Basic human liberties such as freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and freedom to acquire and hold private property are more important than economic prosperity in an abstract sense. 

Early last year one of my academic colleagues emailed me with an update about conditions in the UK today being worse than the Black Death which killed up to 60% of Europe’s population. Because inequality. This was in the aftermath of news headlines announcing the advent of tough times ahead: ‘UK workers set for worst pay growth decade since the Napoleonic Wars.’ 

One of the most interesting features of the inequality debates is that one side puts forward rational arguments while the other side puts forward emotional arguments. Saying that you already have a lot of stuff but you feel bad that someone else has much more stuff than you is an emotional argument, and it cannot be met with rational replies. Appeals to ‘fairness’ in this context are just a way of expressing feelings (feeling very angry about all the unfairness) – if people feel that something is unfair there is no rational argument on earth that will make them stop feeling that it’s unfair.