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The Occupy Wall Street/99% movement, which is about to re-emerge from a winter break, dramatized the fact that the extremes of wealth and poverty in America are the worst by far in the industrialized world—a total reversal of our status after World War Two.
What is not so well appreciated, even now, is the overwhelming evidence that this gross income disparity has produced massive collateral damage to our health and well being as a nation. It turns out that many of our public health problems and social/psychological pathologies are strongly correlated with the degree of income inequality. It is no coincidence that, in international comparisons with other rich nations, we now rank very poorly in our quality of life measures—also in sharp contrast with previous generations.
As the distinguished public health researchers Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett conclude in their bestselling book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, “The truth is that both [our] broken society and the broken economy resulted from the growth of inequality." The authors document in detail that, across all of the rich countries and even in state-by-state comparisons among our 50 states, the degree of income inequality is highly correlated with such things as levels of social distrust, mental illness, teenage pregnancies, crime and incarceration rates, homicide rates, infant mortality rates, life expectancy, obesity, educational performance and school dropout rates, teenage pregnancy rates, and (not surprising) upward economic and social mobility, or the lack of it.
The differences are stark. The data amassed by Wilkinson and Pickett show that the most unequal societies (most notably the U.S.) have a six fold difference in the level of social distrust. Their mental illness rates are five times higher, and their citizens are also five times more likely to be imprisoned, six times more likely to be clinically obese and have a difference in murder rates that is off the charts. “Inequality seems to make countries socially dysfunctional across a wide range of outcomes,” they conclude.
Although all of these urgent social problems need to be addressed and dealt with in their own terms, it is clear that they are also symptoms of a deeper underlying cause. Indeed, even our economic safety net programs, like welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, and unemployment benefits, are only expensive band aids. To make any real change, we also need to address the root cause of the problem—our deep economic inequality and the spreading poverty and the decimation of our middle class. Wilkinson and Pickett rule out the usual suspects – ethnic differences, single parent families, bad schools or poor teachers, taxes, oppressive government regulations, etc. They describe the insidious effects of income inequalities at length.
Wilkinson and Pickett’s prescription for the problem is at once heartening and daunting. “What is most exciting about the picture we present is that it shows that reducing inequality would increase well being and quality of life for all of us.” Alas, that’s easier said than done.
In fact, the underlying cause of these extreme inequalities, and therefore the key to a solution, goes even deeper. The historic roots are ultimately ideological, and political. It is rooted in an ancient conflict between two competing views of humankind and society. On the one hand, there is the vision of society as an interdependent community with a common good and shared obligations—the so-called "organismic" model that traces back at least to Plato’s Republic. This has been opposed by an individualistic model of society (often associated with the ancient Sophists) as simply a “marketplace” where our relationships are defined by the pursuit of our own self interests, often in competition with others. Both of these ancient ideologies have some truth to them, but both have been used to justify different economic outcomes over the years. The Platonic model dominated during the New Deal era and beyond in the U.S. Now the Sophist/capitalist model is in the ascendancy.
But the debate about these two visions of society goes on. It is implicit in the ongoing conflict (and the policy differences) between conservatives and progressives (and between Republicans and Democrats), including their competing views of the role of government. In other words, any effort to mitigate our deep economic inequality will need to start by changing hearts and minds, and that’s no easy task. So, stay tuned to the historic political debate that is just getting started in this election year.
