We Must Strive to Overcome Inequality in a World of Plenty

Summary

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THE magnitude of our challenges has yet to met by the measure of our actions. Those 15 words, embedded in President Barack Obama's main remarks to the United Nations on Wednesday neatly capture what seems to me to be the central dilemma of modern politics. Even after the worst financial crisis for seven decades, we live in a world of unprecedented material plenty. Despite the almost daily toll in brave young lives in Afghanistan and other instances of localised carnage, millions of us have lived our entire lives free of the kind of wars that scarred the first half of the previous century. Technology has brought us all a clickable intimacy with what is happening all over this world, a keener taste for its countless wonders.

With our gap years and early retirements, social networking sites and budget airlines, prepared meals and ever-more-exotic holiday destinations, mobile phones and televised pathways to instant celebrity, we are, in so many ways, a gilded generation. Yet our insecurities and prejudices, our obsessions and profligacy all speak of a deeper unease. Health scares abound. We throw away up to half of all the food we buy in supermarkets. Too many of us drink ourselves senseless given half a chance. Fewer of us know our neighbours. More of us brand whole cohorts of the population - teenagers, for instance - with the sins of the few. Material inequality is rising inexorably. Mental illness, too. Yes, we are a gilded generation. We are also a very troubled one. If you doubt that, just read any day's newspapers.

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We Must Strive to Overcome Inequality in a World of Plenty

Politicians are people, too. Cut them and they bleed. After this summer's expenses scandal or half an hour spent listening to David Cameron and Gordon Brown tearing lumps out of each at Prime Minister's Question Time, that may seem a ...

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