The Richer The Poorer

The Richer The Poorer charts the rollercoaster history of both rich and poor and the mechanisms that link wealth and impoverishment. This landmark book shows how for 200 years Britain’s most powerful elites have enriched themselves at the expense of surging inequality mass poverty and weakened social resilience. Stewart Lansley reveals how Britain’s model of ‘extractive capitalism’ – with a small elite securing an excessive slice of the economic cake – has created a two-century-long ‘high-inequality high-poverty’ cycle one broken for only a brief period after the Second World War. Why he asks are rich and poor citizens judged by very different standards? Why has social progress been so narrowly shared? With growing calls for a fairer post-COVID-19 society what needs to be done to break Britain’s destructive poverty/inequality cycle?