Inequality Briefing Video Analysis

How the theme of inequality and right help to illustrate the role of money in society.

The ever changing society, due to its population growth, has seen many developments in the role of money. Everyone knows the saying that money makes the world go round; however, what needs to be examined is the extent to which it fuels inequality within the society and its consequences. Furthermore, it must be examined how a powerful item as money is controlling our rights within a society. This opens up a field of rights and importantly debt, which inevitable is a form of money. The two themes that vividly illustrate the role of money in the society are; inequality and rights, along with examples provided they open up questions frequently examined by

There is a long history regarding what money means to one because this changes on a day to day basis. The best way to understand this is by looking at how wealth is distributed in Britain. A short video produced by Inequality briefing (Open University 2017) explores the idea of how fair Britain is in relation to one’s wealth. The poll examined the following; what the wealth distribution should be, what the participants think it is and the real distribution of wealth in the UK. Even from the first statistics standing at “lowest earning 15% and highest 25% of the overall wealth” it provides an idea that British people think a society should not run without some inequality and it has become acceptable that one

In the Chinese province of Guangdong money has a lot of power, even over the most basic human rights such as a child’s education. Yuan Oifeng, a city planner stated “75% of the tax income belongs to the central government so what the local government gets is very limited” (Open University 2017) From this we understand that only 25% of the tax income belongs to the local government; thus, people travelling to work in that city do not qualify for any benefits. This is because the government is increasing tax revenue in order to pay off the debt it undertook in order to create such an economy in the city of Guangzhou. That enormous job opportunity attracts many migrants from the land nearby, because they are hired as cheap labour they cannot afford to live there permanently. Additionally, a big part of them travellers in order to provide for their family, yet their children do not benefit from an education there. Migrant worker’s children cannot attend school in the city because of the houku system “… a way of administering the distribution of state resources and controlling migration…” (Open University 2017) Though one can seek to change their residency after a set amount of years it still does not help much with the gap between rich and poor already created in