How doe social trust work with Equality

The importance of social trust (or generalised trust) has become widely accepted in the social sciences around the issues of Equality. Social trust is important because it correlates with a number of other variables that are, for most people, normatively highly desirable. At the individual level, people who believe that most other people in their society in general can be trusted are also more inclined to have a positive view of their open institutions, to participate more in politics, and to be more active in civic organisations. They also give more to charity and they are more tolerant towards minorities and to people who are not like themselves. Trusting people also have a more optimistic view of their possibilities of having an influence over their own life chances and, not least important, of being happier with how their life is going. For societies, generalized trust seems to be an important asset, and as such it has been conceptualised as one central part of social capital (Coleman 1988; Putnam 1993). In sum, both at the individual and societal levels, many things that are formal desirable seem connected to social trust and have been attributed to social capital more generally. The issue of the principle of cause and effect is admittedly a different question from the statistical correlations, but so many correlations point in the same direction that social scientists have begun to pay a lot of attention to trust.

If we look at means-tested system we have in the UK to get benefits, in contrast, single out people because they are poor and treat them as if they were undeserving. Poverty and inequality already rip apart the social fabric. Belittling recipients of government programs leads to social strains in two ways: the poor feel isolated and feel that others deem them unworthy. The unfair criticism of welfare recipients feeds on public perceptions that the poor truly are responsible for their own poverty. Neither side sees a shared fate with the other. Universal programs do not cast a statement that attacks somebody’s character on the responsibility of benefits and thus do not destroy trust. When they work well, they can even help to create it.

• Why, then, is there so little change in levels of trust and equality?
• How does trust and inequality play?
• How do we as Individual bring trust to play around equality and diversity?
• How doe we as organisation bring trust to play around equality and diversity?
• Does it matter?
• What do you think?