Saturday, April 12, 2014

Richard Wilkinson — How economic inequality harms societies


TED lecture: video and transcript

TED
How economic inequality harms societies
Richard Wilkinson | Professor Emeritus of Social Epidemiology at the University of Nottingham

Bill Mitchell includes a lot of social dysfunctional effects of unemployment in his analysis. Here it is on inequality. Very similar results.

1 comment:

Nebris said...

An Open Letter To The Corporate State et al, [11/22/11 4:41 PM]

Dear Sirs, [as you're almost all guys]

To mix the metaphors, you have screwed the pooch and killed the goose that laid the golden egg.

You had a really sweet deal here in The Republic. A stable and secure nation with a solid industrial base and a capable population that was happy with its goodies and prepared to shed some blood from time to time to protect your overseas empire as long as you could put a proper spin on the shedding.

All you had to do was cough up some extra tax revenue, share some of your profits and do some long term investing in things like The Welfare State, National Infrastructure and Space Exploration, ya know, that Endless Resources thing that's out there.

That would not have been such a big deal. I mean, how much do any of you really need? We each can only wear one pair of shoes at a time. Or sleep in one bed at a time or drive one car and so on.

But you guys just got too greedy – truly deeply greedy – and you gutted The Republic with your financial game playing. And it IS all game playing, the childish “He who has the most toys..” bullshit you seem not to have been able or willing to grow out of.

And now even the Hipsters are in the streets and being Radicalized because you've literally dumbed down the cops as a 'cost effectiveness measure'. That use of Force will work for a while. But when millions cannot even feed themselves or their families...?

Well, guys, shit is going to get Ugly. And your gated communities and private security [mercs are historically unreliable] will not protect you from the coming fury. Note too that many of the folks you've alined yourselves with have some serious Mental and Emotional problems and would quite happily burn the lot of you alive to please their God.

Therefore, unless you really listen to some of your wiser brethren, like Mr Buffet and Mr Soros, your goose is what shall be cooked. At this point, it may be anyhow.

I confess that I am not particularly hopeful. But, as ever, more shall be Revealed...

Yours,
Michael Varian Daly