth differentials and their very real disadvantages are more than offset by the long-run, extra-personal, benefits returned to an individual’s direct and collateral descendants through societies that are resilient to natural disaster and shock due to high aggregate, societal wealth. Advocates could show that this argument is sincere by recommending policies that facilitate the transfer of wealth between generations and within families, with a particular emphasis on those currently of lower net worth. In order to reconcile ourselves to short run individual wealth differentials we must be allowed to build families with long term interests.