The Richer, The Poorer charts the rollercoaster history of both rich and poor and the mechanisms that link wealth and impoverishment. This landmark book shows how, for 200 years, Britain’s most powerful elites have enriched themselves at the expense of surging inequality, mass poverty and weakened social resilience. Stewart Lansley reveals how Britain’s model of ‘extractive capitalism’ – with a small elite securing an excessive slice of the economic cake – has created a two-century-long ‘high-inequality, high-poverty’ cycle, one broken for only a brief period after the Second World War. Why, he asks, are rich and poor citizens judged by very different standards? Why has social progress been so narrowly shared? With growing calls for a fairer post-COVID-19 society, what needs to be done to break Britain’s destructive poverty/inequality cycle?For 200 years, Britain’s most powerful elites have been allowed to enrich themselves at the expense of surging inequality and mass poverty. This landmark book charts the roller coaster history of both rich and poor, and the mechanisms that link wealth and impoverishment. Stewart Lansley traces the way financiers and executives have ruthlessly exploited their power to extract existing wealth at the cost of livelihoods and social resilience. He examines the bitter ideological rifts that have driven society back to the divisions of the past and asks why rich and poor citizens are judged by very different standards, and why the ‘cycle of privilege’ is as embedded today as a century earlier.