Charles Dickens and income inequality

On 10th January I wrote “CEO Pay and Ugly Leadership”, referencing wise thinkers past and present and noting:

“Leadership where CEO pay keeps climbing to ever higher heights while average workers real pay has been dropping in the modern world for some time. Not beautiful. Ugly in fact.”

So a friend who read that post recently sent me show notes from an Old Vic production of Christmas Carol, so today I share thoughts from Charles Dickens on “fat cat” inequality. Oh, and these date from when? 1843. 175 years ago.

Plus ça change plus c’est la même chose, or the more it changes, the more it is the same thing.

From the Old Vic show notes of the current production of A Christmas Carol:

“In the spring of 1843, the 31-year-old Charles Dickens was…fretting over the state of the unequal society in which he lived and yearning to be able to bring about genuine social change in a world that seemed uncaring of those who were most in need of being cared for. When he was invited to attend a fundraising dinner in aid of the Charterhouse Square infirmary, which housed elderly, impoverished men, he hoped the evening would make a difference in the lives of the poor. Instead he found himself at a table of corpulent wealthy men, who had made their fortunes in the City of London and seemed unconcerned at the plight of those for whom the dinner was being held…his frustration with the world had been exacerbated, instead of relieved….he was desperate to write something…