wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

I am not overly worried about my financial situation, but I resent the millionaires and billionaires even if they are a tiny % of the population, because here $$ = alot of power. And this country is in pretty poor state. The stats show that the gap between rich and poor, the gap between executive and worker has skyrocketed over the last several decades.

What happiness means needs more time than 10 min.

I agree with Ms. Pickett's conclusions about inequality but think that many Americans believe (erroneously) that remedial efforts are of necessity a zero sum proposition. By which I mean that efforts to address the equality disparity are often depicted as wealth or income redistribution schemes, in which the better off must lose something so that others may gain. This may account to some degree for the ambivalence/hostility towards remedial efforts in the US. I am not fond of the Danish tax structure but the Danes at least believe they all bear the burden equally (and of course the benefits). A topic worthy of deeper investigation...

this professor leaves out so many complexities of history, as well as make up of individual countries. She is comparing countries of hugely differing scales as well. After a quick jump on google, some of the "facts" she presents seem a little shady too.

The strong countries mentioned are not racially diverce.

We are made stronger by our mixing of cultures into an American Culture.

Great points by Mr. Lehrer and the guest.

The great philosopher John Rawls argued (roughly) that the differences could as large as possible as long as those differences served to improve the lot of the least well off.

It is brutally clear that the differences in the US are not only failing to improve the lot of the poorest but are actually dependent on the poor and middle class getting poorer while the rich get richer.

voters have shown very little interest in equity