Reddit mentions of The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger

I appreciated this post, and I'm enjoying reading the arguments from various viewpoints, but there's something I'd like to add that I think is maybe the most important point of them all:

Rejection of Results-based Policy Decisions

I've had many discussions with American Libertarians, and something I always see them do is frame their arguments like so:

Government Action X is bad because of Distasteful Side-Effect Y. Instead, things should be like Fantasy Scenario Z.

There are several problems with the way this argument is reasoned:

• When chastising the evils of X and Y, the alternative is not properly considered. Example: "taxation is theft- the government robs you at gunpoint". Ok, what does a society without taxation look like? No law is enforceable in such a system. Rules require resources in order for them to be enforced. Would this be better, or worse than what we've got now?
  
  
• Fantasy Scenario Z relies on the assumption that some essential piece of human nature magically changes. Example: "Social services are unnecessary because voluntary charity will be sufficient to meet the needs of the poor"- No, we aren't that generous, especially given the current economic circumstances.
  
  
• The entire argument seems to presume that we would be engaging in a bold new experiment that is destined to produce a more ideal society, when in reality, the world has already been a rich testing ground, and people have been keeping track of what happened. We already have mountains of data, and can actually know what sorts of policies produce what sorts of results. For example, it turns out that if you want a happier, healthier, less criminal, and more educated population, you need to actively install policies that steer the society towards greater equality of wealth. Here's a book about analyzing that data.
  
  I think it really boils down to the fact that we have empirical evidence of policy effects, but Libertarians tend to reject these conclusions for some reason that I don't fully understand. I do grasp that there's a streak of idealism involved there, but I think it's a big mistake to let such idealism cause advocacy for policy that is destined to produce bad results. Even worse, such belief that people will behave in a way that evidence shows they won't behave is bound to be exploited by unscrupulous entities every single time. The bad guys win. Fuck that.

Check out Timothy Noah's Slate series about the causes of wealth inequity.


Another awful aspect of wealth inequity is that for the past few decades, as business profits have increased greatly, average wages have stagnated. That is against the traditional American view of economic fairness, if that means anything to anyone. Workers' wages are supposed to reflect productivity gains, are they not?

That, and it decreases the entire society's quality of life: link

Also, here's another great source for wealth inequity, if this topic interests you. It gives a breakdown of US wealth distribution, net wealth distribution, wealth across racial lines, and more.

By every measure social democracies, with a higher level of wealth redistribution and lower levels of inequality do better than the US. That is just one metric, you can find hundreds of others in this book. Societies which are more equal have better qualities of life for both the lowest and the highest.

I read some article, and of course I cannot find it now, that the rate of death during childbirth in the US is on par with some country like Belarus. Can you really call that a success?

I really hate these articles. The child does not make you less happy, our screwed up society makes you less happy.

Hundreds of years ago, before the industrial age, people worked less than we do now. They worked 'sun up to sun down' only during the harvest or planting times. A farmer also saw his kids for lunch in his own home, and as the kids got to be a bit older, he worked with them on that farm. The mother saw the kids during the day.

Now parents feel guilty that their kids are raised by others, then feel even more guilty when they are torn between wanting time to themselves at night, vs spending time with the kids, which they know is important. It''s also important to have time to yourself, but this is hard with a 1 hour commute to work every day.

Then of course the media has you scared shitless than someone will steal your kid, so taking your kid to a park is stressful (if you believe the media).

And the coup de grace? A kid is a financial burden, unlike they were hundreds of years ago when kids wore hand me down clothes (in today's rat race, this gets you a lot of derision.) and helped do chores on your farm. Today a child is very expensive, which pushes you, at least temporarily, down the financial status ladder. And that status apparently is pretty important, causing us lots of stress. (this book explains it in detail)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies/dp/1608190366

Kids are great. Society sucks.

For those really interested, get his book "The Spirit Level" on this topic.

Luck is automatically equalized. That's the whole point of randomness.

