Richard Wilkinson, a co-author of The Spirit Level, presents one of the Ted Talks on income inequality and how selfishness and greed hurt everyone, poor and rich alike.
We feel instinctively that societies with huge income gaps are somehow going wrong. Richard Wilkinson charts the hard data on economic inequality, and shows what gets worse when rich and poor are too far apart: real effects on health, lifespan, even such basic values as trust.
Watch it. (17 mins) it’s worth it.
Interesting video, and worth watching.
I wonder though Clare, will you now be petitioning to have MPs salaries frozen for an extended period of time, or reduced? Leadership from this top down.
Leadership from the top down…I hope Port of Auckland executives remember to bust down their own pay and conditions by 30% in that case.
Watching this video, reflecting on the %~@£ going in in my homeland I feel a mixture of sadness tinged with anger for the utter indifference of over 50% of my countrymen to this reality…
… I am just glad to be living in Japan.
Then watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VshDTFPirhE
Summary: The Spirit Level is debunked. It exhibits selection bias not only in the countries it looks at, but also the attributes it measures. The data is outright wrong–e.g. Japan is the most equal country they consider according to their data, but anyone who has some passing familiarity with Japan knows that is bollocks. The statistical significance relies on one data point—the US. And other, better explanations are not considered.
Hi Thomas,
I live in Japan and am married to a Japanese national, so I guess I have a “passing familiarity” with it.
Although I’m not going to throw it up as a utopia, for the vast majority of Japanese people it is a very egalitarian society. Although it does have hierarchies established along age and gender lines, the people surrounding me on my commuter express for Shibuya have a lot more respect for the dignity of their fellow human beings than you will EVER see in New Zealand.
Apologies for the double post. Hit done by accident the first time!
Hi Thomas,
I live in Japan and am married to a Japanese national, so I guess I have a “passing familiarity” with it.
Although I’m not going to throw it up as a utopia, for the vast majority of Japanese people it is a very egalitarian society. Although it does have hierarchies established along age and gender lines, the people surrounding me on my commuter express for Shibuya have a lot more respect for the dignity of their fellow human beings than you will EVER see in New Zealand.
Watching the talk under the warmth of the kotatsu last night, I found myself nodding my head repeatedly, especially during his apt comparison of Japan and Sweden. It is true that tax is not high here, but people CHOOSE not to establish huge wage gaps (with the exception of the MNC finance types) because they don’t want to be seen as having huge material advantage over their fellow human beings.
So, in the words of John Pilger: just read… read.
Japan’s got a wee problem though. It just posted its first trade deficit in 31 years. And with a shrinking and aging population and a fiscal imbalance where 49% of every tax dollar is used to service debt, the country needs to take urgent action before another major problem occurs.
The thesis of the spirit level is that hierarchies are bad. And, as you observe, Japan is hierarchical.
Yes. I’ve spent some time in Japan and it’s a great country with great people. But the spirit level claims that it is the most equal country they have cherry picked. And I don’t believe that.
There is some dispute about the data and causes. Work by Toshiaki Tachibanaki, an economics professor at Kyoto University, puts Japan behind only the United States, Britain and Italy in income inequality among the big rich economies.
But enough about Japan. There are plenty of other gaping holes in the spirit level, such as the authors never explaining why they discarded the countries that don’t fit their hypothesis.
For the record, I support a lot of what is being advocated here. However, I believe that pseudoscientific frauds like Richard Wilkinson damage the cause of social justice by shifting the focus from helping to poor to hating the rich, which achieves nothing.
Nah the Spirit Level is based on top notch science. Is the science perfect – no. But the message is clear – vastly unequal societies i.e. banana or feudal republics are very bad for most. And even in different regions or cities in the same country, the differences are noticeable.
The IMF and even our own Treasury has come around to accepting that inequality is not good for economic growth let alone positive social outcomes.
But then creation science and greenhouse induced climate change denialists survive. So why not those who think debating some of the studies protrayed in one book is somehow of itself proof that the only case for the proposition is contained within it.
Of course that’s as convincing as critiquing a film by Al Gore to disprove the science behind the greenhouse effect on climate.
Colonial Viper:
Watch the video. The criticism of the method is valid even if you like and believe the conclusion.
I don’t believe the conclusion, not just because of the lack of good evidence, but also because I don’t believe that “keeping up with the Joneses” causes all these terrible social outcomes from crime to infant mortality.
http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/resources/other/response-to-questions
Basically Thomas, the link you put forward to ‘debunk’ The Spirit Level is wrong.
The authors of the Spirit Level deny cherry picking examples. I’m well aware of that. But, until they explain how they chose their examples, I don’t believe them. I mean what’s so hard about explaining why you chose the countries you did?
