Given the scale of contemporary poverty, many consider it either inappropriate or just fantastical also to worry about inequality. The priority, it is said, should be the alleviation of poverty and destitution. If societies could once guarantee that everyone had enough – that we all had sufficient resources for an adequate life – there would be no need also to worry about inequality. The presumption is that citizens of at least liberal democracies already enjoy a basic ‘status’ equality (are already in some significant sense regarded as equals), and that the persistence of even gross material inequality does not affect this. This view seriously mistakes both the history of claims about our supposedly basic equality and the reality of contemporary society. The argument of this lecture is that we cannot so readily separate out status from material equality, and that we should worry about both poverty and inequality.