You shouldn’t count on all things being equal using The Spirit Level

A FACEBOOK friend messaged last week to ask: “Have you not read The Spirit Level?” Did he mean Seamus Heaney’s poetry collection or the acclaimed book published last year arguing that income inequality is the cause of most social problems?

I suspected the latter but thought I had better check. I was right. It seems he objected to my column last week pointing out that elaborate welfare states had to be paid for and that the country had to generate wealth in order to support all those who cannot work, cannot find work – or choose not to work, or work very hard.

As it happens, I have read The Spirit Level, the one authored by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. It has been hailed as proof that inequality undermines any sense of community, harming not just the poorest in society but almost everyone else as well, so great are the negative effects. In Ireland, as well as Britain (the subject of its main argument), it has been praised lavishly; Senator Ivana Bacik has called it nothing less than “irrefutable”.