Also, education, in countries where they have functioning public education systems and free college for everyone who wants/qualifies for it, that sort of thing, is not simply acquired through wealth. Because that's the whole point of their entire welfare state, it's structured to increase equality, instead of reduce it.

Read up on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient , http://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies-Stronger/dp/1608190366 , etc.

A recent paper in the American Journal of Public Health entitled “Estimated Deaths Attributable to Social Factors in the United States“ tries to examine a link between social factors (such as inequality, racism, poverty) and mortality (i.e. death). It’s a meta-analysis of 47 prior studies, and the results,
>“…approximately 245000 deaths in the United States in 2000 were attributable to low education, 176000 to racial segregation, 162000 to low social support, 133000 to individual-level poverty, 119000 to income inequality, and 39000 to area-level poverty … The estimated number of deaths attributable to social factors in the United States is comparable to the number attributed to pathophysiological and behavioral causes.”

If you don't want to read the paper, the New York Times has coverage here. The upshot of this study is well stated by the author in his New York Times interview. I’ll simply quote him,
>“In some ways the question is not ‘Why should we think of poverty as a cause of death?’ but rather ‘Why should we not think of poverty as a cause of death?’ If you say that 193,000 deaths are due to heart attack, then heart attack matters. If you say 300,000 deaths are due to obesity, then obesity matters. Well, if 291,000 deaths are due to poverty and income inequality, then those things matter too.”

A lot of scientists and researchers in the United States have a tendency to overlook social factors (poverty, discrimination, barriers to access) when considering negative health outcomes (thinking mainly of personal choices such as smoking and exercise, and genetics), but the evidence is mounting that these factors are not just at least as significant, but actually more significant than the traditional individual risk factors (smoking, seat belt use, etc). About half of any person's health is already programmed by the time they are 2-years-old, and social factors (poverty, racism, mom's maternity experience -- whether she was working two fulltime jobs as a single expectant mom, etc -- are hugely significant).

Having lived in West Africa, I can tell you there is definitely a lot of poverty there. Many days I was without running water or electricity. I can also tell you that there is a lot of poverty here in the US. A well known Harvard researcher famously published a study that demonstrated that black men in our nation's capitol had shorter life expectancies than their counterparts in Ghana; this seems pretty fucked up, since I've lived in Ghana (see my aforementioned comment about lack of running water and electricity). I loved my time in Ghana, but it makes me ashamed that the health outcomes would be worse for our own citizens in a country that is many decades ahead of Ghana with respect to infrastructure. A New England Journal of Medicine study found that black men in Harlem have a shorter life expectancy than their counterparts in Bangladesh, again a scandalously tragic finding, since Bangladesh is quite poor.

So, in summary, although poverty and inequality are the root of much of the world's health problems, and while Africa in general does have a lot of both -- I can assure you of two things: we have plenty of poverty and inequality within the United States, and as a result, we have very poor health outcomes (50th in the world for life expectancy, 45th in the world for infant mortality, etc).

Sorry for such a long post -- I made this account a while back to occasionally post something about structural violence (the academic term that refers to the cause of these sort of deaths; deaths that occur when there is no person or direct behavioral violence to blame), and although I know this post will get lost in the shuffle, it was about time I actually wrote something meaningful here. If you are curious about other social factors and poor health outcomes in the US, there is a good chunk of digestible infographics here. If you like data and graphs, this is a fabulously well researched book that addresses a lot of important topics (or for a bit of the data from the book, see this TED talk.

I'd love our local rural library to be able to have a book called The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger which can be gotten for about $7 plus shipping from the independent sellers (no free shipping), or the paperback version is $12 from Amazon (free shipping). It's been highly recommended for folks interested in creating a more equal society, which I hope at least some of the more politically active folks around here do!

Oh, and you can see a little about our library at http://palermolibrary.wordpress.com/

Thanks!

"Spirit Level Films"... so it's these guys?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies/dp/1608190366

Relevent Book. Haven't finished the read, but basically makes the point that societies are better off (people healthier, happier, less crime, etc) when people are more equal (income equality).