So… have you read, ‘The Spirit Level’ yet? If not, why not? Actually, if not, we can assume you’re not switched into progressive politics on either side of the Atlantic, and/or you’re still a Lib-Dem and wedded to the new coalitions fiscal policies which seem to be pretty solidly in denial of the veracity of its findings.
The clue is in the part-title: ‘Why Equality is better for everyone.’ -it’s a small, easily read gem of a book by a pair of epidemiologists who have spent a long time and a lot of diligent effort examining population statistics around the world, comparing nations and states within nations (or counties, in the case of Chile) to see which were the ones with the greatest difference in income between richest and poorest, and those with the least. Then they took a good hard look at how the populations fared as a whole.
And they found that in every single case, measured by every single parameter of well-being, from infant mortality, to average age at death, to expressions of wellbeing, to levels of trust, societies, cultures and states where the gap between richest and poorest was least, fare best. Norway comes out way ahead of everyone. Japan’s not far off, nor Iceland. The USA and the UK come way down the list, not as bad as Zimbabwe, but not far off - and the states of the US where there is the greatest divide fare far worse than those that are more egalitarian.
From which we can concur that the old right-wing reactionary concepts of ‘trickle down’ economics which say that if the rich get even richer, they’ll spend all their wealth so everyone else will get richer too, is basically not working - for the simple reason that after a certain point, gross national income, and gross personal income, are no longer reliable indices for well being - money can’t buy you love, or even happiness.
We know this. It doesn’t stop us all playing the lottery, but we do know it. Why, then do we elect otherwise sane, sensible, compassionate people (I’m giving Dave and George the benefit of the doubt here, and ignoring the unnamed cabinet minister in a recent Observer article who was quoted as saying ‘The undeserving poor are…. undeserving”) who believe against all evidence that GDP is the best index of national well being and that we must create a fiscal policy that maximises it, while protecting the incomes of the richest? It’s not that they haven’t read Spirit Level, it’s that, as reported here, they’ve put a lot of intellectual power into denying its veracity.
Which is sad when there’s so much on the Equality Trust website to support their original findings. Might we suggest that the Con-Dem coalition spend some time reading it, instead of defending the indefensible?
And meanwhile, we should point out that Ed Milliband seems to have taken his entire manifesto for leader straight from its pages, and it’s only in the past month or so that the rest of the Labour hopefuls have begun to listen, and so to discuss it. As a newly fledged member of the Labour party, this has to be A Good Thing, although it would be rather better if those who were espousing it so fulsomely now, had done so a while ago. On the other hand, Ed might get in yet (Milly, not Blinky - he’s the Tory’s best friend; he’d do for Labour pretty much what Brown did, which was a catastrophe) - in which case, there may yet be a sane, balanced party of the centre-left progressive politics alive and well in the UK. And if not… then we can always move to Norway…
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Considering what’s going on in Canadian politics these days, I’ve always kept one eye on Scandinavia. Even to the point of learning to speak Swedish. Luckily for us anglophones, Scandinavians are, for all intents and purposes, fluent in English. I’m not too sure what I think if the Norwegian appetite for cetaceans though…