In this TED video, researcher Richard Wilkinson discusses real work data based levels of income disparity one finds in "rich developed-market democracies." As you can see (at 4:11 of the video), nations with low amounts of GNP don't tend to exhibit aberrant levels of health and social problems. On the other hand, countries that exhibit substantial amount of income disparity (3:44) exhibit high levels of health and social problems.
GNP per capita is thus a poor measure of a country's well-being. Further, we should be alarmed at high levels of income disparity. The same relationship (5:01) is apparent when one compares GNP to the UNICEF scale of child well-being. "The national well-being of our societies is not dependent any longer on national income and economic growth." The same tests were run on the 50 states of the U.S. with the same results.
What else suffers along with high income disparity? Trust (5:45), involvement in community life (6:00), mental illness (6:50), violence, percentage of the population in prison (7:40), the percentage of dropouts in high school (8:16), social mobility (poor parents having children who end up poor) (8:24), drug abuse, life expectancy, obesity, math and literacy scores and many other problems (9:10).
Wilkinson sums it up by saying that the countries that do worse---those that have higher social dysfunction--tend to be more economically unequal.
How do the various low income disparity nations and states attain their earning levels? Sweden does it by heavily taxing the rich. Japan has more comparable wages to begin with. Wilkinson's numbers show, however, that it doesn't much matter how you get your equality as long as you get there somehow. He adds that it's not only the poor that are affected by income disparity (12:20). Additional statistics show that the wealthy significantly benefit from general equality, not just the poor.
What is the proximate mechanism for all of these startling numbers. Wilkinson points to the following consequences of inequality:
More superiority and inferiority;
More status competition and consumerism;
More status insecurity;
More worry about how we are seen and judged;
More "social evaluation anxiety" (threats to self-esteem & social status, fear of negative judgments).
Wilkinson offers an unsurprising solution to countries and states with high levels of social dysfunction: Even out the income, either by offering more opportunities to folks at the lower end of the scale or by taxing the high earners (16:17). The bottom line is that we can improve a country's overall well-being by reducing economic inequality.
I am not at all surprised by Wilkinson's findings. It combines many ideas that I've previously discussed. No, GNP (and GDP) is a terrible measure of well-being (and see here) and people are deeply compelled to display their self-worth through material acquisitions. And all of this would seem to be exacerbated to the extent that TV and magazines pump images of the haves (and their expensive toys) into the homes and lives of the have-nots, causing all kinds of frustrations and degradations of self-worth among the have-nots. That was my suspicion prior to viewing Wilkinson's video and now all of this and many other measures of social dysfunction are backed up by Wilkinson's real-life numbers.
Two years ago, I was excited to see Barack Obama elected President because I had listened closely to his campaign speeches and I assumed that I would now have a meaningful voice in how my government was being run. I assumed that we would see an immediate decrease to America’s warmongering, domestic spying and fossil-fuel dependence, for example. Since that election, though, I’ve witnessed Mr. Obama cave-in to right wing demands on numerous major issues. I’ve seen Wall Street “reform” that allows bigger “banks” than ever. I’ve seen health care “reform” that shoved single payer under the table and consisted of a sell-out to for-profit monopolistic insurers, without any meaningful price controls. Government spying and secrecy are more prevalent than ever. I’ve seen big business spend more money more flagrantly than ever to purchase politicians, including Barack Obama.
As all of this has transpired, I keep being reminded of George Carlin’s words, (at the two-minute mark) that there is a “big club . . . and ain’t in it. . . . You and I are not in the big club."
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In my last piece, I talked about how Tim Geithner's job over the past five years has been to (a) print money, (b) give it to rich friends, and (c) deny everyone else legal and financial rights. This shows up everywhere, from the 0% you get on your savings account versus the insider information the rich get, to your lack of access to the Fed discount window. It's a symptom of bought government, which I try to expose on our show every day. . . . I find it laughable to hear President Obama's spokesperson talking about how his campaign represents the 99%. For starters He'd have to fire Geithner, to prove he's not the leader of a bought government. After all, it is Geithner who took a system indirectly rigged to profit the 1% at the expense of everyone else, and institutionalized and formalized it during a crisis.
The article Ratigan wrote at Huffpo reads like a long detailed indictment of Wall Street, but the word "indictment," when used in the context of Wall Street, is always and only metaphorical, as Ratigan points out:
It's not the scandals that matter, or rather, it's that the scandals are the new norm that matters. The larger context here, what the Occupiers are protesting, is that Tim Geithner formalized a financial elite and gave them special rights they had not previously had, notably a government guarantee for their investing, rights which ordinary people don't get. You can see this in bank borrowing spreads; large banks get a subsidy of $34 billion of dollars a year, simply because investors think their bonds are backed by the US government. This is now written into law - Dodd-Frank requires regulators to draw up a list of systemically significant firms. These are pretty explicitly firms that are too big to fail. Behind these investing advantages are legal advantages. No elite bankers have been prosecuted for the financial crisis, or the foreclosure crisis. NONE.
For Barack Obama to regain some of my trust, yes, he should immediately fire Tim Geithner and replace him with someone who will make Wall Street scream. And then Obama should do everything in his power to see that the big banks Ratigan describes as being on the "systemically significant firms" list are thoroughly investigated by funding hundreds of financially sophisticated investigators. To top it off, Obama should do everything in his power to effect thorough annual audits of the Federal Reserve. If he will do all of this, I'll start listening to Obama once again, though it will still be with considerable apprehension.
