David Beckham and Michelle Obama at the White House in 2013. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
In 1992, social psychologist Michael Billig wrote a book on how ‘ordinary’ people talk about the British Royal family. He argued that through their conversations, people compared their situations with those of royalty in ways that made their own lives come out better—helping them to ignore gross inequalities of wealth and power in the process. This makes action on inequality much less likely.
