In an interview on Inequality

The author of your next book, Oliver James, is a psychologist who looks at some of the reasons why this might be the case. Tell me about The Selfish Capitalist. 

Well, Oliver James’s most famous book is actually called Affluenza. The book which I have chosen, The Selfish Capitalist, is a compilation of all the academic evidence behind it; Affluenza itself is mostly a series of interviews done with people all around the world. He talks about the incredibly high rates of mental illness which tend to accompany affluence; according to the WHO, one in four Americans is mentally ill; one in ten people in Scotland is taking Prozac or a similar anti-depressant. Oliver James argues that these people are taking drugs and suffering these illnesses for good reasons: society provides them with good reasons for being anxious. 

Is it wealth itself which is the problem?

Not really: it’s the inequality in wealthy societies which is the problem. Oliver James finds that it is the unequal affluent countries in the world that have the highest rates of depression. The most content countries, on the other hand, where people trust each other and crime rates are low and so on, are the more egalitarian countries; Japan, Korea and the Scandinavian countries, for example. One thing that creates unhappiness in unequal societies is that they are highly fragmented. There has been research done in the States scanning the brains of students as they see a homeless person: the evidence suggests that they don’t recognise them as human. It was only when they asked the question ‘Do you think that person is hungry?’ that suddenly all the emotions fire up. It’s a survival mechanism. If you live in a very unequal society, you barely even see people who are from different social classes.