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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: Inequality or poverty?
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Lucia
Looking for light
# 15201
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Posted
I'm currently reading The Spirit Level - Why equality is better for everyone by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.
The analysis here is that it's not poverty as such that causes a plethora of social and health problems in society in the richest developed nations of the world but high levels of inequality within them. But I still can't decide if I'm convinced by their arguement that it's not the poverty itself that is the problem. Ok, so societies which are more equal have less of these problems, but surely they are more equal because the people at the bottom end of the scale are better off, ie less poverty. I can't see how the rich being less rich will reduce the problems in itself unless the poor are actually better off as well as a result.
So am I missing something here? It seems that they are arguing that a major issue is psycho-social problems caused by inequality that lead to many of the other effects being reported. It's certainly a very interesting theory but I suspect that whether you buy into it will depend on your political views. That certainly seems to be born out by the reviews I read of the book ie Guardian reviewer liked it, Daily Telegraph reviewer did not!
I'm finding it an interesting read even though I'm not a natural socialist by nature. Indeed when it comes to politics I often tend to feel "a plague on both your houses" about political parties and end up choosing to vote for who I object the least too! Sadly the realities of human nature often tend to stuff up good intentions by members on all sides.
Anyway, I just wondered if anyone else here had read it and what they thought about the poverty vs inequality analysis of the root of the problem.
If no one else has read it, this will be a very short thread...
[ 05. January 2015, 23:40: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
Posts: 1075 | From: Nigh golden stone and spires | Registered: Oct 2009
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anteater
Ship's pest-controller
# 11435
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Posted
I found it rather boring to read, and never finished it. Too many tables of statistics which I always view with suspicion.
Maybe you're blessed with a complete absence of the sin of envy and resulting resentment. I'm not.
So to me it is just common sense that if load of bling is being rubbed in your face, with people making off with huge amounts of money, often (though obviously not always) for no good reason, you feel a tad p'd off.
You I would say equality is a good thing. However, the problem is that it is incompatible with freedom, unless everyone suddenyl becomes Good, and getting the balance right is a problem.
[ 08. September 2011, 07:40: Message edited by: anteater ]
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Schnuffle schnuffle.
Posts: 2538 | From: UK | Registered: May 2006
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
I didn't read the book, but I think it's a bit of both. Poverty is a bad thing of course, but inequality can lead to a load of specific problems.
In a very unequal society, politics tend to be controlled by the rich, and the poor have much more problems in making themselves heard. So for example, in these societies, poor people will have less access to basic social services. And it's much easier for business owners to trash workers' rights. Or the environment where the poor live gets destroyed more easily.
And inequality inevitably leads to more criminality and violence. Brazil and South-Africa are big examples of that. Even the poor who are innocent will suffer from this.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
Haven't read it, but I thought part of the argument was that in highly unequal societies even the rich are at a disadvantage. For instance, that in the USA infant mortality rates for the rich are higher than in more equal countries, such as Scandinavia.
I think that to a large extent, poverty is inequality. In the end all you can buy with your money is other people's time (sometimes expressed in goods, sometimes in rights, sometimes in services). If you are relatively poor you are absolutely poor.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
quote:
And inequality inevitably leads to more criminality and violence. Brazil and South-Africa are big examples of that. Even the poor who are innocent will suffer from this
That's the big issue in the UK inner-city context with which I am familiar. Hardcore poverty (starving in the street, dying of trivial illnesses, no clean water) has been dealt with, and it's neighbour-on-neighbour crime which really f*cks up peoples' lives. I'd choose 'only basic physical needs met, in company with a solid cooperating local society' over 'status quo, robbing each other wherever we can' any time - but that option has been rare in my UK experience. Older readers (I'm 40 - UK industry was largely 10 years dead before I entered work) might like to disabuse me of the romantic notions of working-class solidarity to which my Methodist roots pre-dispose me?
The church has sometimes played a role in attempting to band together the 'innocent poor' and build solidarity, but we're shrinking and increasingly old, marginalised and diverted by collapsing buildings, in the inner city. We're also speaking into a hugely multi-racial context which creates many more barriers which we don't know how to overcome (central Manchester). Then again, it feels as if we've a very limited impact with the white poor, also (central Salford)...
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
Posts: 1596 | Registered: Oct 2010
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
There's a plausible bit of pop psychology that claims that depression is at least partly a natural response to one's percieved position in some sort of "pecking order" or social hierarchy. So that people who frequently come across others who seem to outcompete them in the struggle to achieve social position (which can be represented by material wealth) are more likely to be depressed. The original idea was based on seeing how some other primate species behave in dominance/submission interactions. I think Oliver James might be keen on it.
So if that was true you would expect mental disorders to increase among people routinely exposed to others much richer or sexier or more successful or more popular or more famous than themselves.
As with nearly all assertions about neurology and personality its not really based on rigorous science.
Also with nearly all assertions about neurology and personality its a win-win because people on the top of the heap often fear (or realise) that they don't deserve it and so feel anxious or depressed!
But you never know, it might be true.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
Maybe you're blessed with a complete absence of the sin of envy and resulting resentment. I'm not.
The usual solution to sin centers around reforming the sinner, doesn't it? So if envy and resentment are causing problems the solution is to reform those who are feeling envious and resentful, not the ones who are the objects of their envy and resentment.
To suggest that the way to solve the problem of people's sinful economic envy is to give them more wealth is like suggesting that the solution to my sinful lusting after a work colleague is for her to sleep with me!
