1/ While the book makes a case for a correlation b/w inequality & broader lack of well-being + social breakdown, causality is tricky to establish & it might go both ways. Plus, these symptoms may derive from unevenly distributed benefits of economic growth economist.com/books-and-arts…
2/ "But as inequality rises, differences in status become harder to ignore. There is more to be gained or lost by moving from one rung on the ladder to another." (cont'd)
3/ "And however much some maintain that disparities in pay-cheques do not correspond to differences in human worth, such well-meaning pieties feel hollow when high-rollers earn hundreds or thousands of times what ordinary folk take home." (cont'd)
4/ "Money cannot buy everything, but it can buy most things. The steeper the income gradient, the less secure everyone becomes, in both their self-respect and their sense of the community’s esteem."
5/ "And so people compensate. They take pills, to steel their nerves or dull the pain. Some cut themselves. Some adopt a more submissive posture, avoiding contact with others. Yet such withdrawal can feed on itself, depriving recluses of..." (cont'd)
6/ "the social interaction that is important to mental health, undermining relationships and careers and contributing to economic hardship."
