A Book At Bedtime. Or Any Other Time ...

I've been reading 'The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Better For Everyone.' by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, and highly recommend it.

This book investigates the apparent modern conundrum of affluent nations whose citizens seemingly ‘have it all’ and yet record higher than ever levels of anxiety, stress and dissatisfaction – across all age and social groups – and are increasingly classified as being ‘fractured societies’; in our own case, we are “broken Britain”.  And yet there are similarly affluent countries where people are much happier and content with life.  What is the difference between the two groups; where does the disparity lie?  The theory put forward by Wilkinson and Pickett, supported by a wealth of evidence gathered from over thirty years of research, is that it lies in the gap between rich and poor.  In those affluent, developed nations with the largest gap between their wealthiest and their poorest citizens.  Those are the countries which have the highest rates of: teenage pregnancy; youth violence; violent crime; imprisonment; mental health issues; drug and alcohol abuse; obesity; end of life illnesses; single parenthood; suicide; etc. etc.  They are, virtually without exception, those societies where the income inequality gap is greatest: the USA, Australia, New Zealand (yes, that one really surprised me, too!), the UK, Portugal, Ireland, and much of the rest of Europe.

Conversely, those wealthy, developed countries with the flattest ‘wealth hierarchies’, where the economic equality gap is smallest, routinely record much higher levels of individuals’ happiness and satisfaction, and concomitantly lower levels of the social ills mentioned above: Sweden, Denmark, Japan.

It seems economists could have learned a thing or two from social and evolutionary psychologists about group behaviour, and also from women’s studies, as regards the alienation and sense of powerlessness amongst those at the lower levels in a hierarchy, and what the associated stress and anxiety does for physical and mental health and welfare.  But, and here perhaps is the most important point that the authors make, it is not just those at the lower economic levels in a society who benefit when the inequality gap is reduced: all levels of society benefit in many different ways. 

The root of all these evils is competitive consumption; economic aspiration at the cost of everything else; conspicuous and shallow status display in every area of life.  Ever increasing wealth and consumption does not make us happy or healthy as individuals, nor does it make for a happy and healthy society.

Whilst the modern-day Neros fiddle their expenses, avoid taxes and build their golden ‘iceberg’ houses with the profits from their gargantuan multi-nationals, we have consentingly allowed ourselves to be led down the path to our own destruction.  The cult of the individual and the growth of conspicuous status-based consumption, that have been so fervently promoted and adopted, are nothing more than the equivalent of the bread and circuses that kept the Roman masses acquiescent.  They are the smokescreen behind which the ultra-wealthy have operated, and we, the modern masses, have gladly used them as the means to fill the voids left by the fracturing of our traditional extended family groups and the increasing dearth of community relationships. We’ve lost sight of the fact that society is collaborative, not individualistic, and that operating collaboratively brings far more benefits, both individually and socially, than would be achieved otherwise.  We no longer operate for the ‘common wealth’ but rather for our own.

Wilkinson and Pickett contest that we’ve reached the point where further improvements in the quality of our lives are no longer dependent on greater economic growth, but on the growth of community: how we relate to one another.  I can’t see this as being a position that any right-thinking person could argue with: society is not made up of un-related and un-connected individuals, it is all of us.  Our survival strategy, as a species, was to choose to live in groups that enabled their members to benefit in ways that would not have been possible on an individual basis, and thus delivering both individual and social benefits.  We seem, in many cases, to have lost sight of that very basic fact, choosing to concentrate on merely that which benefits us as individuals.  This book makes the price we are paying for that very clear and plainly lays out the case as to why we need to change.

There is a level of criticism over the way the authors have chosen to display their data, though.  A great number of people seem to be exercised over the way they have simplified and displayed the data, labelling graph axes with 'low' and 'high', for example.  I'm not sure that they could have used absolute values given the number of countries in their study. It would have been very unweildly, surely?  And there could very well be wide-ranging differences between affluent countries in the absolute values for their top and bottom percentiles ofaverage income levels.  In fact, a very rough comparison of the data for tax levels in New Zealand and the UK for 2010: in New Zealand, the average earnings for the lowest ten percent of tax payers was (equivalent to) £11k pa, whilst in the UK, the same group had an average income of £8k.  Likewise, the top ten percent of tax payers had average incomes of £750k and £100k pa respectively.  Very rough figures but, hopefully, they illustrate the point.  

To be honest, I can’t help but feel that in nit-picking over Wilkinson and Pickett’s graphic representation of the data some people are being almost deliberately obtuse.  It seems to me to be more of a cop out than a genuine argument against the premise of the book:  It's saying: “It’s a good book and I like the idea behind it but I really can’t buy into it as a way forward because they haven’t used absolute values on their graph axes”.  The point is that it is the size of the gap between those in the richest ten per cent and poorest ten per cent in any of the given societies that is the issue, not what the absolute wealth values of those percentiles might be.

It's so simples even a Meerkat could understand it!  (< And I don't actually believe I have just typed that sentence!)

This is an excellent book that I wish I had discovered sooner (it was first published in 2009) and which I wish all politicians and would-be politicians could be compelled to read.

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 a(n excellent book that, admittedly a little belatedly, I would wish all politicians and would-be politicians could be compelled to read. 

I can’t help but feel that in nit-picking over Wilkinson and Pickett’s graphic representation of the data people are being almost deliberately obtuse.  I really don’t understand the issue.  It seems to me to be more of a cop out than a genuine argument against the premise of the book: “It’s a good book and I like the idea behind it but I really can’t buy into it as a way forward because they haven’t used absolute values on their graph axes”.  The point is that it is the size of the gap between those in the richest ten per cent and poorest ten per cent in any of the given societies that is the issue, not what the absolute wealth values of those percentiles might be. 

It’s so simples even a Meerkat could understand it!