It’s all the rage these days to worry about the growing gap between rich and poor. Our fretting was fuelled by Capital in the 21st Century, by the French economist Thomas Piketty, which claims to show that over time this gap will grow inexorably. But we’ve been agonising about equality for aeons, and for aeons arriving at the same stand-off between rich and (relatively) poor.
Here’s how the argument goes: those who don’t feel rich begin by saying that it’s disgusting how much of the world’s total wealth is owned by a small minority. Globally, the richest 10 per cent hold close to 90 per cent of the world’s assets. It’s just wrong, they say.
To which the rich, aggrieved, reply: ‘Why? What’s wrong per se with being wealthy? Look how much tax we pay! We pay for public hospitals and schools we don’t even use, so let’s have some gratitude, please, or we’ll up-sticks for the UAE.’ The rich have a point. In the UK the richest 5 per cent may own 40 per cent of the total wealth, but they pay 48 per cent of total tax. Even so, say the fretters, something is amiss. It’s not healthy, this gap — and here’s where the debate ends, in a disgruntled stalemate. Everybody’s right and everybody’s unhappy, as they say in Russia.
But what if the problem isn’t so much a financial one as a sociological or moral one? What if the unease people feel isn’t about inequality of wealth so much as in-equality of behaviour? We don’t pay them much heed these days, but Christianity, literature, folklore, myth and history all warn us repeatedly: money and power corrupt. Perhaps that’s what we’re really antsy about, and if so, science is on our side.
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