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
So if that was true you would expect mental disorders to increase among people routinely exposed to others much richer or sexier or more successful or more popular or more famous than themselves.
The problem there is obvious. Even if everybody was exactly equal in terms of wealth, the pecking order would still exist. Wealth would just cease to be one of the determining factors.
It follows that reducing wealth inequality may not solve the problems at all.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
quote:
It follows that reducing wealth inequality may not solve the problems at all.
I reckon the poor potential criminal needs to feel like he's got something to lose...
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
Posts: 1596 | Registered: Oct 2010
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
I do get somewhat angry at accusations from the well off about those "below" them using the "politics of envy".
If you look at the stories of the old woman in the vinegar bottle, or the fisherman's wife, at the beginning, in their poverty, they are recognised as needy, and not in error in expressing their need. But once settled in a sustainable situation, they persist in wanting more than they need, and that is envy.
I cannot accept that it is a sin for someone who has to choose between heating or eating, or who is going without proper meals in order to feed their children to wish that they had enough not to have to do that; to recognise that there are those with far more money than anyone normal could imagine what to spend it on in a decade, and wonder why they are having to scrape to keep the wolf from the door. I don't remember Jesus accusing Lazarus of envying Dives.
There is a tendency in politics to re-name things to divert attention from wrongs in society, or worse, to apply new meanings to old good words. So when someone points out that death comes sooner to the poor than to the rich, the poor are labelled as envious, instead of someone trying to equalise the situation.
What about the politics of "superbia", "avaricia", and "gula"? Don't hear those cast about as aspersions on those opposing taxing the rich.
Penny
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Equality and equity, anyone? A level playing field for opportunity i.e. getting away from racism, sexism, classism in education, training, work etc, is an excellent equity principle, whether applied at local, national or global level. And we're a long way away from seeing it applied universally at all of those levels.
But even if that eventually happens, it wouldn't guarantee equality of outcome, would it? People may mess up opportunity, or may not have the talent, or the capacity for hard work, to enable the realisation of their hopes and dreams. An outcome of poverty is not always someone else's fault.
Mind you, I haven't read the book, so I don't know if that issue is covered within it.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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aumbry
Shipmate
# 436
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
I think that to a large extent, poverty is inequality. In the end all you can buy with your money is other people's time (sometimes expressed in goods, sometimes in rights, sometimes in services). If you are relatively poor you are absolutely poor. [/QB]
On that definition it would always be impossible to eradicate poverty. In Bavaria, which IMHO is the most successful part of Europe, if not the world, I doubt whether many people would consider themselves to be living in poverty even if the Quandt Family are a hundred thousand times richer than they are.It is an efficient state which provides a good standard of living through the industriousness of its people. They would laugh at the view expressed above.
Posts: 3869 | From: Quedlinburg | Registered: Jun 2001
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
And inequality inevitably leads to more criminality and violence. Brazil and South-Africa are big examples of that.
While living in West Africa, where people are more or less equal, I visited South Africa for several months. I was stunned by both the violence and the poverty. Togo was certainly poor, but violent crime was almost non-existent and few people were much better off than anyone else.
I struggled to figure out why South Africa was so strikingly different. Inequality was an obvious answer, along with the social disorganization caused by the economic situation, an enormous amount of dislocation, and the evils of apartheid.
More interesting to me in the long run, though, was why the people in my village of mud houses seemed so content. The area was a paradise, there was plenty of food, the social situation was mostly well-organized, the population was homogenous, and everyone's income was almost the same, that is, very low. I guess that explained it.
I would have been happy to live there permanently, I think. But I also noticed that as I returned to visit over and over again in later years it seemed increasingly less idylic.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
I've had a look at unemployment and picked up a few other stats about Bavaria.
1. Above average income.
2. Well below average unemployment, including that for young people.
3. Strong inward migration (from all over, including elsewhere in Germany)
4. No minimum wage
It's worth noting that Germany was the first in the world to have mandatory health insurance, with contributions from the employees, employers and state subsidies. Higher paid workers can opt out. Education is pretty good. Public transport, both within and between cities, is way better than Britain's or America's, to name but two.
When you've got that package, even with income inequality, you are unlikely to get much poverty.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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chris stiles
Shipmate
# 12641
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
I think that to a large extent, poverty is inequality. In the end all you can buy with your money is other people's time (sometimes expressed in goods, sometimes in rights, sometimes in services). If you are relatively poor you are absolutely poor.
On that definition it would always be impossible to eradicate poverty.
[/qb]
It would be if relatively poverty was being talked about in isolation - in this case it's being considered alongside inequality.
quote:
In Bavaria, which IMHO is the most successful part of Europe, if not the world, I doubt whether many people would consider themselves to be living in poverty even if the Quandt Family are a hundred thousand times richer than they are.
The Gini-coffefficient isn't as subject single outliers as you seem to suggest above. The fact is that Germany (even considering the rust-belts in the former FDR) is a lot more equal a society than either the UK or the US by any measure.
quote:
They would laugh at the view expressed above.
Yes, some Germans have a 'let them eat cake' mentality towards the less privileged - though they never seem to take into account the economic advantages Germany has had over the past few centuries, overplaying thoughts of their own virtue. In many ways the current Euro crisis is a result of blowback caused by this attitude.
Posts: 4035 | From: Berkshire | Registered: May 2007
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irish_lord99
Shipmate
# 16250
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Posted
I keep hearing with more frequency and more openness the claim that government is in the pocket of big-business (at least, the US government).
