Biological evolution gave humans a fairness instinct, and cultural evolution has promoted fairness above other competing values in the developed world because it critically enables complex cooperation, a crucial component for economic gain and rising living standards. Everyone has their own idea of which policies and ideas constitute “fairness” in a society and which are deemed to be generally “unfair”. Within our political system there are many political approaches or ideologies which seek to give a voice to our ideas of what is fair and unfair. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Populism<\/strong> is a political ideology or movement that champions the interests of the common people against the perceived elite or establishment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Populist language is couched in terms of unfairness by its framing. It tends to be anti-elite, and entails substantial frustration with elites who allegedly rig society in their favour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n It must be noted that “economic unfairness” and “economic inequality” are not the same thing. Economic inequality to a certain extent is necessary for a productive and healthy competitive society in which those who contribute more achieve more financial reward. In fact, this system in principle is what helps achieve “fairer” outcomes in capitalist societies rather than communist ones. Economic unfairness on the other hand results when enough people feel that their input doesn’t match the reward, particularly in comparison to others in society. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But feelings of economic unfairness need to be somewhat widespread and persistent to take proper hold in a society. Unfortunately in many cases since the 1990’s, these feelings of economic unfairness have done just that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n