Hong Kong's poor need equal opportunities

One hears a lot about "the grass roots" in Hong Kong. It's a phrase that seems to carry a more specific meaning here than I have encountered elsewhere, having come out from Scotland some 18 months ago.

Whereas in Britain and the US it intimates more generally the rank and file, or the population base at large, in Hong Kong "the grass roots" also tends to serve as a rather euphemistic term for the poor. We are told that grass-roots people feel neglected, that they are being pauperised by inflation, or that they do not trust Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying to deliver on his pledges to help them.

There is one problem with the metaphor, however: real grass roots find it easy to break through the sod and grow. By comparison, many of Hong Kong's poor can legitimately be described as downtrodden.

Much has been made of inequality in Hong Kong. As indicated by the city's Gini co-efficient, a statistical measure of income disparity, we are living in one of the most unequal societies in the world. But it would be a mistake to unhesitatingly conflate, as many do, these two problems: stalled social mobility (the thwarted seedbeds) and a yawning gap between rich and poor.

To seriously confront the latter would require large-scale redistribution of wealth, which seems an unlikely course for any government here to take.

It is worth stressing, furthermore, that a more equal society is not necessarily a better one. "Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" is how Thomas Hobbes described life in mankind's "natural" state - relative equality tends to prevail in primitive societies as there is little scope for accumulating wealth. There is therefore less economic activity, less innovation and less incentive to create employment - things which benefit everyone.