The Price We Pay for Better Living

"The inherent vice of capitalism," Winston Churchill told Britain's House of Commons in 1945, "is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." According to Walter Scheidel's remarkable new book, The Great Leveler, Churchill's bon mot was truer than he realized. In fact, says Scheidel, history shows that misery is the only reliable path to equality. "All of us who prize greater economic equality," Scheidel concludes, "would do well to remember that with the rarest of exceptions, it was only ever brought forth in sorrow. Be careful what you wish for."...