Social Inequality: What a Miserable Lot We Are

[liveonearth]

http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html

This is the latest Ted Talk to cross my viewscreen.  It's Richard Wilkinson, speaking about the differences between societies with wide vs narrow differences between the highest and lowest income groups.  The finding is intuitive, but the specific data that he pulls together, and the way he makes sense of it, is very interesting.  At the end of brings it all together with some science about stress.  According to him, the stressors that cause the greatest increase in cortisol are "social evaluative threats" to one's esteem or status.  In other words, "people are sensitive to being looked down on".  In societies where there is greater equality, there is less stress, hence explaining the increased longevity, health and peace that is seen in those societies.  Of course, the US rates only second to Singapore in his scaling of wealth disparity, with Japan and Sweden at the other end of the scale.  Anyway, it's worth seeing for yourself, if you have the 15 minutes.

Comments

[ford-prefect42.livejournal.com]

The wealth disparity studies... aren't exactly correct.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/09/robert-lerman-responds-to-comments-on-socuial-security-medicare-and-inequality.html

The problem is thath they exempt all the social welfare programs, which in a real accounting do count toward the ability of the poor to acquire goods and services.

Also, the wealth gap in the US even according to the traditional accounting methods isn't as wide as many would like to think.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality

Sorting by r/p 10 and scroll down, you'll find the US fairly close to the middle.

[liveonearth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, not really surprising that his data was skewed in this way. Everybody's pushing something these days...

[ford-prefect42.livejournal.com]

Aren't they just.

I was just thinking though... It's not actual *disparity* that would have the physiological effects, it'd be *percieved* disparity. All the discussion of the disparity and the magnitude of it could easily *invoke* the physiological effects of a great disparity whether or not one existed. It's so hard to separate causes from effects sometimes.

[liveonearth.livejournal.com]

True enough. Perception is what matters most, and it is only faintly anchored in reality.

[bobby1933.livejournal.com]

Wilkinson acknowledged that he was looking only at the "developed" nations. Unfortunately traditional societies continue to have high rates of inequality (aristocrats vs. serfs and peasants) When the Wikipedia list is divided among "traditional" and "modern" states, the USA has the second highest Gini index (right behind Singapore, as Wilkinson noted),

[liveonearth.livejournal.com]

Ah. This makes good sense.

I really want to check out Singapore. I heard an interview with one of its leaders on NPR once and he was a fascinating character. Laughed out loud that America "permits" an "underclass" to exist. He had some good points.

[ford-prefect42.livejournal.com]

One could debate where they are drawing the line on what is a "traditional" nation and which are "modern". By that I mean that many of the countries listed as "traditional" have societal structures more similar to the western world, and many of the "modern" nations have very "traditional" structures. But that's neither here nor there. I get that he's drawing a line more between "western/wealthy countries" and "other". The line drawing seems arbitrary to me, but meh.

It also doesn't exactly address the annuity values of the social programming.

[bobby1933.livejournal.com]

Yes, income transfers do make a difference in Gini indices, and can make a big difference. (,6 before taxes and income transfers and medical insurance, ,45 after these are taken into account in the U.S,) But the big picture doesn't change all that much. A .45 is "Agrarian" unequal but it is closer to an agrarian than to welfare state number.

The presence of some "low Gini" states in Africa and in other poor countries creates the interesting possibility of doing the sort of analysis Wilkinson discussed on those poor countries, Does a poor country with a low Gini index have fewer social problems than a poor country with a high Gini index?

[ford-prefect42.livejournal.com]

Well, it *does* make some sense that the US would be closer to "agrarian" than "welfare state". After all, we've been rather resistant to becoming a "welfare state" :P

I would be interested in seeing the study you're mentioning, I suspect that in nations that have "real" poverty, like the low gini african nations, other factors will begin to dominate the equation and the gini impacts will be reduced in significance.

[bobby1933.livejournal.com]

Perhaps, but people seriously underrate the impact of inequality. This is the main reason why Wilkinson's talk is bound to cause controversy. Scientists claim to be objective, but the fact is most of them have pretty good incomes and they see the world from a well off person's perspective more than they see it from a scientific perspective. All kinds of inadequate data are accepted as long they don't question our basic assumptions. I know that is going to sound like radical bullshit, but i will stand by it. Because we are a conservative country, radicals are forced to confront their biases and compensate for them far more often than conservatives are. A sloppy study will convince us to believe what we already believe than an excellent study will convince us of something different. Yes, i have always believed in equality, but my beliefs were challenged in my home, in church, in grade school, by my peers, and in high school. In college i discovered that there ways by which one could supposedly set his or her biases to one side while investigating reality. It was a sad discovery that most trained people outside of the natural sciences still could not do that. I recognize that my own biases keep me from seeing what really is, but i think i am more aware of that than most people and that radicals, in general, are more aware of it than conservatives, in general. IMPPO

[ford-prefect42.livejournal.com]

I am profoundly skeptical of the introspection of the radical. In fact, I frankly dibeliee it. For a wide variety of reasons.

I don't feel like getting into the debate that this is heading toward in this forum. Suffice to say that I do not consider inequality to be a particularly big deal in the scheme of things, at least compared to real problems like sytematic oppression, suffocating poverty, and outright genocide. So I oppose socialism, because it leads to one of those as day leads to night. You disagree. I can live with that.

[bobby1933.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that sounds fair. And those are certainly things worth eliminating.

[liveonearth.livejournal.com]

=-] You rock.

[liveonearth.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised you went as far along into this discussion as you did. Congrats to both of you for remaining civil though you approach this question from opposite ends of the thought universe!