I know there's people in the lower class that dream of becoming rich the easy way: suing McDonald's, winning the lottery, or even crime. But the truth is that most Americans I know want to work their way to success; they don't necessarily want it given to them.
What most of us do want, however, is an equal seat at the table when it comes to how the country is run and who gets elected. The fact that having money so easily brings inequality in this regard is frustrating.
I don't get angry about the financial gap between me and the uber-rich, but I do get angry about the political power they wield as non-elected citizens. Those with money should not have the right to be heard more than me in a true democracy.
Of course, I don't really believe we have true democracy in the US anymore.
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"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." - Mark Twain
Posts: 1169 | From: Maine, US | Registered: Feb 2011
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Even if everybody was exactly equal in terms of wealth, the pecking order would still exist. Wealth would just cease to be one of the determining factors.
It follows that reducing wealth inequality may not solve the problems at all.
Not neccessarily because (despite my use of the phrase) humans (& to some extent other apes) don't have one-dimensional hierarchies like chickens but lots of different ones which we adopt in different situations. Most people are not in the same position on every one of the hundreds of heaps.
The usual argument is that modern communications expose people to many more others than they would have, and obviously people pay more attention to the richest or the most beautiful or whatever.
So - goes the argument - Og the Caveman didn't need to be the best hunter on the Northern Moors in order for the rest of the tribe to like him and to be able to get a wife, he just had to be about as good a hunter as Ag or as good a flint-knapper as Eg. And he doesn't need as big a willy as Ig if he is a better singer than Ug. There is more than one game in cavetown. And things were similar in small-scale societies throughout history up to about the invention of coins with pictures on the front, when people started to get famous.
Ever since then we have all been exposed to ever larger numbers of super-stars with personality cults around them. If Og's 500-times-great-grandson wants to feel confident in his ability to impress the girls he wants to be as rich as Bill Gates and as good-looking as whoever her favourite Hollywood star is and as famous as David Beckham and as well-dressed as that camp skinny bloke posing behind the model on the front cover of Vogue - and of course he can't compete with all them so he feels bad. Maybe he feels worse than he ought to because he isn't really competing against those blokes but still against Ag and Eg and Ig and Ug in the next street but it feels as if he is.
So why are so many people angry and unhappy and frustrated even though life has objectively got better in so many ways? Blame Hello magazine and Hollywood, and the fashion industry, and celebrity culture in general! It was Simon Cowell what caused the riots!
Like I said, plausible psuedo-science, its hard to see how you could ever prove it.
There's another bit of plausibly pseudo-scienctific pop psychology with slightly better grounding (but not much) that postulates that one of the reasons more people are single now than in the past, and more are single in cities than rural areas, is that potential partners are compared against a larger pool and so more likely to be found wanting.
If you were the third most attractive girl in the village you might have put up with marrying the fourth most attractive boy, because there wasn't that much more choice. But every day the 339,502nd most attractive single woman in London walks past thousands or tens of thousands of men who are more attractive to her than the 420,905th most attractive man who happens to live up the street and fancy her.
Again plausible - I think I might even believe it partly - but not really testable and there are millions of
A few caveats to that:
(1) "Attractive" here means not just looks but whatever it is that might attract one person to another - which includes looks but also personality, intelligence, hobbies, jobs, possessions, reputation, age, health, money - and not being depressed.
(2) In general, in most human societies, women choose men not the other way round. And one of the things men are doing when they compete with each other - maybe the main thing even if they don't realise it - is competing for the attention of women.
(3) There is really good evidence (a first for this post!) that in the "marriage market" people tend to end up with others who are by general consensus about as attractive as themselves - which is why you see 25-year-old models on the arms of 50-year-old rock stars, they are trading beauty against fame.
(4) So a large amount of human mating behaviour consists of men doing things to make themselves seem attractive to women - and usually getting it wrong - and women selecting men who seem to be at about the same level of desirability, or a little but higher than themselves.
(5) And - so goes the pseudo-scientific-sociobollocks theory - people who think they rate low on the scale of desirability often get depressed or angry. And it probably affects men more (because, to be crude, lots of men would be happy with almost any woman, but women tend to have higher standards)
(6) And incidentally that could explain why though it is almost certain men are far more likely to get severely depressed than women - just look at the suicide rates - they are far less likely to get diagnosed. Maybe they don't want to admit to weakness or mental problems because that makes them look like losers and that makes the underlying cause worse.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
I think that to a large extent, poverty is inequality. In the end all you can buy with your money is other people's time (sometimes expressed in goods, sometimes in rights, sometimes in services). If you are relatively poor you are absolutely poor.
On that definition it would always be impossible to eradicate poverty.
Yes, but, well, hang on, didn't ..
Whatever. I suppose you never read that bit.
quote:
In Bavaria, which IMHO is the most successful part of Europe, if not the world, I doubt whether many people would consider themselves to be living in poverty even if the Quandt Family are a hundred thousand times richer than they are.It is an efficient state which provides a good standard of living through the industriousness of its people. They would laugh at the view expressed above. [/QB]
We have quite a chuckle in Ilkley, and I bet you can hear gales of laughter coming from the Sultan of Brunei's house. Looking at pockets of privilege doesn't tell you much about inequality, though, does it?
[ 08. September 2011, 12:52: Message edited by: hatless ]
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
Maybe you're blessed with a complete absence of the sin of envy and resulting resentment. I'm not.
The usual solution to sin centers around reforming the sinner, doesn't it? So if envy and resentment are causing problems the solution is to reform those who are feeling envious and resentful, not the ones who are the objects of their envy and resentment.
