13) WHY EQUALITY IS BETTER FOR SOCIETY
The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, authors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, book review by Peter Kerek
This ground‑breaking book first went to print in 2009, and had a second printing in 2010 with a postscript to rebut its detractors. The findings of the authors, however, do not sit well with the established ruling class of most nations, hence the fairly muted coverage in most media.
Neoliberal economists claim that raising the overall wealth of a society is the best way to increase quality of life for all citizens. In direct contrast to this claim the authors found that societies perform better in all sorts of ways when the distance between the poor and the wealthy are substantially reduced regardless of the overall average wealth of a nation.
The best and most frequently cited example was the USA.
The USA has one of the highest average income levels of any nation in the world, yet the country, as a whole, performs quite poorly in areas of teen suicide, homicide, poor access to education, social mobility, trust, crime, systemic discrimination, pollution, divorce and poverty. The US, in these areas, measures no better than many second and third world countries. The US also has the second‑greatest gap in income between its poor and rich.
The book gives as much attention to differences between all the individual states of the United States as it does different countries. Because there has been so much reliable and comparable data already gathered on Americans, and because there are such great discrepancies between the quality of life in the various states, it gave the authors an opportunity to test their thesis in a "closed" arena; in other words comparing US states to other US states negates claims that the cultural differences between Asian, Scandinavian and English‑speaking countries is somehow skewing their findings. The evidence found in the inter‑state comparisons overwhelmingly supported the findings of their international comparisons.
In measuring the "success" of various societies the authors used many of the same data also used by international relief and development organizations such as UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund), the WHO (World Health Organization), UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) and the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development).
Included in their areas of analysis were: mental health, human development (including access to education, healthcare, housing), social mobility, social status, teenage pregnancy and births, incarceration, disease, life expectancy, trust of fellow citizens, infant mortality, class, consumption and consumerism, diet, substance abuse, discrimination, divorce, happiness, pollution, unemployment, religion, poverty, sexual activity, homicide and war.
The most important concept put forth in this book is called Social Cohesion.
Social Cohesion describes the connectedness, or feeling of community, between members of a society. When discrepancies in income levels are reduced, the feeling of social cohesion is enhanced. The personal focus appears to change from a "me first" to a "we first" approach to everyday life, as well as a support for a "we first" approach to governmental policy‑making. A person living in a society with high levels of social cohesion is more likely to have similar experiences, dreams and goals as other members of their community. They are also more likely to have affordable access to the basic necessities of life such as food and shelter and have greater access to opportunities based on personal ability rather than wealth and social status.
An argument Capitalists and Libertarians alike have asserted is that income inequality is one of the societal realities that forces people to "innovate" in order to succeed and be more creative than their competition; having lots of incredibly wealthy people around is supposed to be a great motivator for those who have relatively nothing. However, the authors crush that idea as well with an analysis of "patents per million population" and show that while the US, UK, Australia, Portugal and Singapore had the highest levels of inequality, they were all amongst the worst 10 producers of patents. In contrast, the countries with low levels of inequality had much higher rates of patents. For example the rates of patents in Finland are about 30 times greater than those in the US. Amongst the 23 analyzed countries the US has the second highest level of inequality while Finland has the second lowest rate of inequality. This evidence clearly shows that greater income equality is much more likely to foster innovation and creativity.
But the evidence didn't just show quality of life improvements for people at the bottom end of the socio‑economic ladder. The wealthiest people in countries that had greater income equality also reported having a better quality of life; they were more likely to trust their fellow citizens, have better family and community relations, live longer and live in communities with lower rates of crime and lower rates of other negative factors that eventually affect nearly everyone to some degree.
When comparing countries the authors used a list of the 50 richest nations in the world supplied by the World Bank and then struck off nations with less than three million people and countries that didn't have enough comparable data; without enough comparable data the information would have made it much harder to come to any sound conclusions. Many of the smaller nations, such as the Cayman Islands, were ruled out because their wealth is grossly distorted by overtly obvious tax policies that make them little more than tax havens. That left a list of 23 countries. Some truly international studies of every nation on the planet were also utilized in the areas of ecology, pollution and human development.
In short, the book consistently shows a trend that nations with greater social cohesion also perform better: Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, Netherlands and Japan lead the world in many of the factors analyzed. It also consistently showed the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Singapore and Portugal amongst the worst. Canada usually performed somewhere near the middle, in both relative income inequality and positive/negative outcomes, which, again, validates the authors' hypothesis linking income inequality to social cohesion.
Since the book’s publication further studies have produced overwhelming evidence that the wealthier a person is, the more likely they are to lie, cheat, and break the law. These studies were performed primarily in California and accounted for factors like as gender, age and religion. In relation to the Spirit Level's assertions it makes it even easier to see why there would be greater social cohesion in a society that has far fewer individuals lying, cheating and breaking the law.
This book succeeds in making the economic argument that a classless society is a more productive, satisfying, innovative and humane one to live in. It also shows that countries with greater income equality can also be world leaders in reducing their carbon footprint while still providing a rich quality of life. For those who have been preaching this message since the days of Marx and Engels it's good to have a comprehensive 21st century compilation of statistical evidence to validate our theoretical suppositions.
(Peter Kerek is the editor of the Interior Worker and president of the Kamloops and District Labour Council.)
(The above article is from the March 16-31, 2014, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)