From social settlement to household lottery

This article proposes a new approach to the problems of late capitalism, focused on circuits of production and consumption. It presents empirics on the growth of ser-vices in four advanced economies and examines the distributive implications in the UK. The argument is that, for the UK case, the changing composition of employment and the composition of demand feed into a vicious circle whereby the pattern of demand reinforces employment-generated inequalities. The political conclusion is that centre-left politics should be about breaking this vicious circle.