TORSTEN BELL
British inequality is like bad music: It’s all about the 1980s
The gap between the rich and poor hasn’t moved that much in the last 25 years. In the 1980s, however, a chasm opened up— and it’s a chasm that remains. The increase between 1979 and 1990 was around 10 points on the summary “Gini” measure, a huge shifton a scale that goes from 0 (where everyone has exactly the same) to 100 (where one person has everything, and everyone else nothing). Britain’s income gap, which had previously been typical for northern Europe, came to look more like America’s. The 80s gave Britain its real inequality problem—not that it is always rising, but that it is simply too high.