|
Radical Inequality Is Literally Killing UsNew scientific research shows that Wall Street's war on the middle class is sabotaging our longevity.
January 27, 2010 | Two British intellectuals — one a distinguished, gray-haired professor emeritus, the other a rising young academic superstar — have just finished a 15-day speaking tour across the United States. They came to fan the flames of “populist rage.”
We don’t, of course, normally associate populist rage with sophisticated scholars. Our most eminent pundits almost always employ "populist rage” as a condescending, even derisive, put-down, a tag for an unfocused, unthinking anger directed toward elites — a cry from the great unwashed masses born of frustration and envy.
But Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, our two recent scholarly British visitors, would beg to differ. Populist rage at bank bailouts and Wall Street bonuses, they believe, actually reflects state-of-the-art scientific insight.
Wilkinson and Pickett both work as epidemiologists. They study the health of populations, and, over recent decades, pioneering work by Wilkinson has helped reveal the most reliable foundation for good health and long life. Want to live long and prosper? Go live in a relatively equal society.
Over 200 studies since the early 1980s have now documented that people living in societies where wealth has concentrated at the top of the economic ladder live significantly shorter, less healthy lives than people who live in societies that spread their wealth more evenly.
And we’re not talking just poor folks here. All people in unequal societies do worse. Middle-income people in the United States, the world’s most unequal developed nation, have shorter lifespans than middle-income people in Japan, Sweden and a host of other more equal nations.
This same dynamic, Wilkinson and Pickett show in their new book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, is operating on all our most basic yardsticks of social decency. On everything from homicides and teen pregnancies to drug addiction and levels of trust, people living in more equal nations do better — from three to 10 times better — than people in societies where treasure tilts to the top.
More at http://www.alternet.org/economy/145413/radical_inequality_is_literally_killing_us |
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
