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A review by bootman
The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die by Keith Payne
5.0
Many books that discuss inequality discuss it from a moral and ethical point of view, but this was by far the best book I've read that really looked at it from all angles. Keith Payne has been studying inequality for years, and this book focuses on the psychology of inequality. There's a huge misconception that lower-class people make bad decisions for bad reasons, but when you understand the psychology, you see how they are forced into what Payne calls the "live fast and die young" approach.
The Broken Ladder is an absolute must-read because it really focuses on how many of our issues come from our relative status. When you have a better understanding of that, you see that there are certain things we can do to improve our happiness and well-being now as we also fight to change how our society runs. This book reminded me of the documentary Happy, which started out with the story of one of the happiest people on Earth, but the kicker was that he and his family basically live in poverty. The Broken Ladder offers a ton of societal as well as individual solutions, and I can't recommend it enough.
The Broken Ladder is an absolute must-read because it really focuses on how many of our issues come from our relative status. When you have a better understanding of that, you see that there are certain things we can do to improve our happiness and well-being now as we also fight to change how our society runs. This book reminded me of the documentary Happy, which started out with the story of one of the happiest people on Earth, but the kicker was that he and his family basically live in poverty. The Broken Ladder offers a ton of societal as well as individual solutions, and I can't recommend it enough.