The popularity of Picketty’s book Capital was perhaps the publishing surprise of the year … Could the attraction of the book … be that it lays the blame for increasing inequality firmly at the feet of capitalism rather than suggesting that minor reforms would solve the problem?
… Another recent book that launches a major attack on capitalism, this time on health grounds is Nicholas Freudenberg’s Lethal but Legal. He sets out the evidence that the food, alcohol, tobacco, automobile, pharmaceutical, and gun industries are now the main sources of damage to public health. And of course in the endless conflicts between public and corporate interests, corporations use their huge advertising wealth, media and political influence to defend themselves to the hilt… and [they] continue to maximise the sales of their products in the face of massive evidence of harm – from obesity, drunkenness, smoking-related disease, environmental damage, and so on.
If we wanted evidence that the antisocial behaviour of big corporations is a large political problem, their record on tax evasion provides it. Estimates of the cost just of corporate tax avoidance to the UK government vary between £4 billion and £12 billion depending on whether estimates include things like “legal” profit shifting …
Inequality makes money even more important as it becomes the key to demonstrating our status and worth to each other. . .
An editorial in the British Medical Journal BMJ 2014;349:g7516