Remember the fabled midnight ride of Paul Revere? The
storybook warning he shouted that evening in 1775 to his fellow patriots just
outside Boston?
“The British are coming!” Revere proclaimed as he rode. “The
British are coming!”
That urgent cry set off a chain of events that, fifteen
months later, saw a Virginia slaveowner named Thomas Jefferson declare the
“self-evident” truth “that all men are created equal.”
The new nation that Revere and Jefferson helped create would
grapple with the challenge of making that noble sentiment a reality. By the
mid-20th century, America had made strides toward equality, and by the 1970s,
the distribution of income and wealth had become noticeably more equal.
But progress stalled and then reversed. By the late 20th
century, the United States had earned a notorious reputation as the most
unequal major nation in the developed world, a distinction it still holds
today.
The good news? The British are once again sounding an alarm
that America needs to hear.
The UK's highly respected Equality Trust has issued a
powerful new report, making clear that tackling inequality is “both a moral and
economic necessity.”
This report, "The Spirit Level at 15," comes
fifteen years after the groundbreaking book "The Spirit Level" by
British epidemiologists Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson. In their 2009 work,
they explored how unequal distributions of income and wealth lead to worse
outcomes in areas like health and societal stability.
The new analysis, authored by Pickett, Wilkinson, Aini
Gauhar, and Priya Sahni-Nicholas, reveals that inequality's negative impact is
even more profound than initially understood.
“What we weren’t prepared for when we first wrote the book,”
Pickett and Wilkinson acknowledged, “was how much worse things could get.”
Research since "The Spirit Level" was published
has linked inequality to a range of issues, including gambling, domestic
violence, and the mistreatment of children. This isn't just
correlation—inequality actually causes poorer outcomes.
Inequality fosters a society where hierarchy reigns, and
some people—particularly the wealthy—are seen as more valuable than others.
This creates a climate where people are more concerned about their status and
how they're perceived, leading to feelings of inadequacy and depression for
some, and narcissism for others.
This "hubris of the ultra-wealthy," as "The
Spirit Level at 15" describes it, is devastating our world. The report
points out that the richest 1% globally are responsible for as much greenhouse
gas emission as the poorest 66% combined.
To combat this, the report stresses the need to address the
environmental impact of the wealthy as a crucial step in tackling the climate
crisis. It also highlights how high levels of inequality drive "status
competition and class insecurity," which contribute to overconsumption and
a throwaway culture.
"The Spirit Level at 15" offers a range of
strategies to reduce economic inequality, such as implementing taxes on extreme
wealth and income to fund public services, redistribute wealth, and stabilize
economies. Additionally, it suggests rethinking business models to support
co-operatives and employee-owned enterprises, and proposes that governments
adopt procurement policies favoring these business structures.
The report also draws attention to the disparity in
executive pay, contrasting the Mondragon Group's practice of capping top
executive pay at nine times that of the lowest-paid workers with the extreme
pay gaps seen in many U.S. corporations.
The Equality Trust has many other proposals for fostering a
more equal and sustainable world. Building such a world has never been more
urgent.
“In an era of unprecedented wealth,” the authors of "The Spirit Level at 15" remind us, “we are witnessing soaring numbers of people suffering from emotional distress, exhaustion, and isolation.
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Sam Pizzigati, an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, co-edits Inequality.org. His latest books include "The Case for a Maximum Wage" and "The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970."
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