Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth. We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them.

Tony Judt died on August 6, and wrote Ill Fares the Land during the advanced stages of his two-year battle with Lou Gehrig's disease. The time of writing the book was not an optimistic time, and as its title suggests, the book does not paint a glowing picture of the present condition of many Western democracies. It contains a stern message to the generations that follow: the United States, United Kingdom, and other predominantly Anglo-Saxon nations including Ireland, Australia and New Zealand have spent 30 years deconstructing various components of the welfare state in pursuit of greater economic efficiency and the accumulation of private wealth at the expense of the public good. Something must change. We can do better than this.

Drawing heavily on the research of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett's The Spirit Level, Judt notes that inequality has grown in the last 30 years. In 2005 21.2 per cent of US national income accrued to the top 1 per cent of income earners, and between 1977 and 2007 the majority of jobs in Great Britain were created at either the very high or very low ends of the pay scale. Intergenerational mobility has collapsed, the poor increasingly stay poor and economic disadvantage translates into ill health, missed educational opportunities, mental illness, and minor criminality. As inequality increases mistrust grows. Thirty years of growing inequality have made chronic disadvantage appear "natural conditions of life".

Politics devoid of idealism: 'Ill Fares the Land'