[Vision2020] Film on Inequality at Kenworthy, Sept. 5

[Nicholas Gier]

There will be a free showing of Robert Reich’s award-winning film *Inequality
for All* at the Kenworthy Theatre on September 5 at 7 PM.  It is sponsored
by the Moscow Human Rights Commission, the UI Faculty Federation (AFT), and
the Latah Human Rights Task Force. The Task Force has chosen inequality as
the topic for Human Rights Day at the Market (September 8), and before the
film there will be a display table of powerful graphics and informative
hand-outs. Patrons are encourage to come early to check out the Task
Force’s table.

For those who do not receive the DNews, here is my column on the topic.

*The Effects of Income Inequality on Mental Health*

by Nick Gier, The Palouse Pundit

In 2011 British epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett released
the second edition of their book *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.

Among selected industrialized countries the authors found that the U.S.
performed the worst on all nine indicators, and that the most consistent
predictor was economic inequality. Significantly, the more equal American
states had better results on these issues.

In their new book *The Inner Level: How More Equal Societies Reduce Stress,
Restore Sanity, and Improve Everyone’s Wellbeing*, Wilkinson and Pickett
have gathered more data about inequality’s negative effect on mental
health.

For example, they found that only 10 percent of Japanese and Germans
suffered from some form of mental illness, while 20 percent of those in the
United Kingdom and 25 percent of Americans did so. The Japanese and Germans
are significantly more equal than Americans, with the British less so.

Our authors cite research that showed that “in 1980, 4 percent of Americans
suffered a mental disorder associated with anxiety, today half do.” Between
2007 and 2017 the number of Americans receiving Social Security Disability
benefits due to a mental disorder increased 2.5 times.

Young people are also suffering. In Britain, since 2011, there has been a
68 percent rise in rates of self-harm among girls aged 13 to 16, and 58
percent of British teachers believe that there is a mental health crisis in
their schools. From 2010 to 2015 there was a 36 percent increase in
depressive episodes among American adolescents. School bullying is also
much more prevalent in unequal countries.

Research has shown that status anxiety is much higher in unequal countries,
and one study revealed that “people of lower status in hierarchies have
higher levels in their blood of a clotting factor called fibrinogen,
implying that their bodies are constantly on high alert to heal potential
wounds.”

Anxiety has been found to cause depression, drug addiction, and increases
in suicidal thoughts, narcissism, and schizophrenia. Excessive drug use
correlates tightly with economic inequality all over the world.

Most people do not realize that narcissism is categorized as a mental
illness in psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistics Manual. From 1982 to
2006, psychologists administered the Narcissistic Personality Inventory to
thousands of American college students, and they found a 30 percent
increase in the display of narcissistic symptoms.

Two questions on this survey especially caught my eye: “If I ruled the
world, it would be a better place,” and “I can live my life any way I want
to.”

Wilkinson and Pickett report an ever increasing “defensive, narcissistic
presentation of self” in unequal societies, and a reviewer from *The
Guardian* newspaper remarks that “we risk creating a society of mini-Trumps
all clawing at one another’s hairpieces.”

Trump certainly epitomizes this description of narcissistic persons: “They
tend to lack empathy, react aggressively to criticism and favor
self-promotion over helping others.” Narcissists undermine the social
fabric of those around them, but the one in the White House has upset
economic and diplomatic relations throughout the world.

The most alarming statistic is increased mortality rates for American men
without a college degree ages 45-54. They are dying prematurely because of
drug and alcohol abuse, and their suicide rate is eight times the national
average. From 2000 to 2016, 183,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses.

As one reviewer of Wilkinson and Pickett's book observes: "The world’s
richest large country, the city on a hill, seems to be coming apart."

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they
shall never sit in.

-Greek proverb

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in
lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own
understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.

--Immanuel Kant
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