Download Inequality in Society - Raymond Williams Foundation

Inequality in Society
ODD Circle16th March 2009 at the Lazy Trout Meerbrook
The gap between rich and poor in the UK has decreased since 2000. The bad news is
the gap is still wider than in 75% of similar nations.
Do we all feel that the gap has been diminishing?
Is income inequality inevitable and indeed
desirable? Is there good and bad inequality?
According to Prof Richard Wilkinson for ‘First World’
countries more equal societies are healthier and
have higher levels of trust.
Extreme polarisation of wealth leads to more
violence, higher prison populations, higher teenage
pregnancy, more bullying, obesity etc. in fact almost
all the social evils are worse, often 3-5times worse.
Japan and the Nordic countries tend to be
better. USA, Portugal and UK tend to be worse.
Prof Wilkinson tends to think that Status Competition is more prevalent in the polarised
nations. This causes stress across the whole spectrum of rich and poor.
What do we think?
In history economic growth was always desirable because large parts of the population
were below a reasonable economic standard. These days it is not quite so simple.
People are now not starving or even poor in the absolute sense. For the first time poorer
people tend to be more obese than richer.
Why would this be so? What is more important now as wealth becomes less important?
The rich seemed to have caused this recession by their greed.
Will the recession help us to rebalance our society?
I picked up these comments from the web..
“The horrifying reality seems to be that if the most powerful members of a society are
allowed to have their way, they protect and enrich themselves and destroy everyone
else, and they really don't care. How can we create a society where the most useful and
most powerful members do not feel like they have to kill to get what they want?”
“Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.”
“A child's future is largely determined by social status, not brains.”