Inequality: the enemy between us - Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson | Humanists UK Convention 2023

If we compare health and wellbeing in different countries, it’s clear that some societies do much better than others. And the countries that do well on one measure, life expectancy for example, tend to do well across the board - with better health, better educational outcomes, better community wellbeing, and so on. Countries that do badly on one, also tend to do badly across the board. So what’s going on? Surprisingly, it isn’t how rich a society is that matters; it’s how unequal it is that really counts. Inequality has always been regarded as divisive and socially corrosive, and now the evidence supports that intuition. This talk, at Humanists UK Convention 2023, explores the extent to which the question of inequality is central to meeting the grand challenge of creating sustainable wellbeing for everyone.

[@BrianPeiris]

Thanks!

[@johnwarren6110]

This should be required knowledge for all politicians.

[@coreyc1685]

Sadly many politicians are against the very premise of their work from the get go. Right wing politicians would dismiss it as lefty propaganda and insist anyone trying to make even our extremely unequal society slightly more equal is a 'Marxist'

[@as123ferrdi8]

They know it very well. The actual western elites (and the politicians who work for them) WANTED precisely to widen inequalities, to transfer social power from the people to themselves. It's not a matter of (only) knowledge, but a matter of political struggle, and nowadays the (true) western left is not able to mobilize the masses as in the past. BTW the data and analysis like this one are precious.

[@minwall9924]

I find this very interesting and shocking in places 🙏

[@HumanistsUK]

It really is!

[@sarahkhan2310]

We are all one human family.

[@George1966ism]

Equality spells liberty. After having watched this interesting video I think we should regard equality as a social space to interact with each other - what Richard has shown. It seems contradictory but, Kate mentions that in the very end, equality is creating diversity.

[@annaharrington7961]

I think equity spells liberty.

[@efortune357]

10:30 “USA, at top right, most unequal of these countries with worst performance on all those kind of outcomes.”
~Richard Wilkinson
I think alot of people in the US have no idea how poorly we do compared to other developed countries.