Economic inequality and our grandchildren’s future

Economic inequality and our grandchildren’s future

Public Lecture, School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Nottingham, October 13th 2015

There is no way that everyone can be rich. Only 1% of people can be in the best-off 1%. Today being rich often involves having many other people work for you. They have much less choice than you might have, if you are rich, but we sometimes over-estimate the freedom of those who have most wealth. In this talk I’ll show some images of growing inequality in the world, the UK and in particular in London. I’ll also talk about recent evidence on the spread of anxiety and wider worrying.
I think the two trends might be linked and their are geographical clues as to why that could be the case. A more equitable world might be also be a world with less precarity and anxiety. Is that possible, desirable, and if so how do we travel that way?