The Spirit Level

The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett

Down at the Edinburgh Book Festival in August I attended a striking talk by Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett on their book 'The Spirit Level'. Having bought the book and read it I can say that using every possible method of empirical scientific analysis the authors have proved beyond any reasonable doubt that unequal societies are more prone to corruption, drug abuse, mental illness, violence, teenage pregnancies, adult obesity, etc - in fact, just about every known negative social indicator in our society can be traced to the manifest inequalities in it.

On the plus side if you live in a more equal society you are roughly four times as likely to trust someone, you tend to be more socially aware (so it’s goodbye Daily Mail then) and to respect and be respected by others for yourself rather than your possessions.

In general, as you’ve probably guessed, the UK comes out shockingly badly unless you compare it to the US (which at one point of the talk was so bad that it had to be marked by a point off the screen and midway across the roof) with Sweden, Norway and Denmark doing generally best.

The graph showing the huge and widening gap in the UK between rich and poor kicked in, predictably, in the 1980s and showed that Labour’s 1997 victory did absolutely nothing to repair the damage apart from making it worse – to the extent than inequality is 40% worse now than it was in the 1970s.

The old monetarist notion of an expanding GDP being great for the entire population was utterly exploded as the studies showed the notional ‘trickle down effect’ had failed to trickle down over a 29 year period. Wilkinson & Baker, in fact, stressed that GDP beyond a certain point was immaterial to the wellbeing of a society.

Despite the recent ICM poll which showed that 82% of people polled want the government to take active steps to reduce the gap between rich and poor their recent response to the recession has been to bankroll the bankers and reduce social services – a sure sign that the fat-cats who pay New Labour’s election expenses expect to be featherbedded while the poor suffer disproportionately for their financial screw-ups.

For those of you of a socialist bent, the results probably won't be that much of a surprise but what it does do is provide demonstrable and measurable scientific proof that unequal societies do badly and will continue to do badly and the authors state clearly in the book “Rather than simply waiting for the government to do it for us, we have to start making [the more equal society] in our lives and institutions straight away.” Or to use a topical example, if disaffected citizens in the 1960s waited for the US government to solve the civil rights problem Obama would not only not be president, he’d still have to sit at the back of the bus.

This book can either provide backup for your already held socialist beliefs, an encouragement to become an activist or a guide to why you should be a socialist. If you buy/borrow/steal only one more book this year buy/borrow/steal this one!