[lbo-talk] Better live in Sweden than in the US: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better

[Bryan Atinsky]

Let's talk about politics for once. It is common knowledge that in rich 
societies the poor have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every 
social problem. In a quite fascinating book, /The Spirit Level: Why More 
Equal Societies Almost Always do Better/ 
<http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spirit-Level-Societies-Almost-Always/dp/1846140390>, 
epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson 
<http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cps/index.php?page=2.0.0.40> and Kate 
Pickett <https://hsciweb.york.ac.uk/research/public/Staff.aspx?ID=1197> 
demonstrate that more unequal societies are bad for almost everyone - 
the well-off as well as the poor (here 
<http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/docs/inequality.pdf>is the /Guardian 
/review, and here 
<http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7242/full/4581109a.html>is 
/Nature/'s). The remarkable data the book lays out and the measures it 
uses are like a 'spirit level' which we can hold up to compare the 
conditions of different societies. The differences revealed, even 
between rich market democracies, are striking. Almost every modern 
social and environmental problem - ill-health, lack of community life, 
violence, drugs, obesity, mental illness, long working hours, big prison 
populations - is more likely to occur in a less equal society. The book 
goes to the heart of the apparent contrast between the material success 
and social failings of many modern societies. /The Spirit Level/ does 
not simply provide a key to diagnosing our ills. It tells us how to 
shift the balance from self-interested 'consumerism' to a friendlier and 
more collaborative society. It shows a way out of the social and 
environmental problems which beset us and opens up a major new approach 
<http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/> to improving the real quality of 
life, not just for the poor but for everyone. Last but not least, (at 
least for the reader of the ICCI's blog 
<http://www.cognitionandculture.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=398:what-about-cognition-and-society&catid=37:nicolas&Itemid=34>), 
it is a very good piece of sociology based on cognition and evolution.

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