Why does the spirit level only consider 23 countries? What about South Korea? And all of eastern europe, the former USSR, and latin america is omitted for no apparent reason — these are still large and wealthy countries. The Spirit Level said they looked at the top 50 countries and discarded based on data availability and population, but there is no reason to discard the majority of these countries, as data is available and they are reasonably sized.
I had a look at Wilkinson and Pickett’s tl;dr response to Saunders on their website. They still do not explain how they chose their examples and data. The entire response seems to be either attempting to impress the reader with meaningless jargon or nit-picking small details in Saunders’ heavy blows.
Wow the Righties are really struggling with the Spirit Level’s message. Parents who can’t afford to send their kids to the top private schools fully fed and clothed, their children don’t do as well in the long term as parents who can do all those things.
Shock horror, please wake up Righties.
Cherry picking is rife in research so it would be no surprise to me if that is what has been done in Spirit Level. Afterall tobacco industry has cherry picked, medical and pharamceutical industries cherry pick and so on. No research, or very little is entirely objective not the least because the researcher is subjective in choosing what to research and how to narrow or widen it.
Empirical data is great and incredibly useful but anecdotal, while dismissed by quantitative researchers does, in my opinion have a place.
research is crucial but it’s not always a golden “period” point to end an argument
“Missing data is a serious problem in clinical research. It distorts the scientific record, so that clinical decisions cannot be based on the best evidence.
Today the BMJ publishes several papers that examine the extent, causes, and consequences of unpublished evidence. They confirm that a large proportion of evidence from human trials is unreported, and much of what is reported is done so inadequately.”
http://group.bmj.com/group/media/latest-news/missing-trial-data-threatens-the-integrity-of-medicine
http://www.lymeneteurope.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3595
Clare Curran, Thank you for posting this thread. Information is pivotal to democracy.
I consider it a shame that this subject’s thread has been hijacked by a discussion as to whether the spirit level’s process of information gathering has merit or not. Such information, presented in an easy to understand format is helpful, yet not necessary. We have the capacity to prove for ourselves that the growing gap in wealth is harmful to all. Three examples:
1. If more people are getting lower wages, this is unhelpful to business owners because it means less people with disposable income to support their businesses.
2. If the minimum wage causes people to not be able to make ends meet, this raises costs of welfare.
And a third more exaggerated example:
3. In a climate of job losses, people are unable to meet previously agreed upon mortgage payments, this either raises welfare costs or conversely we apply austerity to welfare, then we get more homeless people. If laws disallow people to camp on public land, these people end up in jail. Jailbirds cost the taxpayer approx $50 000 a year as opposed to an unemployed person approx $12 000, so in response to this cost we privatize prisons and end up with the phenomenon facing some American state where judges get underhand payments by privatized prison interests to ‘encourage’ more people being thrown into jail, thus we lose (even more) fairness in legal proceedings. (I acknowledge this is an extreme example).
How about we stop burying our heads in the sand by indulging in distracting arguments and address the real issues, such as the failure of our governments worldwide to address disparity in earnings and thereby avoid the dysfunctional ‘patch up’ regulations that are ignoring the real problems we are facing, thereby causing more?
Lets have a debate about disparity of incomes by all means but what a pity that “The Spirit Level” has come back into this discussion given the way it has been widely rubbished by social scientists including several from the left. (try a Google for “The Spirit Level” + “criticism”) There was much talk about the text when it first hit the bookshops and the Greens tried to make much of Wilkinson and Pickett’s arguments at the time but I can’t recall the text being featured by any of our political parties during the 2011 election campaign. Most of us have put this text in the bin, Clare, and moved on.
The Spirit Level is an excellent synopsis of the state of the art; I wish the Righties would stop running scared from it. Through a mix of social and economic disadvantages, children who are worse off do consistently worse off in life. And that is the society that National and the Right Wing neolibs are building for NZ today.
It’s almost as if some people commenting on here seem to want more inequality and think it’s a good thing. Putting the Spirit Level aside, surely nobody, even far right ideologists, can produce a sensible and valid argument that inequality is not a bad thing either socially or economically speaking?
Mikes76 – it’s because inequality is the gaping wound in the achilles heel of capitalism. The money is supposed to trickle down, but it’s not, it’s failing and western civilization is on the verge of implosion because of it. But don’t worry, be relaxed, have a blue sky attitude and build a brighter future!
I’m sorry Mikes76says, I can only come up with the problems it causes, like less social mobility, therefore more poverty traps, also creating some of the population being very removed from what others are experiencing creating less cohesion in society and causing some members of society to, out of lacking understanding of the difficulties being created, support the very policies that will make it harder for people in tricky circumstances…kind of like what happened last year with the election…perhaps media, being well paid, won’t empathize with those in difficulty, thereby leaving people uninformed as to how some are suffering.
It would certainly be intriguing to hear some arguments promoting inequality; or is this something we all agree on?
“But don’t worry, be relaxed, have a blue sky attitude and build a brighter future!”
