At least since Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality, philosophers and others have been concerned with the social problems linked to inequality. More recently, in 2009, two British academics Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett published a much discussed study The Spirit Level, which suggested that greater equality led to significant benefits in many areas of society.The same authors provide by far the longest contribution to the volume under discussion here. It is also the only essay which was not originally written in German. Over 40 pages and with the aid of numerous graphs, they demonstrate the extent of inequality in a number of countries in the area of income distribution and emphasise the psychological and social consequences. Inequality, they maintain, can be linked to a number of psychopathological conditions such as alcoholism and drug dependency.
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