Equations that mask inequality
Barbara Williams
Students of economics learn obedience to equations that mask inequality. That thought hit me while reading “The Justice Lie” by Otti Vogt.
Because here’s what neoclassical economics actually does: It takes political choices and disguises them as natural law.
Wages aren’t framed as decisions, but as “marginal productivity.”
Inequality isn’t framed as policy. It’s framed as “scarcity.”
Ecological collapse isn’t framed as the consequence of extraction. It’s framed as “externalities.”
This is not neutrality. These are design flaws giving rise to ecocide and wealth inequality.
Vogt exposes the core move:
1. justice is removed from economics;
2. then quietly replaced with efficiency
Once that happens, wealth distribution stops being questioned. And wealth distribution gets treated as deserved. And the ecocide is an inevitable consequence of GDP growth (I=PAT).
This is why:
1. Unpaid care work doesn’t count;
2. Forests have no value until cut;
3. GDP Growth is celebrated even as the planet overshoots.
A system that never asks “what is enough?” will always take more.
Degrowth is anti-denial.
It says:
1. value # price in a market where the consumers are all conned and coerced;
2. justice # business-as-usual; and
3. survival # GDP growth
The insights from I=PAT inform us that survival is inversely proportional to GDP, and that the only sustainable justice will require global eco-equity.
If economics wants authority over our lives, it must answer this question wisely: Who benefits and who pays?
If it can’t deliver wellbeing for all of Life on Earth, then it doesn’t need more complex equations. It just needs some moral accountability.
Read The Justice Lie by Otti Vogt. Question the economics you were taught. Promote the mindset shift from ‘Grab and Grow’ to ‘Shrink and Share’ and push for a Global Aspiration for Eco-equity, aka the Charter for Ecological Justice. Consult the website -Poems for Parliament
Because, a global discipline that conceals inequality behind math should not be left unquestioned.
Source: LinkedIn, 25 Jan 2026
Barbara Williams advocates degrowth and eco-equity, and is founder of the website https://PoemsForParliament.uk (Poems for Parliament). Barbara specialises in lobbying the UK government to consider a paradigm shift to show humility and embrace degrowth objectives. Her self-published book appeared in 2020 -“Saving us from ourselves – can we repair 50 years of ecological overshoot?”
