This year’s World Economic Forum in Davos kicked off with the striking claim by the charity Oxfam that the richest one per cent of the world’s population owns almost half the world’s total wealth. And its share was growing; inequality was becoming worse. The consensus is emerging that inequality on its present scale is socially and economically very damaging. Quoting Pope Francis’ words that inequality was “the root of social evil,” Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, said last year: “The solidarity and reciprocity that bind societies together are more likely to erode in excessively unequal societies ... democracy begins to fray at the edges once political battles separate the haves against the have-nots.”The picture