The Inequality of Wealth

A wide-ranging and compelling account of the historical and current causes of wealth inequality, offering prescriptions for lasting solutions to an intractable problem, and for a more equitable distribution of wealth and resources.

Is equality possible in the 21st century? In The Inequality of Wealth, Liam Byrne, a former Treasury minister in Gordon Brown's government, argues that the economics of the next ten years will be critical in determining the answer to this question—and the nature of all our futures.

Surveying five centuries of British capitalism and the damage wrought by the socially divisive policies of the last ten years, Byrne warns that we're fast approaching a point of no return beyond which we bequeath to Generation Z a dystopian future of irreversible rifts between the super-rich and the rest that erodes the internal bonds of once united countries and triggers the failure or the fracturing of nations. Yet it doesn't need to be like this. Change is now happening so fast that we're seeing the stuff of science fiction become a reality in our own lives. The future won't be land of milk and honey but it could be a place where we live longer, happier healthier and wealthier lives. But only if we master new ways of sharing wealth without war or revolution.

Liam Byrne draws on conversations and debates with former prime ministers, presidents and policymakers around the world together with experts at the OECD, World Bank, and IMF to argue that, after twenty years of statistics and slogans, it's time for solutions that aren't just radical but plausible and achievable as well.