This provides a potential missing link between system and agency in explaining why inequality leads to violence such as riots… How Growing Inequality Hurts the Middle Class by Robert H. Frank (2007) – Even though it’s not focussed on those suffering real deprivation – if inequality hurts those in the middle this much – it can surely be applied to help explain why the really deprived in unequal societies might occassionally display signs of anti-social behaviour… Of course you may have seen this, but it’s relatively new to me, even though it’s four years old…

Frank offers up considerable evidence that human beings have an innate sense of justice – they care about their position relative to others and feel that if they are not getting their fare share in relation to their peers, then a sense of injustice and negative emotions arise – most notably anger… (taken from the text)
Do you teach kids to care about relative position or do they just discover it on their own?

I was curious and did an experiment with my two older boys when they were young. David was seven and Jason was five, and it was a three day experiment. I gave them each a full glass of orange juice on the first day. I watched them each day. What did they do? Nothing on the first day! I cut them back to a half glass on day 2. Did they complain? “Why did we get only half a glass?” No, they again drank their orange juice without comment. The pay-off was day 3. David got 7/8 of a glass, Jason ¾—what psychologists call a “just noticeable difference,” where you need to carefully make sure there is a difference. Sure enough – I could see Jason’s eyes go back and forth between the two glasses. He could tell it wasn’t going to play out well if he complained, but he just couldn’t bottle it up any longer. He finally blurted out “That’s not fair. He always gets more than me.” We don’t teach them to do that, they just do it.

He goes on to provide an excellent account of evidence for greater equality leading to greater pyschological well-being  

So this is basically to pyschology what the Spirit Level is to Sociology – and I believe that Will Hutton in ‘Them and Us’ builds a similar arguement…although I’ve only just skimmed that book thus far – but while the war against the unread pile may be unwinnable, I think we are making ground in the war against neoliberalism in general and the Tories in particular…Check out the latest Yougov polls for some encouraging signs on this.