Sorry, brighter futures are currently only ‘aspirational’.
Please try again later.
Touche al1ens
I’d be quite happy to provide you with an argument in favour of inequality.
I wrote out a long post, but then decided it was too long for a comment. Therefore I posted it at my blog, which you can find by clicking on my name.
In short, inequality is what drives capitalism and what provides something to aspire towards, a reason for hard work.
@Joel
A shame your post in completely unsupported opinion and baseless, broad brush supposition rather than factual analysis. I was looking forward to reading something genuinely contrarian.
Malthusian wealthy=smart,worthy,hard worker vs poor=stupid,unworthy,lazy ‘reasoning’ doesn’t really cut it these days I’m afraid if you want to be taken seriously. It reads like an Ayn Rand cut-and-paste.
A for moxie, D for execution I’m afraid.
@al1ens – almost forgot about being aspirational!
@Joel – I think it’s a ____ blog post. Although I don’t want to give it airtime (it deserves none), your assertion that “[intelligent people] become wealthy, while others who are less intelligent, persistent and hard-working do not, inequality develops.” is a classic example of how ignorant some NZers have become.
How old are you? Do you ever leave the house and, like, meet people? Your attitude smacks of a spoilt brat with no appreciation of the realities of life. Go out and meet some poor people (you will not have to go too far) and get some ____ing education.
A reason for hard work? LOL Why work harder when the more you work, the more your income goes down?
Why work harder when the owner class in society can sit back and let rental income, dividend income and investment asset appreciation do every thing for them?
Why work harder when everyone can see that the proportion of GDP going to workers salaries and wages is falling, meaning that every worker has to work harder for a diminishing share of the pie?
Bottom line is that no executive should earn more than 25x what his lowest paid worker earns. CEOs want a pay rise? They have to make sure that their lowest paid workers are looked after too.
Not the current capitalist system – screw worker pay down, offshore and casualise worker jobs, and award yourself big bonus pay for a job well done. Perverse capitalism. BTW real capitalism doesn’t even exist any more, today its just crony cartel capitalism.
That fallaciously assumes that there is no incentive for hard work a in society with equality of opportunity. It also incorrectly assumes that hard work necessarily will result in financial success. In our unequal society hard work may result in financial success, or it may result in being considered a hard worker at a $13 an hour job, where you are unable to ever afford to have a family.
In a more equal society, people who work hard are more likely have enough to support themselves and their family. As such, social democracy provides better incentive for hard work for most of the population than free market capitalism does. What free market capitalist proponents are selling as ’something to aspire towards’ is totally unobtainable for the vast majority of people.
To put this in perspective, we know that the wealth of the average American is higher than ours.
But did you know the average price of a home there is well under $200,000 (under $180,000). Converting that to our currency, it’s only NZ$225,000 for their average home.
And half of employed Americans earn less than $26,000. Less than our minimum wage (not sure how many are part-timers or casuals).
The disparity in that economy is vast.
Joel at least you didnt suggest slavery is good because it makes those enslaved motivated to escape its chains.
Joel,
Thanks for your reply, unfortunately, due to my less than precise wording and assumption that the thread’s subject would be taken into consideration, you have answered the arguments for a general disparity in income, yet haven’t addressed the specific “huge income gaps” that are developing in many (all?) developed nations.
As others have pointed out, when people are working and still unable to meet their costs sufficiently I think you will find that your arguments espousing the merits of incentive is more effectively applied to SUPPORT ensuring this wealth disparity doesn’t continue to widen and is ineffective for the argument to justify the continuance of this growing gap.
I, personally, believe absolutely equal rates of return for everyone is unachievable, and accept some of the arguments for not aiming at that; however I believe there are serious disadvantages when the gap between our highest earners and lowest is extensive and growing. I wanted to know whether anyone saw advantage in this phenomenon (not simply differences in income; LARGE differences).
I believe this argument would have to involve justifying why it is advantageous that some percentage of our society are in a ‘working poor’ situation and could also aim at addressing the benefits to society of having this percentage of working poor living in amongst us when they can’t afford to make ends meet without government support while our prices and tax breaks are aimed at those who are earning a huge amount more. In a cost benefit type way the argument would have to involve addressing the growing lists of negative consequences to this phenomenon and prove that the positive consequences out-weighed them.
I have no problem with some earning more than others, with all sincerity I am happy for them; where I feel a great deal of concern is with regards to the EXTENT of wealth disparity that is evident and growing within our and many developed countries and was wondering whether anyone saw advantages in this trend?
SJW
I think you would be harder pressed to find many who see advantage in this trend, apart form those who benefit directly from it (i.e. the already extremely wealthy). Even then I suspect, most of them wouldn’t think about it consciously. To actively seek advantage and hope to perpetuate the trend would be somewhat sociopathic and eventually, counter-productive.