Peak inequality

a long read from Danny Dorling published in the New Statesman

There are many ways in which inequality can be felt and innumerable ways in which it can be measured. However, it is annual income that trumps all other measures, because it is income that gives us respect and the freedom to do everything from buying a bus ticket to securing a mortgage. We can only live how we live by dint of the income we receive.

Income inequality in the UK is higher than in any other European country, except occasionally one of the Baltic states (during a bad year for them). All other European Union countries enjoy greater income equality. Because of this their citizens are freer to live where they wish, to mix equally, to go to school with each other rather than segregate their children, as the majority of parents in the top 10 per cent of income distribution in Britain feel compelled to do.

Peak inequality is when the town you live in is so segregated that the school-aged children do not mix – not between schools, not socially, not at all. Peak inequality is where the best-off people in your workplace demand “housing allowances” because they could not possibly live near those who clean their workplace, or those who ensure the photocopier works, or who keep the computer servers working night and day.

We live in times of peak inequality. It pervades almost every aspect of our lives in Britain in ways that we now accept as normal. Like goldfish in a bowl of dirty water we have adapted to think that our tank is normal. But it isn’t.

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