Thinking Allowed - 15/07/2009

Laurie Taylor explores the latest research into how society works. Research has shown that health and social problems become more acute in an unequal society, where the gap between the richest and poorest is greatest. For most of us, respect is measured in money, and lack of it or low pay tells us that we are worth very little. But given the chance, would we as a society be prepared to rebalance? Laurie Taylor discusses these issues with Professor Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, authors of The Spirit Level: Why Equal Societies Almost Always So Better, and Sunder Katwala from The Fabian Society, on a new paper on underlying motivation. Also teddy bears; how did a real hunting story become a political myth which left Theodore Roosevelt forever credited as the namesake of the teddy bear, symbolic of childhood innocence?