One of the stranger things about the Blair administration is that they never stop going on about inequality, and what they call the problem of social exclusion. They have a social exclusion unit that is constantly raising issues onto the public debate, like single motherhood, unemployment etc etc.
Which ought to be a good thing. But as you might expect with this govt., the discourse of 'social exclusion' invariably leads to reactionary social measures - greater regulations, new laws a call to moralise society, or for a new sense of moral purpose.
I am surprised to hear that there is no discussion of inequality in the US, because there are such good books published about it, from Andrew Hacker's through Sylvia Ann Hewlett's and Cornel West's to Kevin Phillips and those pot-boilers that Barlett and Steele cranked out.
Maybe there is a discussion of inequality but it just takes a mediated form, like crime (a common starting point for the UK's social exclusion unit) or the 'underclass' discussion. After all, that loathsome Bell Curve book was addressing the problem of inequality, albeit in a racist way. -- Jim heartfield