And for all of you tried and true "Democrats" out there who still believe that Barack Obama is a President that is on your side, it's time for all of you to closely consider the damage this President has done to our country (by judging him the way you would judge him had he been a Republican) and to start spending some time on the streets with the Occupy protesters.
Conservatives have figured out their moral basis and you see it on Wall Street: It includes: The primacy of self-interest. Individual responsibility, but not social responsibility. Hierarchical authority based on wealth or other forms of power. A moral hierarchy of who is "deserving," defined by success. And the highest principle is the primacy of this moral system itself, which goes beyond Wall Street and the economy to other arenas: family life, social life, religion, foreign policy, and especially government. Conservative "democracy" is seen as a system of governance and elections that fits this model.
Versus that which appears to be the frame of the Occupy Wall Street movement:
Democracy starts with citizens caring about one another and acting responsibly on that sense of care, taking responsibility both for oneself and for one's family, community, country, people in general, and the planet. The role of government is to protect and empower all citizens equally via The Public: public infrastructure, laws and enforcement, health, education, scientific research, protection, public lands, transportation, resources, art and culture, trade policies, safety nets, and on and on. Nobody makes it one their own. If you got wealthy, you depended on The Public, and you have a responsibility to contribute significantly to The Public so that others can benefit in the future. Moreover, the wealthy depend on those who work, and who deserve a fair return for their contribution to our national life. Corporations exist to make life better for most people. Their reason for existing is as public as it is private.
I occasionally listen to Rush Limbaugh's radio show because I consider it important to understand how it is that my views differ from those of people who oppose my views. Two days ago, I listened to Limbaugh bloviating about the people who are participating in the Occupy Protests springing up all over the United States. By some reports, there are more than 1,000 such protests ongoing, and they are actually occurring all over the world. Limbaugh announced, without hesitation, that these protesters are mostly unemployed, lazy, dirty, amoral, socially irresponsible and ignorant young people. Those who rely on Rush Limbaugh for their facts might thus be highly likely to object to these protests (including Occupy Wall Street) based on Limbaugh's description of the protesters. But is the description he gave to his many (though dwindling number of) listeners accurate? I had an opportunity to check this yesterday at the Occupy St. Louis protest in my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri.
Over the past few days, I've been quite occupied at my day job, and it was only while walking back to my law office from the federal courthouse at 4 pm yesterday that I spotted an organized march coming down Market Street in downtown St. Louis. I would estimate that there were almost 1,000 people marching. I didn't have my video camera with me, but I did have my Canon S95 pocket camera, so I got to work taking hand-held video and still shots of the protesters. Here's the finished product, which will allow you to actually meet the types of people who are participating in the Saint Louis Occupy protest. You can now be your own judge of what these protesters are like:
As you can see from the parade route pans and the interviews, none of these people fit the description given by Rush Limbaugh. Off camera, I asked most of the protesters about their "day jobs," and all of them indicated that they were gainfully employed, and in a wide variety of challenging fields. These "young" protesters of Occupy St. Louis ranged in age from 20's to their 80's. The on-camera statements of the people I interviewed show that they are well-informed, thoughtful, highly articulate and good-hearted. Many of the people I spoke with indicated that they are not going away. They have been waiting for a good time and place to express their deep concerns about the way our government works, and they have finally found what they've been looking for.
In case anyone is concerned that I intentionally skewed my sampling regarding who I interviewed, this was my method: I simply walked up to someone nearby and asked whether he or she would be willing to give a short statement about why they were attending the protest. I approached 12 people. One woman sympathetic to the protest apologized and said she couldn't talk on camera because she was a member of the news media. One man said that he supported the protest, but he'd rather not go on camera. Another man said he had never been part of a protest before, but he read about this protest recently and then said to himself, "Yeah, these people are right on these issues." The other nine people I approached agreed to give statements on camera. I'd like to thank each of these folks for taking the time to talk (I've listed their names in the order in which they appear in my video):
Al Vitale
Fred Raines (a retired economics professor, who said that he compiled the statistics displayed on one of the signs appearing on the video)
Apollonia Childs
Chrissy Kirchhoefer
Curtis Roberts
Michel Kiepe
Jeff Schaefer
Matt Ankney, and
Frances Madeson
Based on the above video, there is no lack of intellectual moorings for this protest. The focus is that our government, including politicians of both major parties, has been substantially bought by big business, and many destructive things are flowing from the consequent misuse of government power.
About a dozen protesters have have formed a camp in Kiener Plaza, a public gathering spot across the street from the towering downtown headquarters of Bank of America. I was told by several protesters that some of the camping protesters had been evicted from the camp over the past week, but that the intent is nonetheless maintain a presence in Kiener Plaza indefinitely. The Bank of America building has been the geographical focus of other recent protests, including this one in August, 2011. (A payday loan protest by a group called GRO occurred at this same bank last year--here's video). I should note that most of the people who work in the huge Bank of America building work for companies other than the Bank of America, yet the building remains a symbol of what has gone so very wrong with the political process.
I'd also like to mention that the St. Louis Police, who were out in the hundreds, were courteous and professional. The protesters were there merely to protest-to get their message out. There were no untoward incidents that would distract from the central message of the protests.
For more on yesterday's protest, see this description by St. Louis blogger Gloria Bilchik at Occasional Planet. See also, this post by another St. Louis blogger, Adam Shriver at St. Louis Activist Hub.
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