HackerTube.dev

How economic inequality harms societies | Richard Wilkinson

TED · 1.3M views · 2011-10-24 · 16:55

Open on YouTube ↗

If playback is restricted in your region, try opening the original video. Use Mark watched to add it to your marked videos.

Overview

Richard Wilkinson presents data showing that societies with larger income gaps do worse on health, lifespan, trust and other measures. He argues the effects track inequality itself rather than average income. It is a 17-minute TED talk.

On Hacker News

HN commenters cite it in inequality debates as a compact summary of studies linking inequality to worse social outcomes.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2012–2016

Topics

Labor, work & inequalitySocial issues & culture
Search by tags
inequalitypublic healthsocial trustted talkincome gap

What people said

lars · 2015-05 · Recommendation

You seem to be talking about average wealth and social mobility. This is different from inequality, which is about the distance from the bottom to the top. Some of these results are counter intuitive. For example: There's data to show that the top quartile of earners in low inequality countries live longer than their top quartile counterparts in high inequality countries, even if the high inequality counterparts earn much more both in absolute and relative terms. Edit: Since this is getting downvoted, here's a talk that spends 17 minutes listing studies showing that this is in fact about inequality, not average income. [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗
dools · 2016-01 · Reference

Nobody serious said inequality was bad or good Lots of very serious people say that inequality is bad: [LINK] [VIDEO] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK]

Read the original HN comment ↗
asdkl234890 · 2014-10 · Reference

One thing that always bothers me about wealth distribution is that you can't simply move wealth around and expect things to get better. Things have gotten better in countries which have reduced inequality: [VIDEO] Don't confuse persons with populations. They are not the same thing. A person is very different from a population.

Read the original HN comment ↗

Sources

Video by TED, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

Views, duration and playback status refresh separately from the published catalog. When an update fails, existing data remains visible.

Selection checks
  • SaaS & AI candidates: Topic keywords do not match
  • Editor-approved picks: Editorial review is required

Rule matches identify candidates. They do not guarantee video quality or financial results.

About the library and its sources