To suggest that the way to solve the problem of people's sinful economic envy is to give them more wealth is like suggesting that the solution to my sinful lusting after a work colleague is for her to sleep with me!
Is it necessarily envy, though? I bet Joe Cole, who spent most of last season at Liverpool on the bench, wishes he got as many minutes on the pitch as Steven Gerrard or Lucas Leiva, but can we say that he envies them? And if so, is that a sinful or an admirable reaction?
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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Erroneous Monk
Shipmate
# 10858
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Posted
I don't think the conclusions in the book are particularly scientific, though the way in which they're presented tries to give them greater credibility. IIRC, countries with GDP below a certain level are stripped out of the analysis. This means that lots of countries where everyone is poor, and which still have many of the problems the book attributes to inequality, aren't included in the statistics. If they were, the graphs and tables would look somewhat different.
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And I shot a man in Tesco, just to watch him die.
Posts: 2950 | From: I cannot tell you, for you are not a friar | Registered: Jan 2006
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moron
Shipmate
# 206
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lucia:
That certainly seems to be born out by the reviews I read of the book ie Guardian reviewer liked it, Daily Telegraph reviewer did not!
Please pardon a Pond tangent: is that an example of 'classification'?
(Something I've been led to believe Brits are particularly susceptible to. TIA.)
Posts: 4236 | From: Bentonville | Registered: May 2001
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by 205:
quote:
Originally posted by Lucia:
That certainly seems to be born out by the reviews I read of the book ie Guardian reviewer liked it, Daily Telegraph reviewer did not!
Please pardon a Pond tangent: is that an example of 'classification'?
(Something I've been led to believe Brits are particularly susceptible to. TIA.)
The Guardian almost defines 'Librul' on this side of the pond. The Daily Telegraph is for Thatcherite Conservatives and retired officers.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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2ndRateMind
Shipmate
# 12231
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Posted
Relative v Absolute poverty? Hmmm. I'm inclined to believe relative poverty to be a good thing, when it spurs enterprise and generates ambition. Absolute poverty, however, has no redeeming features I can see. Indeed, were I to set the priorities for our entire generation, worldwide, without exception, my dictatorship would decide that the eradication of absolute poverty, as constrained by the global ecological carrying capacity, would be our mission. If that left a few in relative poverty, I would not greatly care.
I have the book, but have yet to read it. (you would not believe the length of my reading list). However, since it seems to be provoking interest here, I may well take it off the shelf, dust it down, and pay it due attention. Perhaps it will change my mind.
Best wishes to all, 2RM.
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...the sharing of an inward light;
The love of all that's Good and Right
And Kind, and Just, and True, and Man
Was made for this, and this His Plan.
Posts: 97 | From: Dark side of Bristol | Registered: Jan 2007
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aumbry
Shipmate
# 436
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
I think that to a large extent, poverty is inequality. In the end all you can buy with your money is other people's time (sometimes expressed in goods, sometimes in rights, sometimes in services). If you are relatively poor you are absolutely poor.
On that definition it would always be impossible to eradicate poverty.
Yes, but, well, hang on, didn't ..
Whatever. I suppose you never read that bit.
quote:
In Bavaria, which IMHO is the most successful part of Europe, if not the world, I doubt whether many people would consider themselves to be living in poverty even if the Quandt Family are a hundred thousand times richer than they are.It is an efficient state which provides a good standard of living through the industriousness of its people. They would laugh at the view expressed above.
We have quite a chuckle in Ilkley, and I bet you can hear gales of laughter coming from the Sultan of Brunei's house. Looking at pockets of privilege doesn't tell you much about inequality, though, does it? [/QB]
You did not follow the argument - all I was pointing out was that the original premise did not hold water for Bavaria, if it did then even in a rich state the least well off people would consider themselves in poverty. Although that said I do not consider Bavarians being rich causes others to be poor - they merely arrange their affairs in a more efficient way than in other places. I do include Baden-W as well.
Posts: 3869 | From: Quedlinburg | Registered: Jun 2001
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2ndRateMind
Shipmate
# 12231
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Posted
Sorry for my inept attempts at editing. Perhaps the moderator will oblige and delete the obviously superfluous posts.
Thanks, 2RM
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...the sharing of an inward light;
The love of all that's Good and Right
And Kind, and Just, and True, and Man
Was made for this, and this His Plan.
Posts: 97 | From: Dark side of Bristol | Registered: Jan 2007
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
I do get somewhat angry at accusations from the well off about those "below" them using the "politics of envy".
If you look at the stories of the old woman in the vinegar bottle, or the fisherman's wife, at the beginning, in their poverty, they are recognised as needy, and not in error in expressing their need. But once settled in a sustainable situation, they persist in wanting more than they need, and that is envy.
The OP is saying that poverty isn't the problem, inequality is. The clear implication being that even if the very poorest person in society was wealthy by our modern standards, there would be social and health problems if the richest were significantly better off than them.
We're not talking about crushingly poor people wanting the ability to look after themselves, we're talking about comparably secure and comfortable people wanting to have more simply because someone else has got it. Bluntly, we're talking about people who think being poor means "only" having a 22 inch TV.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
aumbry said
quote:
You did not follow the argument - all I was pointing out was that the original premise did not hold water for Bavaria, if it did then even in a rich state the least well off people would consider themselves in poverty. Although that said I do not consider Bavarians being rich causes others to be poor - they merely arrange their affairs in a more efficient way than in other places. I do include Baden-W as well.
