UnHerd ✒ Location and status are still woefully intertwined in today’s Britain. 

James Kirkup 

 Inequality is arguably the most contentious issue of our time, alienating citizens from governments as well as from one another. The public debates place too much emphasis on disparities in income, to the exclusion of equally important forms of inequality. In this week’s series, our contributors explore some of the other inequalities tearing our society apart.

Among the vast, awful canon of positive-thinking, self-help slogans and truisms, there is a quote attributed to Ella Fitzgerald: “It isn’t where you came from, it’s where you’re going that counts.”

That sounds nice, but it’s not really true, especially in Britain. Where you come from has a huge influence over where you end up, physically and economically. Grow up poor in the wrong place and you’re not just more likely to live poor and die poor – you’ll die sooner too. People in the poorest places die a decade or more before people in rich places.

The unusually big and largely unjustifiable differences between places in the UK should be a much bigger part of the debate about inequality.

Continue reading @ UnHerd.

How The Poor Are Kept In Their Place

 
UnHerd ✒ Location and status are still woefully intertwined in today’s Britain. 

James Kirkup 

 Inequality is arguably the most contentious issue of our time, alienating citizens from governments as well as from one another. The public debates place too much emphasis on disparities in income, to the exclusion of equally important forms of inequality. In this week’s series, our contributors explore some of the other inequalities tearing our society apart.

Among the vast, awful canon of positive-thinking, self-help slogans and truisms, there is a quote attributed to Ella Fitzgerald: “It isn’t where you came from, it’s where you’re going that counts.”

That sounds nice, but it’s not really true, especially in Britain. Where you come from has a huge influence over where you end up, physically and economically. Grow up poor in the wrong place and you’re not just more likely to live poor and die poor – you’ll die sooner too. People in the poorest places die a decade or more before people in rich places.

The unusually big and largely unjustifiable differences between places in the UK should be a much bigger part of the debate about inequality.

Continue reading @ UnHerd.

No comments