Jeremy

Excellent video and well worth seeing once I got the opportunity.

Two points:

1. I have mentioned before the lack of social mobility in the USA which has now destroyed 'The American Dream'
2. Japan versus the Nordic Countries:

Japan has reduced inequality by REDUCING taxation (coming from a less unequal base)

The Nordic countries have INCREASED taxation to reduce inequality (but if they have come from a less equal base is subjective from the data provided)

I've always believed in making the poor richer rather than making the rich poorer and I'd ratrher be Japanese than Danish in this respect; HOWEVER I've also mentioned before that studying in Denmark in 1993 had a profound affect on me in that the high taxation combined with zero visible poverty made me feel that Denmark at least was a far fairer society than in the UK.

Whether many of us would rather live in a bland and more equal society or enjoy the homicidal cut and thrust of a greed is another matter; human beings are still rather nasty animals whatever clothes they wear to cover up their desire to kill and maim anything and everything that gets in their way.

LouisV-W4

I'm glad I'm not the only person to have seen this excellent fairly short video clip that Jeremy Bosk recommended.

It certainly should make us all think and that's a good thing.

Jeff Lampert, another poster, would then rile us for inaction, but I really wonder what we, as individuals, can do?

The 'dis-enfranchised' as you call them really scare me; especially as I was part of that society and lived in a particularly rough area for many years although didn't really feel I belonged there - it took almost a miracle for me to escape the prison I'd found myself in where there was almost no hope for the future and each and every day was a mental hell of survival as opposed to living.

People should be allowed to live.

The feeling of being disenfranchised means that all your hope has been taken away from you and you believe that 'normal' people are some strange alien species. Your comfort zone and ability to do anything positive is reduced as though you are gradually being choked by a cancer of despair.

You then you either become apathetic or angry...................... and angry people eventually revolt in desperation.

That's what scares me!

Inequality doesn't scare me as there has always been and always shall be inequality of one sort or another, but a sub society of young, physically fit, uneducated, disenfranchised and ANGRY no-hopers scares the living daylights out of me.

They are our future (however unpalatable the thought) and we MUST give them hope and enthusiasm and something POSITIVE to look forward to or they'll DESTROY us all with the enormous anger and resentment that has built up inside them.

We must give them something to LIVE for rather than merely offer them survival as mere animals just kept alive in the cages of the zoo of our welfare state.

An interesting video, and one which confirms my own outlook on our society. Britain may be broken, but it is broken because there are vast differences in income (and wealth, which was not mentioned) between the most and least well-off. However, while this might be easy to sell to those at the bottom of the scale, I would imagine that the idea would be most unwelcome to those at the other! The option of making the poorest better off to achieve greater equality is fine in principle, but even this would require significant restraint being imposed on the rate at which the top end is able to improve their position.

In short, this is a political question, one where in our democracy there needs to be a strong Social Democrat movement to pursue this policy and implement it, but alas, in England at least, we do not even have a Social Democratic Party any longer which we can vote for. I am afraid the notion that "greed is good" is still widespread, although in the current economic circumstances one might have expected it to have been completely discredited.

I will not bore you with a manifesto, but at least this video indicates that the well-being of everybody (including the financially well-off) can arguably be improved by a move towards greater equality.

The option of making the poorest better off to achieve greater equality is fine in principle, but even this would require significant restraint being imposed on the rate at which the top end is able to improve their position.

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Here's a solution. Take all of Richard Branson's money. Give it to the poorer off. Now you need to sell all his assets to an overseas bidder or you take the money out the country.

There you go. Poor people are richer. What's the problem?

Well, Very quickly you find that rich people move overseas. One reason why tax revenues this month are down big time.

However, as they leave, the poor get relatively richer. Woopie. However, they now have to pay more tax, because the rich aren't their to be milked.

That's why the issue should be about absolute levels of poverty, not relative poverty.

The poorer can only get richer in the long term by not being taxed, by working, and by investing.

nicle

You mainly get rich by being brought up in a well off household with access to good schools, health facilities and all the other appurtenances of the middle class good life. It helps to have parents and grand-parents who got on the property ladder generations back and then conveniently died.

Inequality is passed down the generations through social means (much more than genetics). The very poor never earn enough to save and invest. They are brought up with inferior access to education, health and capital or good examples of success (in real life rather than on television).