No, and it doesn't hold water for Ilkley, Brunei or my left pocket either. However, if you think of my trousers as a whole there is gross lateral inequality. Rich people, places and states don't think of themselves as poor, but when you describe Bavaria as rich that has to be in relation to other places. Look at the bigger picture to see the inequality.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
The OP is saying that poverty isn't the problem, inequality is. The clear implication being that even if the very poorest person in society was wealthy by our modern standards, there would be social and health problems if the richest were significantly better off than them.
We're not talking about crushingly poor people wanting the ability to look after themselves, we're talking about comparably secure and comfortable people wanting to have more simply because someone else has got it. Bluntly, we're talking about people who think being poor means "only" having a 22 inch TV.
Over time we get richer in terms of consumer goods. We can make better TVs, with better technology, fewer natural resources and less human labour. That's not a zero sum game, but our ability to pay for each other's labour is.
We cannot all be able to eat out more often, because someone has to be the waiter and the cook and the cleaner. We cannot all have better access to professional services (lawyers, dentists, accountants, etc.) because it's a finite resource that is inescapably linked to population as is demand. We can train more dentists, but only at the expense of other skills.
Apart from the gain in terms of technological advance, everything we buy can be expressed in terms of human labour - skilled or unskilled hours of work. If some people can buy more, it is by definition because others can buy less. Or to put it another way, our time is worth varying amounts.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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CL
Shipmate
# 16145
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Posted
Matthew 26:11
Posts: 647 | From: Ireland | Registered: Jan 2011
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Jay-Emm
Shipmate
# 11411
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Erroneous Monk:
I don't think the conclusions in the book are particularly scientific, though the way in which they're presented tries to give them greater credibility. IIRC, countries with GDP below a certain level are stripped out of the analysis. This means that lots of countries where everyone is poor, and which still have many of the problems the book attributes to inequality, aren't included in the statistics. If they were, the graphs and tables would look somewhat different.
[disclaimer]
I didn't buy the book, and was too far away when I heard him at Greenbelt to be sure of any fuddling/bad analysis.
[/disclaimer]
But one of the first slides he put up was a shape (1/2 way between an upside down "L" and a log fn), with GDP against some happiness figure (I think life expectancy). Beneath around Portugal, national GDP made a massive difference. Above Portugal it made no difference recognisable from the noise. The UK and US were several times over this limit.
If that's the case it's a bit like saying that school physics is wrong because if they included fast objects the results would be rather different.
Posts: 1643 | Registered: May 2006
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Erroneous Monk:
IIRC, countries with GDP below a certain level are stripped out of the analysis. This means that lots of countries where everyone is poor, and which still have many of the problems the book attributes to inequality, aren't included in the statistics. If they were, the graphs and tables would look somewhat different.
The authors start off by saying that up to a certain level absolute wealth does matter. If someone can't afford to buy food it doesn't matter that the person down the road can't afford to buy food either.
The authors do plot well-being against absolute wealth for all countries in the world. Well-being shoots up steeply as wealth increases, and then slows down its rate of growth quite dramatically.
So they're only looking at the countries in the slowed down area of growth. If the GDP of Malawi got richer overnight it would make a big difference to the country's health, education and crime rates even if the gain in wealth wasn't evenly distributed. True. But increasing the USA's GDP would make hardly any difference at all.
The authors are only looking at countries that are past a certain hump.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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churchgeek
Have candles, will pray
# 5557
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Posted
First of all, there actually are abject poor in the US at least, and I would bet most of the "developed" world.
Second, one of the main problems I think with a huge wealth gap is the erosion of a sense of common community, the common good, the civic project, however you want to name it. The poor and powerless get shoved out of view of the rich (or even of the middle class), and the rich buy their way out of common life. That can't be good for anyone, spiritually or socially. When you start to think of human beings as unimportant or dispensable or completely unrelated to you, you tarnish the image of God within yourself. Where some people can buy privilege and others can't, money is set up as the thing of value rather than humanity or human dignity.
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I reserve the right to change my mind.
My article on the Virgin of Vladimir
Posts: 7773 | From: Detroit | Registered: Feb 2004
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
I've just been watching the Horizon programme on Good and Evil, basically an examination of psychopathy. And how is this relevant, you may say? There were two things struck me. One was the finding that the proportion of business leaders with the signs of the condition is higher than in the general population. This was allied with the observation that having got themselves to the top, their performance was not as good as that of others. This suggests that at least some of those at the top of the inequality continuum are not functioning as normal.
The other was a view of a part of Tennessee, where the defence of a murderer had been built on the man's psychological make-up, combined with his abused childhood, pushing him into his psychopathic act. (He was acquitted.) That was not the thing that struck me. It was the living conditions in his neck of the woods. Arrays of trailer homes, almost shanties, scruffy and uncared for, irregularly placed on their roughly fenced plots. It was a worse place to grow up than the traveller encampment currently being evicted in Essex, where the trailers are clean and smart.
The pragramme had been wandering the streets of Manhattan, and the shock of arriving in that sad place rubbed in how there is grotesque inequality even such a wealthy nation as the USA.
Penny
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Belle Ringer
Shipmate
# 13379
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Posted
I worked in one of those big paper pushing organizations (sort of like Big Eight Accounting back when it was 8) where the big bosses take home a million, the little bosses a quarter million, the apprentices to become a little boss a quarter of what the little bosses get, the secretaries half of what the apprentices get, and so on down to the minimum wage jobs.
