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August 1, 2012
In his 2012 John Button lecture entitled entitled Land of Hope and Dreams Wayne Swan talked about the ends of economic policy, by which he means what sort of society we want, and the sorts of lives we each aspire to lead. In this he follows John Button who, Swan says, put economics to work for the betterment of the country.
Swan refers back to, and comments upon, his essay in the March issue of The Monthly. He says his claim then was that:
the rising influence of vested interests is threatening Australia's egalitarian social contract. I argued that a handful of powerful people not only think they have the right to a disproportionate share of the nation's economic success, they think they have the right to manipulate our democracy and our national conversation to gain an even bigger slice of the pie.In the wake of the debate my essay unleashed, let me make one further charge: there is an equally concerning view emerging that such vested interests should somehow be immune from criticism. They should not. They think the rest of us should fear them. We do not. I certainly do not.
He adds that he was accused of preaching class warfare, and called unfit to be Treasurer of Australia.
I was told that I was siding with the wealth consumers not the wealth creators; that I wanted to slice the pie not grow it; and that my day job was simply to shut up and to make the wealthiest Australians wealthier still. In short, the idea was promulgated that I had transgressed some new, unwritten Australian law that limits the scope of our democratic debates in this country with this command: don't criticise the powerful, don't argue for equality.
He adds that rather than risking a stagnant and widely divided society, we should be – and are – building a society with a vast middle class and a high degree of social mobility. That's the meaning of economic equality in the 21st Century and it's the central and abiding purpose of the Labor cause today.
Swan is right to say that inequality in Australia is increasing --it has been since the 1980s. Sadly though, Swan doesn't go on to say that the ends of economic policy are happiness, the well-being of the population, or the good life. Equality is a good because it is a necessary pre-condition for the well being of the population.
That point needs to be made because those on the Right are opposed to equality and favour inequality - because it produces wealth creation---so you need an argument to show why equality is better than inequality. Swan doesn't provide that, other than appealling to the fair go.
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Well, how are we going to have a healthy, creative "ideas" society when the very same government is cooking up a new set of censorship rules for the internet?
All I can see is a future dystopia.