We're born equal, we die equal but in life it seems there are huge inequalities between the rich and poor

Yesterday I went to a talk at the RSA and I hope Alan Johnson MP, the
shadow chancellor, understood what I was trying to say. I think he listened.

The mortality gap is ever widening. The poor and the disadvantaged may
be living a bit longer than they did a decade ago but the rich are
living much, much longer. The recent CSR will ensure this gets worse. I
think this is a bad thing.

The point I attempted to make was about the quality of inferior goods.
These items are the food that the poor have to buy. The cans of
tasteless baked beans devoid of nutritional value and packed full of
chemicals. Supermarkets can be part of Big Society and perhaps this was
the point I should have made rather than attacking his values. They can
keep the price of these goods as low as possible even though more people
will be buying them instead of the more profitable standard and luxury
products. They could make sure the nutritional content was as good as
possible by fortifying cheap essentials with vitamins and minerals.
Maybe the government could even subsidies this.

I think an advanced society is an equal society. The health inequality
and the mortality gap has been written about for 40 years. He quoted
reports from the 1970s. Modern reports show the gap is getting wider
rather than narrower. Certainly if the NHS management consultant is
right, going private is the only way to get decent quality healthcare in
the short term in the UK because of the changes introduced by the
government.

He spoke of guaranteeing the economic prosperity of the nation through
hard measures in hard times. But I'd hope society could advance beyond
these simplistic measures. Equality should be a measure. It's more
important than how many cars and and tanks a country can produce.

Perhaps I'm somewhat religious in my idea that we're all born equal and
we all die equal. In-between I think we're still equal. Sadly this isn't
true but it should be and it will be.

Top city traders, for example in the exotic derivatives market, can get
annual bonuses (or so I've heard through 2 degrees of separation) of
£10,000,000. A person with a disability working part time might earn
£10,000. I can not believe that any is worth 1000 times more than
another person.

The Ben and Jerry's icecream company pioneered the idealism in business
that I'm talking about. This multi-national corporation had a rule, one
that sadly has been rescinded. The Chief Executive of the company
couldn't get more than 8 times the salary of the worst paid employee. I
wish governments could have that sort of idealism about the sort of
nations they want to create. Equality is what an advanced society at the
start of the third millennium of humanity should be all about.