Andrew Sayer has written a very good book which does much more than its title suggests. As well as explaining why we can’t afford the rich, it also explains why we go on doing so. The ideology that the rich shower on us is meant to justify their privilege, but it turns the truth completely inside out. When inequality reaches the insane levels it has done, the rich depend on hoodwinking us all into thinking that they are the source of jobs, prosperity and everything we value. But, to paraphrase George Monbiot, once we stop believing this, either governments have to tackle inequality or revolutions arise. So Sayer’s piece-by-piece unpicking of the economic justifications of the rich is an important political act.

Although this book has a light touch that masks the impressive scholarship which has gone into it, and is free of jargon and sometimes funny, to say it is a ‘good read’ would belie its seriousness of purpose. Above all, Sayer is concerned to help our societies surmount what he rightly calls a ‘diabolical double crisis’ – at once economic and environmental. But too often reading books or articles on the threats the world faces becomes little more than a form of consumerism. We read them to feel well informed – hopefully better informed than others. And it is easy to feel that the more threatening the problem under discussion, the more exhilarating it is as the plot of a ‘whodunnit’. Being well informed adds to our cultural capital and gives us more to say, but let us make sure this book also makes us part of the solution.

On the interface between the environment and inequality, Sayer quotes Pacala, saying that 7 per cent of the world’s population is responsible for 50 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions. But even if we in the rich world give up flying, do without a car and eat little or no meat, we would probably reduce our total (direct and indirect) carbon emissions by no more than a third – only a modest contribution to the 80 or 90 per cent we need to achieve.

Fortunately, well-being and high carbon emissions are not inseparable.