The Killing Fields of Inequality

I. The Fields

1. Human, Nasty and Short: Life under inequality, p. 9

From 1930-1 to 1933 the (crude) Russian death rate increased by 49.5 per cent, i.e., almost exactly the same increase as sixty years later. Russian and Ukrainian extra deaths in the 1990s, through mass unemployment, mass impoverishment and degradations, may well be argued to have been less brutal than those from the requisitions, famine and deportations of the Stalinist collectivisation. But the silent acceptance of new systemic deaths by the world's liberals and conservatives is more amazing in the mediatic, ‘information age’ 1990s, than the starry-eyed disbelief among the Communists and Soviet admirers of the insulated 1930s.

Stunted Lives, p. 15

Stunting is primarily an indicator of undernourishment of children. [...] It is a condition with life-long consequences. Almost half of all Indian children under 5 are stunted, and almost 40 per cent of African children south of the Sahara [as well as ...]

2. Behind the Doors of Exclusion, p. 26

Social science has firmly established that inequality breeds distrust. [...] In Scandinavia, two-thirds of the population think that ‘most people can be trusted’; in Brazil, 3 per cent; In South Africa, 12 per cent; in Britain, 30 per cent; and in the US, 36 per cent.

II. Theory

3. Theoretical Cross-Draught, p. 38

Differences are given [...], while inequalities are socially constructed. [...]
Inequality is a difference violating some norm.

What Equality is Desirable? p. 41

Ironically concomitant with the late twentieth-century turn to increasing economic inequality, egalitarian thought took a qualitative leap in sophistication [...] This started off with John Rawls' A Theory of Justice [...] Amartya Sen qualifies both as a philosopher and as an economist.

Inequality and Poverty, p. 43

The rates of relative poverty are highest in the three most unequal OECD countries: Mexico, Turkey and the USA. [...]
Poverty is a trap easy to get stuck in, once you have fallen into it. [...] In the UK and in France half of the poor three years earlier were still poor; in the USA, 63 per cent.

4. Three Kinds of (In)Equality and Their Production

Dimensions of Human Capability, p. 49

Three kinds of inequality:

1. Vital inequality [unequal life-chances]
2. Existential inequality [autonomy, dignity]
3. Resource inequality [resources to act]

Four Mechanisms of (In)Equality, p. 57

The labour theory of value, at the root of Marxian economics, taken from Ricardo, is no longer held to be a tenable foundation for capitalist economics.

III. History

5. Inequality and the Rise of Modernity, pp. 76-78

Simon Kuznets saw industrial modernity as first increasing inequality, then decreasing it. [...]
The curve is bending upwards again.

6. A Historical Six-Pack: Three Inequalities in Global and National History

IV. Today's Unequal World

7. Current World Patterns and Dynamics of Inequalities, p. 103

The UNDP [United Nations Development Programme] finds that about a quarter of human development in the world is lost due to unequal distributions.

8. Three Puzzles of Contemporary Inequalities, pp. 126-127

In spite of currently sliding backwards, Sweden is still a significantly less indecent country than most in the rich OECD world.

V. Possible Futures

9. Overcoming Inequality — Yesterday and Tomorrow, p. 154

On the eve of the capitalist turn in Russia and China, income inequality was among the lowest in the world.

10. The Decisive Battlefields of Future (In)Equality, p. 167

Inequality runs much deeper into human lives, causing millions of unnecessary, premature deaths, stunting lives across generations, producing humiliations, unfreedom, insecurity and anxiety for continent-sized populations across the globe.