Society / Equality

We banned billionaires? Kathryn Zacharek muses on a world without the super-rich.

We don’t just need solutions – we need the courage to imagine they will succeed. Conrad Landin makes the case for collective action to secure a just future.

Despite the challenges of ensuring equal access, health expert Christopher Morgan is hopeful that the Covid-19 vaccine push is helping to shape a better future for global immunology. He speaks to Amy Hall.

Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has a key role in shaping the global response to the pandemic. And it’s not good news for health equality. Nick Dowson investigates why.

Covid-19 vaccines explained by Thomas Abraham.

We abolished landlords? fantasizes Amy Hall.

How can we transform the calamity that has befallen us and create healing? Vanessa Baird on the change we can be.

Dinyar Godrej ponders what a global minimum wage might look like.

The world has never been better. From global poverty to inequality between nations, all the indicators are showing progress. This is a comforting narrative – popularized by the likes of Bill Gates and Steven Pinker. But is it true? Jason Hickel examines the rise of this so-called ‘New Optimism’, with its ‘battle cry for the status quo’.

Politicians of both Left and Right continue to march behind the banners of meritocracy and equality of opportunity as if this were all that is needed to achieve a fair society. But rewarding people for their ‘merit’ may be creating a new class system based on arrogant, insensitive winners and angry, desperate losers, writes Peter Adamson.

Wame Molefhe profiles Botswana, where prosperity has morphed into corruption and inequality. But will the country’s future see it regain the sparkle its diamonds offer to the rich?

Ten years ago the world focused on the US foreclosure crisis as thousands lost their homes in dodgy mortgage deals. Today, the crisis is still a reality for many. Jack Crosbie reports.

With a career spanning six decades, Tobago’s Calypso Rose has written more than 800 songs focusing on gender discrimination and social injustice. The 78-year-old, who has survived cancer and two heart attacks, spoke to Sian Griffiths.

Paraguayan democracy may have come a long way since the end of dictatorship, but terror is sweeping its agricultural heartlands where farmers and indigenous communities are resisting attempts to take away what little land they have left.

Some people have so much money they don’t know what to do with it – while most of us scrimp and save just to get by. Mark Engler reflects on the vulgar reality of extreme wealth.

Meet the Rastafarian lawyer fighting for cannabis freedom in South Africa. Interview by Alice McCool.

If job-killing robots will play a big role in our future, inequality could get turbo-charged. The counter-proposals on the table barely scratch the surface, argues Nick Dowson.

Technology is changing society at breakneck speed but considerations of human impacts lag far behind. Dinyar Godrej sketches out some of the key political battles ahead.

The advantages of greater equality are clear – the more so as the negative effects of widening inequality in some countries become apparent. But how can we help turn the tide?

While it is clear that equality matters in terms of health and happiness, surprising new data reveals that it is also better for the environment – in the more equal rich countries, people on average consume less, produce less waste and emit less carbon.