[Vision2020] The Huge Social Costs of Economic Inequality

[nickgier at roadrunner.com]

Dear Visionaries,

This was my radio commentary/column for this week.  Wilkinson and Pickett's book "Spirit Level" is dynamite as it completely destroys the predictions of libertarian "trickle down" economics.

The full version, covering most of the issues, is attached as a PDF file.

Next week's column "The Entangled (and Sometimes Violent) Web of Reincarnational Politics" is almost done.  I wrote it on the occasion of Obama's meeting with the Dalai Lama.

Let's hope for a better reincarnation for the US of A,

Nick Gier

THE HUGE SOCIAL COSTS OF ECONOMIC INEQUALITY

By Nick Gier

Among the new objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, none struck me with greater force than the equality of conditions. I easily perceived the enormous influence that this primary fact exercises on the workings of the society.

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
	
Richard Wilkinson, professor emeritus at the University of Nottingham Medical School, and Kate Pickett, an epidemiologist at the York University, have just published a book entitled "The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger."  

The authors studied levels of trust, mental illness, life expectancy, infant mortality, educational achievement, teen births, homicides, and incarceration rates. They found that the US performed the worst on all nine problems, and that the most consistent predictor of these problems is economic inequality.

Drawing insights and conclusions from 396 books and articles, Wilkinson and Pickett demonstrate in graph after graph how the nine problems correlate strongly with income inequality. Aggregating the data for all nine issues, health and social maladies were worse for unequal USA, Portugal, the UK, and New Zealand, but much better in more equal Japan, Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands.  

One of the areas in which economic inequality expresses itself is as a general lack of trust.  When people were given the statement “Most people can be trusted,” over 60 percent of the Scandinavians and the Dutch agreed while only 10 percent of the Portuguese, 30 percent of the British, and 38 percent of Americans agreed.

At this point one might say that racial and ethnic tension is the main reason for the lack of trust in the UK and America’s Southern States.  In 1960, however, 60 percent of Americans thought that most people could be trusted.  This was a time of higher income equality, but there was of course much more racial tension between blacks and whites.

Wilkinson and Pickett cite a study of a Chicago ghetto over time, which showed that, even though Poles, blacks, and Hispanics had lived there in succession, the same health and social problems existed there. The common denominator was income disparity in relation to the rest of the city.

Using an index combining forty different indicators of child well being, the authors graph it against income inequality. The more equal Swedish, Dutch, Finnish, and Norwegian children do far better than the less equal British, New Zealander, Israeli, and American children.  

Critics will say that correlations, even those that are very strong and even those that change in tandem over time, do not prove causation, but Wilkinson and Pickett have answered them with good arguments.  

There are a number of controlled primate and human studies involving social status, a major way in which income disparity expresses itself, that prove causality. Space does not permit listing them all, but a test in India demonstrated that students do equally well on solving puzzles until the caste status of each student is announced.

With their famous motto French Revolutionaries introduced the three enduring values of modern political philosophy: liberty, equality, and community. I substitute “community” (which includes traditional values)  for “fraternity” as a corrective to the 1792 French mistake of thinking that they could create everything anew. 

I would argue that today’s libertarians destroy this fragile political trinity by emphasizing liberty too much, while conservatives tend to threaten both liberty and equality by insisting on traditional positions that are no longer valid.  Communist totalitarians of course destroyed everything in their obsession for complete equality.

Wilkinson and Pickett’s book makes it even more clear the essential role that equality plays in preserving both liberty and community. They propose that “equality [is] the precondition for getting [liberty and community] right. Not only do large inequalities produce all the problems associated with social differences, but it also weakens community life, reduces trust, and increases violence.” 

The Reagan Revolution has proved to be disaster for America. From 1950-80 high progressive taxes were in place and unions had their largest membership. During that same period household incomes rose along with steady economic growth. From 1980 onwards incomes for ordinary Americans have stagnated and economic inequality has increased dramatically. The nine health and social problems also have become worse.

Wilkinson and Pickett have shown that improving economic equality can have a powerful counter effect working its "enormous influence," as DeToqueville observed 190 years ago, "on the workings of [American] society."
 
With sufficient political will based on overwhelming evidence, Americans could once again impress distinguished foreign visitors with a firm recommitment to equality.

Nick Gier taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years.







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