The rich aren’t so different any more

The traditional orange at the bottom of a Christmas stocking dates to a time when this was the only orange a child might receive all year. Earlier, in the 17th century, a single pineapple might cost the equivalent of £5,000 today; like pepper in the Middle Ages, pineapple ownership was confined to royalty and the super-rich. Yet last week I spoke to someone who had worked in a food-waste processing plant. She said their worst nightmare was when one of the supermarket chains offered two-for-one on pineapples; so many people would throw away their unwanted second pineapple that the extra acidity played havoc with the chemical workings of the plant.

Because it’s Christmas, I thought it might be time to reflect on some good news. Yes, every newspaper article nowadays mentions the growing problem of wealth inequality, and for a good reason. But this overlooks one strange facet of modern life: quite simply, the world’s most amazing things are no longer all that scarce.

The last 40 years or so have seen something very strange: a dog that doesn’t bark in the night. In short, nobody has invented anything of any significance which is prohibitively expensive. This is unprecedented. For almost all of previous human history, anything new and amazing has been in short supply, and hence mostly confined to the rich.

As a doctor in a mining town, my grandfather could afford lots of things that were out of reach to most people around him. Fridges, radios, a dishwasher (the fourth in Wales, no less), foreign travel and, above all, a car. I don’t know what the Welsh Gini coefficient was back then, but certainly being ten times richer than average allowed you to buy many things which were off-limits to everyone else.