This is a collection of essays by six prominent social scientists on the ideal of economic and social equality and the ways, if any, in which public action can help to achieve it. * Amartya Sen offers an overview of how equality can be furthered by public action. * A. B. Atkinson proposes an official poverty line in Britain as a way to focus public debate and political action. * E. J. Hobsbawm explores the tensions within the rival demands of language,...