Tag The Spirit Level

Entries 7 Total

Did income inequality cause the financial crisis?

Aug 25, ’10 7:46 PM

Income Inequal­ity and Fin­an­cial Crises:

David A. Moss, an eco­nomic and policy his­tor­ian at the Har­vard Busi­ness School, has spent years study­ing income inequal­ity. While he has long believed that the grow­ing dis­par­ity between the rich and poor was harm­ful to the people on the bot­tom, he says he hadn’t seen the risks to the world of fin­ance, where many of the richest earn their great fortunes.

Now, as he stud­ies the fin­an­cial crisis of 2008, Mr. Moss says that even Wall Street may have some­thing ser­i­ous to fear from inequal­ity — namely, another crisis.

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A broken society, yes. But broken by Thatcher

Feb 1, ’10 12:49 PM

Richard Wilkin­son and Kate Pick­ett writ­ing for The Guard­ian:

The evid­ence shows that almost all the prob­lems that occur most often in the poorest neigh­bour­hoods — includ­ing those that make us a broken soci­ety — are sys­tem­at­ic­ally more com­mon in more unequal soci­et­ies. Rates are not just a little higher, but between two and eight times higher. Wider income gaps make soci­et­ies socially dys­func­tional across the board.

Last Octo­ber Cameron roun­ded on Labour, say­ing: “Who made inequal­ity greater? No, not the wicked Tor­ies. You, Labour. You’re the ones that did this to our soci­ety. So don’t you dare lec­ture us about poverty. You have failed and it falls to us, the mod­ern Con­ser­vat­ive party, to fight for the poorest who you have let down.”

But the truth is that we are suf­fer­ing the impact of the massive increases in income inequal­ity under Thatcher, which Blair and Brown have since failed to reverse. In the 1980s the gulf between the top and bot­tom 20% widened by a full 60% — much the most dra­matic widen­ing of income dif­fer­ences on record.

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Better late than never?

Nov 9, ’09 8:15 AM

Labour (UK) have had twelve years to do this:

A fierce debate within the gov­ern­ment on how to tackle entrenched wealth inequal­ity … is to be ignited by a report ordered by Har­riet Har­man, the Labour deputy leader and the min­is­ter respons­ible for equalities.

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Why the rules have changed on income equality

Apr 28, ’09 7:45 PM

What I find so great about the find­ings in The Spirit Level is that they com­pletely change the rules of the debate on income equality.

No longer does one need rely on grounds of fair­ness and justice, which fall on the deaf ears of a world suc­cumbed to the fal­la­cies of social Dar­win­ism, or “sur­vival of the fit­test,” and the idea of “wealth creators.”

Now, given the deluge of data, it’s a prac­tical ques­tion of whether you want to live in a soci­ety with low rates of social prob­lems or high rates of social prob­lems. A no-brainer as they say.

The Spirit Level has opened my eyes to a couple of things too. One is the import­ance of poor coun­tries to get richer. Wealth has a huge role to play in rais­ing liv­ing stand­ards in poor coun­tries. I used to think devel­op­ing coun­tries had some­thing we didn’t and that they would lose this some­thing as they became richer. What I now real­ise is that it’s not wealth that takes this some­thing away but inequality.

The other thing it’s opened my eyes to is the dif­fer­ent way in which some coun­tries have acheived greater income equal­ity. Sweden, for example, gets its greater equal­ity through redis­tri­bu­tion, through taxes and bene­fits, and pub­lic ser­vices provided by a big state. In con­trast, Japan has a greater equal­ity of incomes before redis­tri­bu­tion. Dif­fer­ences in Japan­ese earn­ings are smal­ler even before taxes and bene­fits. Check out the Equal­ity Trust’s ‘Rem­ed­ies’ webpage for more.

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Shattering the myth of egalitarianism in Australia (and NZ)

Apr 26, ’09 12:56 PM

Boris Frankel in Melbourne’s The Age:

Here is some good news. Just as the Great Depres­sion inspired sig­ni­fic­ant social reforms, so the cur­rent “great world reces­sion” is pro­du­cing a spate of over­due reform pro­pos­als. Some of these pro­pos­als have emerged in Bri­tain, one of the most unequal soci­et­ies in the developed world. While Aus­tralia ranks as the fourth most unequal developed soci­ety after the US, Por­tugal and Bri­tain, there is wide­spread delu­sion among Aus­trali­ans that we are an egal­it­arian soci­ety. By con­trast, 80 per cent of people in Brit­ish sur­veys believe that class divi­sion — or birth not worth — determ­ines a child’s life chances.

I think there’s prob­ably wide­spread delu­sion among New Zeal­anders too when it comes to see­ing their soci­ety as egal­it­arian. It used to be for sure, but since the Labour and National party usered in free-market fun­da­ment­al­ism in the 80s New Zea­l­and, too, has become one of the most unequal developed soci­et­ies in the world. One more reason not to vote for Labour or National.

External links:

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Bill to make companies publish difference between their best and worst paid

Apr 24, ’09 8:34 PM

This Bill was to have its second read­ing in the UK’s House of Lords today. The Bill would make pubic com­pan­ies pub­lish the dif­fer­ence between top dir­ect­ors’ pay and the aver­age wages earned by the low­est paid 10% of their workers.

While a small step it’s laud­able when you con­sider the amount of dam­age income inequal­ity does to soci­ety and its people. It will be use­ful to know which com­pan­ies are doing the most dam­age and which aren’t. And, while it’s a small step, it’s an inter­est­ing Bill in that it makes any­one who opposes it look like a right prat, espe­cially in this eco­nomic climate.

Dick Tav­erne and Miles Tem­pleton dis­cussed the Bill on BBC Radio’s Today pro­gramme this morn­ing. You can listen to it here. Good to hear a House of Lords mem­ber pro­mot­ing income equality.

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Why more equal societies always do better

Mar 15, ’09 9:00 PM

It’s been a long time com­ing but two people, Richard Wilkin­son and Kate Pick­ett, have finally put the num­bers together and con­clus­ively shown that mod­ern social prob­lems are sub­stan­tially worse in those soci­et­ies with wider gaps between rich and poor.

Any curs­ory look at the world tells you this but these are the first people to show it sci­en­tific­ally. This, I would sug­gest, is going to be huge. The implic­a­tions are profound.

Will Hut­ton, writ­ing for The Guard­ian:

Income inequal­ity, they show bey­ond any doubt, is not just bad for those at the bot­tom but for every­one. More unequal soci­et­ies are socially dys­func­tional across the board. There is more teen­age preg­nancy, men­tal ill­ness, higher prison pop­u­la­tions, more murders, higher obesity and less numer­acy and lit­er­acy in more unequal soci­et­ies. Even the rich report more men­tal ill health and have lower life expect­an­cies than their peers in less unequal societies.

They have pro­duced a book on their find­ings called The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Soci­et­ies Almost Always Do Bet­ter. And they’ve also cre­ated web­site, equalitytrust.org, to make the evid­ence they set out bet­ter known.

As John Carey points out in his review of their book in the Times: “It might be said that The Spirit Level merely for­mu­lates what every­one has always felt.”

Now maybe we can get on with chan­ging a few things around here.

External links:

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