The last days of empire?

Most of us are not privileged to witness major historical events at close hand. Even if we did, we would be unlikely to fully understand their significance. Imagine being present at the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, little knowing that it would represent one of the first attempts to codify individual freedoms that would echo down the centuries. Nor would many people have seen the Ninety-five Theses supposedly pinned to the door of All Saints' Church in Wittenberg by Martin Luther in 1517, but we are all familiar with the resultant splits within the Catholic Church which were arguably a first step on the road to the Age of Enlightenment.

I raise these points because it is impossible to know whether what we are experiencing today reflects a fundamental shift in the way our societies and economies will operate in future or whether it is minor diversion on a path we have been following for the past 75 years. One of the motivating factors for thinking about this was an excellent article on the Mother Jones website by the historian Patrick Wyman who looked at the decline of empire. As Wyman put it, “the fall of an empire …looks more like a cascading series of minor, individually unimportant failures than a dramatic ending that appears out of the blue.” He also makes the point that whilst all societies face challenges and setbacks, what determines the survival of the status quo is the quality of the institutions which are able to define a response. At issue in large parts of the west today is whether the institutional framework is sufficiently robust to face up to the challenges of the 21^st century.

Just weeks away from the US election the world looks on to see whether the Donald Trump experiment will be brought to a halt or whether the process of institutional erosion will be given free rein to continue. In Wyman’s view, the future popular narrative of the relative demise of the US will pin the blame on Trump, “but it’s far more likely that the real meat of the issue will be found in a tax code full of sweetheart deals for the ultra-wealthy, the slashed budgets of county public health offices, the lead-contaminated water supplies. And that’s to say nothing of the decades of pointless, self-perpetuating, and almost undiscussed imperial wars that produce no victories but plenty of expenditures in blood and treasure, and a great deal of justified ill will.” This may not be the version of the US that you recognise or accept. But the wider point is that a country as institutionally strong as the US does not suddenly go from being the only superpower to sharing the stage with others in just four years. Other factors are at play. 

Why the economics matters 

The Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz points to “the growing concentration of market power, which allows dominant firms to exploit their customers and squeeze their employees.” This in turn has allowed shareholders and company managers to expropriate a bigger slice of the pie, leading to widening inequality and further fuelling the sense of resentment which led to Trump being elected in the first place. In Stiglitz’s view a small number of firms dominate key sectors of the US economy, which has allowed them to attain disproportionate political influence “and as the system has become more rigged in business’s favor, it has become much harder for ordinary citizens to seek redress for mistreatment or abuse.” 

To compound these problems, evidence compiled by the World Economic Forum suggests that US social mobility has slowed and maybe even gone into reverse. For generations, workers tended to earn more than their parents. However, the evidence suggests that those born in the 1980s whose parents were in the middle of the income distribution only have a 45% chance of earning more than their parents compared to 59% for those born in the 1970s and 95% for those born in the 1940s (chart below). This is not what the American Dream is made of.

One of the factors underpinning this result is the sluggish pace of wage growth. Real hourly earnings, for example, have increased by only 11.7% since the mid-1960s despite a significant increase in productivity. Moreover there has been particularly rapid growth in the price of services such as health and education. Consumers thus have to devote a much higher slice of their disposable income to educate themselves and maintain their health than they did 50 years ago. The income distribution has also become increasingly skewed in favour of the well-off. According to data from the Pew Research Center households towards the upper end of the income distribution have increased their share of wage income over the past 50 years, from 28% to 48%, at the expense of those in the middle, whose share fell from 62% in 1970 to 43% by 2018 (chart below).

This matters because it is this sense of dissatisfaction that Trump tapped into in 2016. But what is driving it? It may partly be due to the decline in trade union membership since the 1980s which has prevented organised labour from acting as a counterweight to rent seeking company owners. The application of new technology further adds to the pressure by pushing down on the wages of the less well educated segment of the labour force. Of course, these issues are not merely confined to the US – this sense of dissatisfaction was a driving force behind the Brexit referendum result in the UK – but they are more extreme on the other side of the Atlantic. The extent to which politicians are willing to tackle these problems will play a big role in determining how Anglo Saxon society and its economy will look in future and whether it will still be held an example for others to follow. 

And why the response of politicians matters even more 

According to Stiglitz “US corporate executives made sure that the vast majority of the benefits from the [2017] tax cut went into dividends and stock buybacks, which exceeded a record-breaking $1.1 trillion in 2018.” This reinforces the sense that Trump’s economic policies have benefited the rich at the expense of those who voted for him. Yet there is a good reason why this should be the case: Presidential hopefuls require a big war chest, to which big business is more likely to contribute if their interests will be served by the candidate. As the experience of Bernie Sanders illustrates, politicians who are prepared to tackle the redistribution question are unable to generate sufficient buy-in to be elected. Nor is the business capture problem confined to the US. Michel Cames and Eckard Helmers argue (here) that “the European oil industry co-initiated the shift to diesel cars in the 1980s and 1990s in order to find outlets for middle distillates [diesel]” and they did so in tandem with the European Commission by selling it as a way to meet CO₂ reduction targets. Never mind the fact that it raised nitrous oxide levels, with all the attendant health consequences.

The danger in all this is that rising economic inequality and the capture of the political decision making process by big business threatens to further raise the degree of anger at the status quo. This could be used by future generations of nationalist politicians to pursue an agenda which makes that of Trump seem tame. The long-term health of the Anglo Saxon economy and the society which underpins it depends on it being seen to serve the interests of voters. After a decade of uncertainty in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, and even more so at a time of the unprecedented Covid pandemic, the US and UK are crying out for someone to deliver genuine leadership and make voters believe that the economic system works for them. Failure to act before it is too late risks condemning the Anglo Saxon model to irrelevance. We may not understand the slow process of erosion as we live through it but it will surely be clear to future generations of historians.