This book systematically attacks (with graphs and interspersed humor) the exacerbation of every modern day social issue through its connection to income inequality. Although in the decade plus between its release and the present day the United States has not meaningfully improved the social situations within the book, the book remains a meaningful answer guide to our ongoing “empire in decay” situation.

good ideas, poor execution. the constant use of graphs with the same (unexplained) fuzzy axes indicated either a lack of the authors' understanding of statistics, or the assumption that readers would have no understanding. the authors actually state at one point that they did no data cleansing, and used the raw data "as-is", as if they saw this to be a good thing (any statistician or scientist worth their name will tell you that all data requires cleansing before analysis!) Still, there are some very intriguing thoughts here, including the weight of evidence showing that equal societies are healthier-by all standards-and for all citizens-not just the poorest.
the conclusion lets it down again,with a rose-tinted assumption that everything is made better by employee ownership of companies. while this would probably help, I was far from convinced that this would be the silver bullet as proposed by the authors.
overall, great food for thought, but feel far short of life-changing. ( )

Fantastic read, but very academic and heavy on the charts & graphs. Lefties will nod, righties will balk. The title says it all, book is just analysis. ( )

The evidence and argumentation is strong in this one. The core idea is simple and powerful, it reveals itself in many aspects of many different societies with very different institutional systems. The core idea is that humans long for better conditions, not only in the sense of absolute material conditions (so, please stop repeating "but hey, global poverty levels are down, time to celebrate!", because nobody is arguing against that), but in the sense of relative psychological and sociological security, solidarity, and trust, achieved by low level of inequality.

The question is simple: if you really had the choice, what kind of society would you like to live in? A society where there's more trust, more solidarity, better mental and physiological health, less crime, and less depression and anxiety, or a society that is worse in those aspects? It is not very difficult to come up with an answer.

The authors take a lot of data sets and many different countries, after which they proceed to show the relationships between the aspects above and inequality levels. Their conclusion is clear: having huge levels of inequality does not lead to very healthy societies. Correlation is of course not causation, and the book has a separate chapter discussing finer points that lead to its conclusions.

Taken together with another book, "Inequality: What Can Be Done?", the time is overdue to focus our perspective on helping each other and ourselves to have healthier environments, both mentally and physically, worth living in.

Many great accomplishments start with a small, simple, and powerful idea; and if we'll have a better future, then this book will be among the valuable few that put forward the idea of "less inequality, healthier society". ( )

Uses a number of data supported examples to demonstrate that poorer societal outcomes result in part from greater inequality (not just for the poor but for all quartiles of wealth). They hypothesise that this results from changes to trust and social connectedness. This section had too much evolutionary psychology for me (not that convinced in science that cannot make predictions). Suggested methods for improving equality of societies. ( )