I commented to a secretary the outfit needs everyone's work, so everyone should be paid the same. She immediately responded "then I would be a receptionist, they don't work nearly as hard, why would I work a harder job instead of an easier job for the same pay?" And the partners pointed out they can be personally sued for an error in their work, a secretary can't, risk needs to be compensated.
So how do we get to equality when some want to work harder if it will get them more comforts in life and others prefer to work less even if it means buying used cars and never seeing Paris? Do we measure equality yearly so any who save money instead of spending it are penalized later for having "more," or do we measure what people had coming in over a lifetime and not care if they spent it on planting a kitchen garden to add to their food supply thus freeing up some money to buy a rare luxury, or spent it gambling and have no food?
I am NOT saying poor people deserve to be poor or don't work hard. I'm saying there are some real issues to deal with in designing an equality society.
Maybe the issue is not equality of financial or whatever measure, but equality of opportunity? People with the same opportunities will chose different work/relax ratios. People with the same income will choose different ways to spent it.
Posts: 5830 | From: Texas | Registered: Jan 2008
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
humans (& to some extent other apes) don't have one-dimensional hierarchies like chickens but lots of different ones which we adopt in different situations. Most people are not in the same position on every one of the hundreds of heaps.
There was a study along those lines, some time ago - don't remember any details, or how far it was empirical rather than theoretical.
The basic message was that if everyone wants the same thing, there are a lot of disappointed people. It was put in terms of men being attracted to women, but the principle clearly applies more widely. If there's only a single variable of interest - or equivalently if all the attractiveness factors are perfectly correlated - then most of us (male and female alike) are so far down the ranking that the gap between who we'd like and who we can get is pretty huge. But it doesn't take that many different factors - different dimensions of attractiveness - to improve the average level of contentment quite a lot.
What's wrong with the equality agenda is that (for the sake of simplicity) it collapses all the dimensions into one - power is wealth is beauty etc and then wants to share it around a bit more. It's not that the desire to see more sharing is bad; it's that by focussing attention only on money it encourages this one-dimensional view of life that means most people end up unsatisfied.
If you really want to add to the sum of human happiness, emphasise the multi-valence of life.
If Mr A has devoted himself to becoming an accountant to maximize his income, while Mr B has sought fame through success at amateur sports and Mr C has become sociable so as to have lots of friends, then its much less obvious that taking away some of A's money to give to B and C (without any transfer of fame and popularity the other way) makes for a better society...
Best wishes,
Russ
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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jlg
What is this place?
Why am I here?
# 98
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Posted
My understanding of the term 'income inequality' is the one used in this article in Slate magazine, which I have also seen in other places.
It's not simply absolute or relative income levels, it's more the distribution of wealth. (And while the initial Slate article doesn't talk about it, the growing hole in the middle of the US distribution where the bulk of the working- and middle-class people used to be.)
The article starts out with this:
quote:
In 1915, a statistician at the University of Wisconsin named Willford I. King published The Wealth and Income of the People of the United States, the most comprehensive study of its kind to date. The United States was displacing Great Britain as the world's wealthiest nation, but detailed information about its economy was not yet readily available; the federal government wouldn't start collecting such data in any systematic way until the 1930s. One of King's purposes was to reassure the public that all Americans were sharing in the country's newfound wealth.
King was somewhat troubled to find that the richest 1 percent possessed about 15 percent of the nation's income. (A more authoritative subsequent calculation puts the figure slightly higher, at about 18 percent.)
This was the era in which the accumulated wealth of America's richest families—the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, the Carnegies—helped prompt creation of the modern income tax, lest disparities in wealth turn the United States into a European-style aristocracy. The socialist movement was at its historic peak, a wave of anarchist bombings was terrorizing the nation's industrialists, and President Woodrow Wilson's attorney general, Alexander Palmer, would soon stage brutal raids on radicals of every stripe. In American history, there has never been a time when class warfare seemed more imminent.
That was when the richest 1 percent accounted for 18 percent of the nation's income. Today, the richest 1 percent account for 24 percent of the nation's income.
24% of our country's wealth is in the hands of a mere 1% of the population. (Later in the article we find out that 0.1% of the population has the bulk of that 24% of wealth.)
My household happens to be in the top 10%, as were our parents before us. Unfortunately, being at the bottom of the top 10% doesn't carry the 'good life' as it once did. Our parents, on a single income, were able to provide for five children, send them all to college, go on yearly vacations, save and invest for retirement and also leave a nice inheritance bundle, buy and furnish a lovely home, go on adult-only trips to Europe, etc.
Our current 'rich' household, while hardly looking at poverty, has never taken a vacation, has totally inadequate savings for old age, struggles to find the money for major household maintenance such as replacing the roof or upgrading the 1950s electrical system. Part of the problem is that we have for most of our married life also provided financial support to various extended family members who have been abandoned by the richest member of the extended family, who has been living quite nicely while ignoring his ex-wife and children.
My husband's family is actually a nice microcosmic example of the macrocosm of the US economy. One rich guy sits on his spoils and pretends that all those other people are doing just fine. Once in a while he passes along a used car to a child in need (who then finds out it is an unreliable lemon and needs expensive repairs) or takes grandchildren to Disney World. But other than that, 'hey, look how they take care of one another, they're doing fine!' seems to be the motto.
My children, in their mid-twenties, bright and well-educated, should be full of enthusiasm for their futures, but they're not. They are resigned to low expectations and simply hoping to stay employed and make ends meet. Planning and saving for a future retirement is a morbid joke for them - they expect to work until they die. As do I now that my life situation has changed.
