Ever since the French Revolution, people throughout the world have gradually come to see both equality and individual freedom as fundamental values. Yet the two values contradict each other. Equality can be ensured only by curtailing the freedoms of those who are better off. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
You cannot read a newspaper or watch a TV programme without hearing people banging on about how terrible inequality is. The amusing thing, of course, is that the people who go on about it the most are the most privileged and unequal people on earth. Do you ever get to go on the TV and be paid £5,000 to talk for ten minutes about the evils of inequality? Me neither.
But having said that, there is a lot of inequality about. Let's take an example of two men (both white with two legs)
Man A: He was born to a life of great privilege. Brought up in a manor house and privately educated. At school he was a total failure - either lazy or stupid or maybe both. But because of his privileged upbringing he is now in a position of great power.
Man B: His father left school at 14 and Man B was brought up in an uninsulated pre-fab where ice formed on the inside walls in the winter. He was educated in the state school system and won the school prize for the best "O" levels. His parents moved cities and at his new school he got the school prize for the best 'A' Levels. He then got a State Scholarship to Birmingham University where he did what was effectively a double degree in Mathematics and Physics. He then left and went into the computer industry before starting his own business where he made a major impact on the problem of derelict factories. Power? He has none worth speaking about.
Which of these men do you have the most respect for Man A (Jeremy Corbyn) or Man B (me). Thank you - and about time too. So why has Jeremy Corbyn got such a hugely unequal share of power and influence? How unfair is that?
As for income, if you are reading this article you undoubtedly are a very unequal person. First of all you can read!. Secondly, you are undoubtedly well educated. But why? Why did you bother to work hard at school? Is it so that you would get a better and more interesting job than if you had left school at 16 with no education? More inequality. Aren't you ashamed?
Sadly, inequality is an intrinsic part of being an evolved animal. On any characteristic you can think of people vary from one end of the bell shaped curve (Google it) to the other. Some are short, some are tall, some are funny, some are boring. Some have blue eyes, some black. Some will have unique talents and abilities that mean they can earn huge amounts of money. Do you make £100,000 per week? Nor do I - I have to work hard for a month to make that kind of money. But lots of footballers do - how unfair is that?
And some people have made gigantic sums of money merely by picking six random numbers - £150,000,000 in the UK or $300,000,000 in the USA. I mean, seriously - that is hideously unequal. Doesn't it just make your blood boil? No? Why not - you get upset when you read that a CEO of a huge company makes £3m pa so why do you accept that somebody makes more that you will ever earn in a hundred lifetimes of hard work by pure chance? Answers on a postcard please.
So what we need is equality of opportunity - so that people from privileged backgrounds like Jeremy Corbyn don't get in possession of absurd amounts of power
Bob Cory
Modified on 28/10/2019 at 08:04:59 by ℗ Bob Cory