This was passed along by the indefatigable
Carolyn Kay from the
Guardian Unlimited.
Needless to say I think this is very important, especially in light of my previous comment [Updated: referenced comment is no longer available on DailyKos - talked about the HBR article Wealth Happens discussed here] regarding the inexorable increase in inequality stemming from 30 years of GOP tax policy.
The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier
by Richard G Wilkinson
Does inequality really matter? The poor have what their grandparents would think unimaginable luxuries - TVs, telephones and washing machines. So why should it matter to them if in some unseen stratosphere the gated kleptocrats on company boards award themselves staggering sums of money? Does anyone really mind the gap?
More below the fold...
That is a reasonable question and it niggles away at those on the left, too. Equality has gone out of fashion. Social justice under Labour means heaving the poorest over the poverty threshold and lifting the life chances of children from lower social classes. Tony Blair said early on that he was not bothered about wealth, only about abolishing poverty. Talk of inequality sounds like the old politics of envy. Equality of opportunity, yes, but equality for its own sake, why?...
Here is the answer. Richard Wilkinson is a professor of social epidemiology, an expert in public health. From that vantage point he sees the world in terms of its physical and psychological wellbeing, surveying great sweeps of health statistics through sociological eyes. He has assembled a mountain of irrefutable evidence from all over the world showing the damage done by extreme inequality. However rich a country is, it will still be more dysfunctional, violent, sick and sad if the gap between social classes grows too wide. Poorer countries with fairer wealth distribution are healthier and happier than richer, more unequal nations...
Social status and respect matter beyond anything, and the psychological damage done by being at the bottom is crippling...
Homicide rates (and other crimes) track a country's level of inequality, not its overall wealth. The fairest countries have the highest levels of trust and social capital. The American states that have the more equal income distribution also have most social trust: New Hampshire, the most equal, is least likely to agree that "most people would try to take advantage of you if they got the chance".
Wilkinson's message is that social environment can be more toxic than any pollutant. Low status and lack of control over one's life is a destroyer of human health and happiness. The wealth gap causes few to vote or participate in anything in a world of fear, conflict and hostility.
It is not primarily five-a-day fruit and veg or obesity that need targeting, but social injustice itself...
This is a book that puts the numbers to a psychological truth: inequality is the real enemy.