FT.com / UK - Now we get exactly what we deserve - inequality rage
" On the one side, inequality harms by pampering; on the other, by vulgarising and depressing. A system founded on it is against nature and, in the long run, breaks down." Matthew Arnold, lecture on "Equality", 1903.
In Equality (1931), the British ethical socialist, R.H. Tawney, concluded that "a society is free insofar as . . . its institutions and policies are such as to enable all its members to grow to their full stature".
The large question is how far the rage will have lasting consequences, and how far old and new arguments for equality can be translated into a fixed, general and electorally sustaining opinion, driving out the view of the past few decades that the prosperity of the few is to the ultimate benefit of all.
Are we really willing to give up being 'Winners'?
" On the one side, inequality harms by pampering; on the other, by vulgarising and depressing. A system founded on it is against nature and, in the long run, breaks down." Matthew Arnold, lecture on "Equality", 1903.
In Equality (1931), the British ethical socialist, R.H. Tawney, concluded that "a society is free insofar as . . . its institutions and policies are such as to enable all its members to grow to their full stature".
The large question is how far the rage will have lasting consequences, and how far old and new arguments for equality can be translated into a fixed, general and electorally sustaining opinion, driving out the view of the past few decades that the prosperity of the few is to the ultimate benefit of all.
Are we really willing to give up being 'Winners'?
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