The Inequality Crisis

Economist and author Stewart Lansley argues that the surging income gap of recent decades has not only been socially corrosive, but is also at the roots of our national and global economic crises.

RSA Thursday

For the last 30 years, the economy of the UK (and much of the rich world ) has been managed on the basis of a doctrine that holds that inequality is a necessary condition for economic progress. Author and economist Stewart Lansley visits the RSA to argue that this theory is wrong. Rather, the surging income gap of recent decades has not just been socially corrosive, it lies at the roots of the current prolonged national and global crisis.

Allowing the fruits of growth to be colonised by the few has, contrary to the current orthodoxy, simply brought more turbulent and more fragile economies. We now need to abandon this theory and adopt a new approach to economic management built around the growing evidence that more equal societies are the route, not just to social harmony, but also to economic health.

Speaker: Stewart Lansley is a visiting fellow at Bristol University and the author of 'The Cost of Inequality', runner-up in Spear's 2012 business book of the year awards

Chair: Matthew Taylor, chief executive, RSA