…if there is a relationship between inequality and diversity we need to understand it and be able to respond.”

I suspect that there is some truth that diversity leads to inequality, but not, perhaps, for the reasons that many anti-migrationists would have us understand.

To the extent that governments can create more equal societies than would emerge in a free economy, they have to do so with the consent of the governed (unless we are talking about Totalitarian Egalitarianism, and I’m happy to park the Communists for now). It is therefore worth noting the evidence that small, ethnically homogenous, culturally close communities are more willing to bear redistributive policies than are large, diverse and diffuse ones. Just as families are more willing to support their down-on-their-luck bretheren than neighbours, so the people of Iceland are more willing to support the family up the road than are the people of Ipswich.

Japan is a good example here. Though large, it has not had the same level of immigration that European countries have seen and family networks remain stronger.

Apropos James, I should add that I don’t see this as a reason to close borders. Immigration might reduce a society’s willingness to bear governmental efforts to equalise outcomes, but it also increases a society’s ability to grow and develop. I agree with Wilkinson and Pickett that “growth is a bigger factor for [improving overall outcomes in] developing countries” but would suggest that it is true of developed countries as well. The latest MRI scanners will not become widely available by making the UK more equal; they will become more available by making the UK richer.

Anyway as Marx say ‘what makes a wage slave? –Wages’ Groucho Marx that is.

What Wilkinson and Puckett haven’t demonstrated – and I don’t think would be able to – is that absolute equality of income would be the ideal in terms of social and health outcomes (which is what I assume Read would like it to demonstrate given his politics). Indeed, as I said in my review, the implication in the book is that at low levels of GDP, growth may well be a bigger factor than equality; there is a dynamic here which isn’t clearly understood.

Perhaps there are better philosophers than I out there who could offer greater illumination.

And a comment on: http://anglobuddhistcombine.blogspot.com/2009/09/equality-is-must.html
Irony here that this is the blog of the Green Party’s Hackney PPC and Hackney Lib Dems had Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett as guests at their garden party. Hackney was also the last stand of the Green Shirts -Social Credit Party in 1951.

Could you point me to this Rupert Read article you are referring to?

As for Wilkinson being all things to all people, I disagree. There are plenty of people I’ve come across who are profoundly opposed to equality, either in principle or in practice, and are appalled by this book. The book itself doesn’t especially concentrate on policy solutions.

What IS true is that it is a useful book for anyone who DOES believe in equality. I would accept that there is a risk therefore that it merely confirms people’s prejudices, but isn’t that true of all social research?