In the US, as the Supreme Court has recently confirmed when it decreed that corporations are legal persons and have the right of free speech, money is free speech is power.
So that 0.1% of the population with it's control of a huge percentage of the country's money has all the political power.
The remaining 99.9% of us, whether happy or not with our income or how things are being run, no matter how much we organize or campaign or try to make a difference, are simply ineffectual pawns in the game.
And THAT, being powerless in a so-called democracy, is what Income Inequality is all about.
Posts: 17391 | From: Just a Town, New Hampshire, USA | Registered: May 2001
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Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
... I commented to a secretary the outfit needs everyone's work, so everyone should be paid the same. She immediately responded "then I would be a receptionist, they don't work nearly as hard, why would I work a harder job instead of an easier job for the same pay?" And the partners pointed out they can be personally sued for an error in their work, a secretary can't, risk needs to be compensated. ...
The error here is supposing that "working hard" is the only determinant of a person's position on the corporate ladder. Individual skills, talent, temperament, etc. are all factors, and the bigger an organization gets, the greater variety of skills it requires among its staff. How much work would the partners actually get done without the support of secretaries and receptionists? Technically I am the lowest person in my office and I can confidently say that among my superiors (yes, all of whom get paid more) there is only one other staff member who would be capable of doing my job. Or, as I like to joke, "It's not rocket science, but a rocket scientist wouldn't be able to do it."
And let's not forget the usual contradictory idea about monetary incentives - paying more at the top gets you the best, but getting the best at the bottom is apparently accomplished by paying as little as possible. It would be nice to see more recognition that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, all the parts are necessary, and all the parts should be valued and respected. OliviaG
PS re: personal responsibility, being sued, etc.: that's really just a social convention for some types of workers. An individual can incorporate. Any employer that wants to can indemnify its employees (or not). It has more to do with a punitive attitude towards errors in the workplace than performance or accountability.
Posts: 5430 | From: Caprica City | Registered: Jul 2005
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
We have quite a chuckle in Ilkley
Not surprising, given the price of tea at Betty's when I was there last week.
Yes, and the cakes are a real laugh. Were you tempted by the chocolate and marzipan seahorses?
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Timothy the Obscure
Mostly Friendly
# 292
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Posted
The relation between money and happiness is not linear--once you get a bit past the point at which you can be really confident that you'll have a roof over your head and enough to eat, the curve flattens out rather quickly. As someone summed it up: "Money can't buy happiness, but it can keep a shitload of misery away from your door."
The problem with inequality is that (as jlg suggested) that as societies become more unequal, political power becomes concentrated at the top, and society is managed to cater to the desires of the very very tippy top--which is what is currently happening more and more in the US.
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When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
- C. P. Snow
Posts: 6114 | From: PDX | Registered: May 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
Money can't buy you happiness but its less unpleasant to be unhappy and rich than to be unhappy and poor.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
What Ken said - and I enjoyed your thoughts on mating and attractiveness further up the thread. I'm not sure about women going for a 'slightly higher spec' man - (reminds me of an IngoB quote 'upwardly nubile' ![[Razz]](tongue.gif) ) - to generalise my single friends are (F) successful, high-income, career-focussed home owners and (M) bedsit-dwelling, semi-or-un-employed, heavy drinkers. I can see the gamma females ignoring the omega males, but does the alpha females' plight result from all the alpha males being mopped up by the beta females? And by the alpha males' insecurities making them more inclined to such (an unequal?) coupling?
Hey, pseudo-science is fun!
MiM, omega male in residence...
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
Posts: 1596 | Registered: Oct 2010
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Persephone Hazard
Ship's Wench
# 4648
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
The relation between money and happiness is not linear--once you get a bit past the point at which you can be really confident that you'll have a roof over your head and enough to eat, the curve flattens out rather quickly.
I dunno, you know. I've got somewhere to live and enough to eat, even if there are notable problems with both at the moment thanks to my own neuroticism, and as I'm not paying for the damned things anyway I know they aren't going to go away.
But I'd be untold happier if I had a grand a month. Just so that I could pay rent somewhere and buy my own food and afford to breathe and not have to turn people down all the while because I can't afford the bus fare.
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A picture is worth a thousand words, but it's a lot easier to make up a thousand words than one decent picture. - ken.
Posts: 1645 | From: London | Registered: Jun 2003
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
It seems to me that you haven't reached the curve flattening point just yet.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
Today, on the PBS "Newshour", there was a segment called "Do Social Safety Net Programs Shrink Gap in U.S. Economic Inequality?"
(Both transcript and video are there.)
The guest was an economics professor, who is way too Panglossian. If you get a chance, watch/listen to the segment, so you can actually hear his tone of voice.
![[brick wall]](graemlins/brick_wall.gif)
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Haydee
Shipmate
# 14734
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Posted
In this part of the world (sunny South Africa) it's quite common for white middle class gatherings at some point to move on the the sense of 'entitled-ness' of the blacks. And then the comment comes that 'we worked hard for what we have, they expect things to be just given to them...'
Meanwhile their maid - sorry, domestic worker - gets up at 5 in order to get public transport from the township to their house, where she works full time for a fraction of what her employer earns.
The reason their 'hard work' gets them the nice house in the suburbs, a car each, overseas holidays etc is because they had considerably more spent on their education and the majority of the population were excluded from competing for the well-paid and skilled jobs. Plus the same applied to their parents and grand parents, allowing the family to build their levels of education, wealth and aspiration.
