Polly Toynbee and David Walker - 'Unjust Rewards: Exposing the greed and inequality in Britain today'

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Polly Toynbee and David Walker - 'Unjust Rewards: Exposing the greed and inequality in Britain today'

04 Sep 2008

Polly Toynbee and David Walker lecture on the growing disparity between socio-economic groups in Britain, a theme covered in their book Unjust Rewards - Exposing the greed and inequality in Britain today (2008).

They point out that social mobility is extremely low in Britain and highlight the huge differences between the upper class on one hand and the middle and working classes on the other. Polly Toynbee points out that the lower half of the population (in terms of GDP per capita) experiences little economic growth, whilst nearly all economic growth is accounted for by the top 20% of the population - and most of this in the top 5%. This is an issue we need to address because, as Toynbee points out, happiness goes hand-in-hand with equality.

David Walker expands upon this by pointing out that, under New Labour, the top 1% of the population has seen disproportionally large economic growth. Social mobility, he says, is lower now than at any time since the Second World War.

This video was kindly provided by The RSA