The virus has thrown social disparities into sharp
relief. But is this global pandemic really the game-changer we have been
led to believe?
Just as “ye have
the poor with you always,” the same is true of the rich. Stark
inequalities of income and wealth have been a fact of life for thousands
of years, ever since farming and herding, private property and
inheritance first emerged after the end of the last Ice Age. History
teaches us that the nexus between civilisation and inequality is so
firmly entrenched that it takes massive disruptions of the established
order to level the playing field.