Most of us can sense it. Society feels off-kilter. Progress on the big issues seems to have stalled, and any optimism that life will be better for our children, and for safe stewardship of our Earth, has faded. We see problems everywhere we look—in our health, our communities, our economy and our environment—and it feels as if we are stuck in a cycle of ‘one step forward, one decade back’. As a member of Earth4All’s Transformational Economics Commission, I’m all too aware of the need for ‘extraordinary turnarounds on poverty and inequality: two roadblocks standing in the way of wellbeing for people and planet.
In my new book, The Good Society: And How We Make It, I argue that the blueprints for a better world have already been lifted off the drawing board; but they are sadly gathering dust on the shelf. To move to genuine transformation, we must recognise that inequality is not just an economic metric—it is the root cause of our social and environmental degradation.
Evidence from decades of social epidemiology shows that societies with larger income gaps between rich and poor suffer more from almost every social ill, including worse health, more violence and lower levels of trust. Issues that we treat in isolation are all intrinsically linked to inequality.
But inequality does more than damage our health and our social cohesion; it sabotages our sustainability. Inequality drives status anxiety, pushing us into a cycle of conspicuous consumption to prove we are not second-class people. We are literally consuming the planet to maintain our social standing. If we want a sustainable economy, we must first level the social playing field.
Designing from the ‘Veil of Ignorance’
So how might we decide what a good society looks like? I often turn to John Rawls’ ‘Veil of Ignorance’. Imagine you had to design a society without knowing your place in it—your wealth, gender, or health. From this so-called ‘original position’, you wouldn’t design a world where a few oligarchs extract vast wealth while billions of people have unmet needs. You would choose fairness, equality of opportunity, and protection of the ecosystems on which all future generations depend.
The ‘fantasy society’ is already here
Sceptics often call these goals utopian. But the society we dream of already exists—in pieces—across the globe. Political economist Andrew Simms introduced an idea he called ‘fantasy economics’, inviting us to imagine an ideal country called Goodland, assembling a better society from proven policies that are already working somewhere in the world. We can see a better education in Finland’s system, which leaves no child behind, a better economic model in the €14 billion Mondragón cooperative in Spain, better publicly funded healthcare, childcare and care for the elderly in Denmark, better societal goals in Bhutan, which aims to maximise Gross National Happiness rather than GDP. When we begin to learn from those who’ve already figured out how to make things better, profound change feels less like a dream and more like an achievable policy goal.
To weave a good society, we need policies that give a strong structural warp, interwoven with the weft of deliberative democracy and evidence-based politics.
Greater equality as the warp of the good society
A good society should be built upon a Universal Basic Income (UBI), paid by government to citizens. It should be universal, paid to everyone (with add-ons for additional needs like disabilities), and unconditional—you get it whether you are in paid employment or not, whether you are studying, caring for children or others, volunteering or in business for yourself. This is the most fundamental way in which a government can express its commitment to the economic security and wellbeing of its citizens. Work from the Common Sense Policy Group indicates that a basic income is efficient, feasible and popular, supporting healthy livelihoods for everyone, with predictability and dignity. The costs of even a generous UBI providing a minimum income standard would be offset by savings accrued from the costs incurred by doing nothing. As technological progress and AI transform the labour market, the need for UBI will become even more compelling and necessary to underpin social cohesion.
Although UBI will be foundational to a good society, we will still need resources for universal basic services—health care, social care, education and preventive reforms in the justice system. We need to invest before we can realise the benefits of shifting towards prevention and providing basic income. In the long term, if we have a good UBI and well-resourced preventive public services, we won’t need to spend as much on treating crises and chronic problems, but we will need to kickstart this transition with a huge initial investment. Wealth taxes can generate this revenue for government. Governments could also encourage the wealthy to invest in a good society by giving them a wealth tax incentive in return for investment in sectors and projects that align with good social goals, such as encouraging investment in renewable energy, affordable housing or community development. Similarly, wealth tax incentives could be used to promote economic democracy and sustainability, with rewards for investment in companies that prioritise social responsibility. There are real opportunities for win-win scenarios here, where the wealthy reduce their taxable wealth, bringing down inequality, while simultaneously contributing to the common good.
In order to realise all the benefits of more economic equality for improved social cohesion, better population health, a more sustainable economy and enhanced life chances for children and young people, we have to tax wealth. But it is also important to do so to rebalance power. There are about 3,000 billionaires on the planet; if we only taxed them a 2 percent super-rich tax, we would raise $250 billion a year, enough to do a lot of good things. But even if we did nothing with that money, even if we locked it all away for a rainy day, we would be making a dent in the inequality that damages us all and denting their hold on power, breaking free of their stranglehold on democracy.
Evidence and institutions as the weft
The Club of Rome has always been at the forefront of warning the world about the limits to growth. But we must also work to amplify the potential of deliberative democracy and evidence-based politics to create a better world. We need to implement existing blueprints for democratising our decision making—things such as citizens’ assemblies and participatory budgeting—and create a new institutional architecture to get relevant social research evidence into policy. All of this is possible.
A good society is not a distant dream. It is a choice we can make by deciding that the wellbeing of the many outweighs the wealth extraction of the few. It is a choice that can be based on successful cases and evidence from all over the world. We deserve no less.