Unfortuately the current government has bought into the 'if we make money it's good for the country' ideology, which is why they are using more and more violence against thier own citizens who are beginning to protest about corruption and lack of service delivery.
Posts: 433 | Registered: Apr 2009
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
Maybe you're blessed with a complete absence of the sin of envy and resulting resentment. I'm not.
The usual solution to sin centers around reforming the sinner, doesn't it? So if envy and resentment are causing problems the solution is to reform those who are feeling envious and resentful, not the ones who are the objects of their envy and resentment.
I believe Jesus of Nazareth had things to say about rich people, camels, and eyes of needles. And if you want to talk about sins, yes, envy is one. So is greed. And luxuria (which was later watered down from decadence to mere carnal lust). If you want to get rid of deadly sins, there are two more...
However the impact of wealth disparity is one on interactions. There's a huge difference between being paid to help people on a more or less equal basis and being paid to serve them.
quote:
The problem there is obvious. Even if everybody was exactly equal in terms of wealth, the pecking order would still exist. Wealth would just cease to be one of the determining factors.
It follows that reducing wealth inequality may not solve the problems at all.
These are humans. You can't solve such problems. But you can reduce them. There's a huge difference in impact of wealth between a factor of 2 and one of 100.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003
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Anabaptist Catholic
Shipmate
# 9284
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Posted
I've happened on this thread as I'm doing a lot of thinking about inequality at the moment in my job, and realised the Ship is most likely to have the most eclectic and well-informed readership of pretty much all forums I can think of.
Well anyway, my question is - are there any examples of democratic societies which have consciously sought to move to a narrower income distribution (i.e. less inequality) and achieved it?
Referring to the OP, I was at a lecture by Wilkinson round about the time his book came out, and he was tackled on this question. Essentially he side-stepped it, almost saying "well we could if we wanted to". He mentioned Japan after World War 2, but clearly there was other stuff going on there.
The modern attempts to tackle inequality seem to be of two kinds: 1) welfare interventions, which funnel more cash to the poor. It works to some extent, but doesn't really tackle the dynamics that caused gross inequality, and 2) attempts which seem to be pre-occupied with the characteristics of the "lower orders", their unemployability and ill-health. Again, individual prescriptions that might work for some, but don't challenge the system. I've excluded Communist regimes that clearly did try and eliminate a certain measure of inequality, but with unacceptable methods in a democracy.
Increasingly, I do think inequality matters for a range of reasons: 1) it may cause the outcomes Wilkinson and Pickett log, 2)the "pop-psychology" of hierachy ken mentioned and 3) the grip that consumerism seems to have on causing those in the middle of the income distribution to work longer hours to compete - which seems to be a factor in greater unhappiness for UK kids.
I think a lot of this will come down to those better off consciously deciding they can get by with less stuff and less money. Some may say this is economic suicide. But what do you think, and has any country actually achieved sustainable reductions in inequality?
[ 09. October 2011, 15:34: Message edited by: Anabaptist Catholic ]
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Catholic and Reformed
Posts: 152 | From: Edinburgh, Scotland | Registered: Apr 2005
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Horseman Bree
Shipmate
# 5290
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Posted
It is arguable that the effects of the Depression and WW2 were to increase the improved distribution of income, along with significant progress on a lot of social justice issues.
In most countries, medical care became socialised, for instance, to reduce the inequality of treatment and the general improvement of preventive care.
National pension systems developed, better road systems developed, telephone and electric power systems were made available to poorer rual areas - all in the aim of reducing inequality by bringing disadvantaged groups up towards what was seen to be a good basic common level.
No-one was guaranteed wealth, in terms of havong too much money. It was just an attempt to improve things.
And you can't say that the rich (those who had more than basic living standard) suffered greatly. Indeed, there are surveys that say the presently-obscenely-rich are actually less happy than the rich were fifty years ago (because they are worried about having their kids grow up spoiled, as well as knowing that many people despise them)
The Fifties weren't a Paradise, but things were better for most people than they ever had been before. It wasn't a simple democratic thing, so much as the democratic regimes of that time actually paid attention to the needs of large groups of their people.
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It's Not That Simple
Posts: 5372 | From: more herring choker than bluenose | Registered: Dec 2003
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Sober Preacher's Kid
Presbymethegationalist
# 12699
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Posted
And much as those policies worked until the 1970's, at least in Canada, we then spent the next 30 years attacking and disassembling that model. The very group who had been the largest beneficiaries of the Great Middling became its enemies. Then we, their kids, who try to aim for the same deal find out its gone. You try and explain to your parents that the rules have changed but they won't listen.
In Canada we made employers the delivery vehicle for pensions, prescription drugs and disability insurance as a shadow welfare state. All have been attacked and rolled back. Precarious employment only makes things worse because you can't access that shadow welfare state. But attempting to generalize the benefits through government provision is "expensive" even though we want it, we already pay for most of it and reduced employment tenure already indicates that employers and employees would rather just deal in straight pay.
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NDP Federal Convention Ottawa 2018: A random assortment of Prots and Trots.
Posts: 7646 | From: Peterborough, Upper Canada | Registered: Jun 2007
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Horseman Bree
Shipmate
# 5290
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Posted
But the process recently has been anything but democratic, as we undo the relatively-equal movement.
Which, I suppose, goes to show that actually-democratic governments can and do reduce inequality.
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It's Not That Simple
Posts: 5372 | From: more herring choker than bluenose | Registered: Dec 2003
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