Equality means Equal Poverty
'As long as the poor have not been getting poorer, which they clearly have not, and everybody’s standard of living is rising, why does it matter that the rich are getting richer? So what? Of the top twenty billionaires in The Sunday Times Rich List, more than half are self-made. Why do we begrudge them their success?
The central contention of the report is that inequality is at its highest since the war. In what screwed-up, quango-ish world does anyone think that we were better off in the 1940s, when everyone was broke, rationed and enslaved to a non-consumerist domestic drudgery?...
The problem is not the existence of inequality, but the absence of social mobility. It matters not one jot that Sir Philip Green has a yacht and you have a plastic bath duck. What matters is that the conditions exist to allow you to work towards yacht ownership if that is what you want. Aspiration and education are everything in this debate, not handwringing about some notional measure of inequality.
How do you legislate towards a more equal society anyway? What does it look like? Perhaps it means taxing the rich out of existence, or at least forcing them overseas, so that the only people left are those whose income Ms Harman approves off. Perhaps it means more state handouts, so that aspiration becomes irrational. Rich white men live longer. That is just so unequal. Do we need means-tested euthanasia for the over-65s? Let’s all mainstream some equal mortality figures.'
- Antonia Senior, 'Who wants equality if it means equal poverty?'
The central contention of the report is that inequality is at its highest since the war. In what screwed-up, quango-ish world does anyone think that we were better off in the 1940s, when everyone was broke, rationed and enslaved to a non-consumerist domestic drudgery?...
The problem is not the existence of inequality, but the absence of social mobility. It matters not one jot that Sir Philip Green has a yacht and you have a plastic bath duck. What matters is that the conditions exist to allow you to work towards yacht ownership if that is what you want. Aspiration and education are everything in this debate, not handwringing about some notional measure of inequality.
How do you legislate towards a more equal society anyway? What does it look like? Perhaps it means taxing the rich out of existence, or at least forcing them overseas, so that the only people left are those whose income Ms Harman approves off. Perhaps it means more state handouts, so that aspiration becomes irrational. Rich white men live longer. That is just so unequal. Do we need means-tested euthanasia for the over-65s? Let’s all mainstream some equal mortality figures.'
- Antonia Senior, 'Who wants equality if it means equal poverty?'
Comments