Well…this idea came from an an article I read by Nicholas Kristof that was in the NY Times this morning…he was commenting on the new book “The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger” by a couple of British authors who have taken on the topic of inequality and how it relates to both the psychic and physical costs to a society. You guys know that this has been one of the threads that have run through my posts here, and what I saw as an existential danger has now been quantified by these two authors down to the physical ailments that come from an unequal society. I know, it sounds like kind of a stretch to make these connections, but these are not fly by night authors…they are well respected in their field and present mountains of data to support their hypothesis.

That said…I have many times railed here about the growing inequality in our society but it was more out of my sense of fairness; that there is something wrong when only the top 1% of our society is doing well and the rest of us scrape and gouge to keep our heads above water. Now, with this new book, we can see that there are real costs to this inequality…not just that people are beaten down emotionally, but physically as well; and this continued grabbing of the entire pie by the rich hurts everyone and can kill our great society if it continues. The next step should be how to address it…and I will admit I don’t have the answers but the old saying “from those to whom much is given, much is expected” or something like that is a good start.