Queremos mais Igualdade, queremos mais Democracia

O que o Miguel Serras Pereira aqui defende vai de encontro ao que é preconizado neste livro

já mencionado nesta crónica do Rui Tavares, e que no essencial demonstra que mais Igualdade e Democracia resultam em mais bem-estar para um maior número de pessoas. Aqui pode ser encontrada uma recensão do livro pelo Renato Miguel do Carmo, do Observatório das Desigualdades, e aqui algumas considerações feitas por José Luiz Sarmento a propósito do livro. Os autores do livro, Richard Wilkinson e Kate Pickett, aproveitaram a oportunidade para constituir uma organização de promoção da Igualdade, o Equality Trust.

Aqui pode ainda ser encontrada uma entrevista a Richard Wilkinson, da qual saliento este extracto:

"What we've learned is that the real quality of life for all of us now depends on improving the social environment, and that we have a policy handle on how to do that. It's not that we all need to have more therapy to try and make us nicer people. Income distribution, an issue government or big corporations can do something about, really affects the psychosocial well-being of the whole society. But we can't just rely just on taxes and benefits to increase equality—the next government can undo them all at a stroke. We've got to get this structure of equality much more deeply embedded in our society. I think that means more economic democracy, or workplace democracy, of every kind. We're talking about friendly societies, mutual societies, employee ownership, employee representatives on the board, cooperatives—ways in which business is subjected to democratic influence. The bonus culture was only possible because the people at the top are not answerable to the employees at all.

Changing workplaces can have an enormous effect—not only is that where wealth is created, it's where income from production is initially divided up. It's also where we're most subjected to hierarchy and authority. Employee ownership turns a company into a community. The chief executive becomes answerable to employees. You might vote for your boss to have, I don't know, three times as much income as you—not 300 or 400 times more. Embedding greater equality and more democratic accountability in our institutions does much more than just changing income distribution or wealth distribution. And, a number of studies show that if you combine an even partial employee ownership, you get quite reliable increases in productivity. This is about how we work better together."