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]

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!