tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70088208622484225322024-03-05T11:52:30.529+00:00Revolutioneering"The real purpose of scientific method is to make sure Nature hasn't misled you into thinking you know something you don't actually know." - Robert PirsigAllyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.comBlogger136125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-57024638808570366132018-08-06T16:33:00.001+01:002018-08-06T16:33:39.797+01:00Laurie Penny is wrong. James Damore’s memo doesn’t say what she thinks it does.
<p dir="ltr">I.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Not all opinions are created equal, but some people seem to wish they were.  Author and journalist Laurie Penny has written a scathing opinion piece for The Guardian where she attempts a character assassination of James Damore, then goes on to argue that it’s “all right [sic] to discriminate against conservatives” and happily admits doing so herself.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Damore, you may remember as the former Google engineer who, last summer, was fired for writing and circulating a company-wide memo denouncing what he describes as “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber” and the “discriminatory practices” that Google employs in its pursuit of the goal of “50% representation of women in tech and leadership”.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Penny’s article was written in the context of Damore suing his former employer in a class action lawsuit for “discrimination against conservatives”.  In it, Penny describes Damore’s memo as “eye-poppingly sexist” and characterises Damore himself as a “bad actor” and a “sexist arsehole” and implies that he holds “certain ‘unorthodox’ ideas about social Darwinism”.</p>
<p dir="ltr">All of these things may be true, or they may not be.  They are not mutually exclusive.  It is possible for one to be a “sexist arsehole” and also to work for a company with an “Ideological Echo Chamber” that discriminates against conservatives.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I’m not here to defend James Damore’s character – I don’t know the guy; I don’t know if he’s a sexist arsehole or a social Darwinist or not.  All I know is I would not be comfortable making the assertions Penny is making about Damore on the basis of his Google memo alone.<br></p>
<p dir="ltr">II.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Penny doesn’t point to anything specific in Damore’s memo that she characterises as sexist.  She misrepresents his memo as being “about why men are naturally better at computers than women” and claiming “that it was wrong for Google… to be pursuing diversity.”.  However, both of these assertions are false.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Nowhere in his memo does Damore claim that men are naturally better at computers than women.  The closest to this claim that one can find in his memo is when he discusses “possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech”.  Here, Damore claims that “on average, men and women biologically differ in many ways”.</p>
<p dir="ltr">When making this point, Damore goes out of his way to make the following disclaimer:</p>
<p dir="ltr">“Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are ‘just.’  I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.  Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">Damore claims that, on average, women have more “openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas”, “a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men”, more “Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness.  Also higher agreeableness”, and more “Neuroticism”.  He also notes that men typically exhibit a “higher drive for status” than women.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Nowhere in his memo does Damore claim that any of this would justify any sort of unfair or discriminatory treatment of women with regard to hiring, promotions, advancement, etc.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Similarly, in his memo, Damore never claims that Google is wrong to pursue diversity.  Rather, he claims that they are going about it in the wrong way.  His issue is with Google’s methods rather than their goals or intentions.</p>
<p dir="ltr">One of the longest sections of his memo is devoted to exploring “Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap”.  Damore suggests, among other things, that Google could do more to “make software engineering more people-oriented”, to “allow those exhibiting cooperative behaviour to thrive”, “make tech and leadership less stressful”, and allow and endorse more part time work.</p>
<p dir="ltr">What Damore takes issue with are some of the approaches Google currently uses, such as “restricting programs and classes to certain genders or races”.  Damore is quite correct when he characterises such practices as “discriminatory”.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The trouble is that, as most children learn, two wrongs don’t make a right.  Discriminating against white men now doesn’t do anything to undo the mass discrimination and persecution of millions of women (not to mention the countless list of atrocities committed against various minorities) for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Note that I am in no way implying that the situation of a white man working at Google in the early 21st century who is denied access to a class because he is neither a woman nor a minority is the same as that of a woman who is denied the vote, or is unable to own property, or get an education, or have a career, just because she was unlucky enough to have been born female in the wrong place or time.  Still, two wrongs don’t make a right.  Even if one of the wrongs is far less severe than the other.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Among Damore’s suggestions for “Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap”, he advocates that we “treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).”</p>
<p dir="ltr">Do these sound like things a “sexist arsehole” would bother to go out of his way to talk about?<br></p>
<p dir="ltr">III.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The charitable interpretation of Penny is that she’s privy to more information about Damore than he expresses in his memo or that she discusses in her article – perhaps she knows him personally, or has had some sort of correspondence with him in which he revealed himself to be a sexist.  Such things are possible, but if this were the case, why didn’t Penny cite any other evidence to back up her assertions?</p>
<p dir="ltr">Normally I would say that the uncharitable interpretation is that Penny is out to shame / lower the status of Damore purely because he defended conservatives and conservative viewpoints in his memo and because she seems to identify as a “progressive” that makes conservatives and everything the stand for her sworn mortal enemies for all eternity and they must be criticised for everything they say and do because they are stupid, evil people.  But Penny has all but come right out and said as much herself – she writes it’s “all right [sic] to discriminate against conservatives” and happily admits doing so.</p>
<p dir="ltr">She goes on to strawman conservatives as believing that “not being allowed to scream and pull your pants down in public” is somehow equivalent to “centuries of violence and injustice” and “that people who die young of preventable diseases because they are unable to afford private healthcare have only themselves to blame for not working harder”.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Penny equates people who are “rightwing and conservative” with “bigots and bullies”, which seems to explain why she’s so happy to openly discriminate against them.</p>
<p dir="ltr">It seems that Penny hasn’t taken the time to properly understand conservative viewpoints.  I would bet that she would fail an ideological Turing test.  In this regard, Penny is part of the “ideological echo chamber” decried by Damore.  Rather than revealing Damore to be a sexist, she merely reveals herself to be a closed-minded ideologue, unwilling to engage with ideas that she disagrees with, preferring to attack the character of those who espouse them, rather than engage with the substance of their beliefs and arguments.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Damore doesn’t even self-identify as a conservative.  In a footnote to his memo he states that he considers himself a classical liberal.  I suspect that, when it comes to social policy, Penny shares more views in common with Damore than she realises.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The story of the boy who cried wolf comes to mind.  If you call everyone who disagrees with your methods a misogynist, a sexist, a racist, or a bigot, these words will lose their meaning and people will eventually stop taking your claims seriously.  Then what do you do when a real sexist – someone who actually wants to oppress women – or a real racist or bigot comes along?  When you’ve alienated many of your potential allies by outing them as “sexists” and desensitised many others to the terms through years of misuse?</p>
Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-74618475989016758412017-04-19T06:02:00.000+01:002017-04-19T06:02:01.713+01:00The Spirit Level: A Rebuttal - Part IV<h1 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 13pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></h1>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is part IV of IV of a rebuttal/review of 'The Spirit Level' by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. If you haven't already read them here are Parts <a href="http://revolutioneering.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-spirit-level-rebuttal-part-i.html">I</a>, <a href="http://revolutioneering.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-spirit-level-rebuttal-part-ii.html">II</a><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;">, and <a href="http://revolutioneering.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-spirit-level-rebuttal-part-iii.html">III</a>.</span></span></h1>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 13pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Further Thoughts</span></h1>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On Statistics & Correlations</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It really should not need to be pointed out, but it does – because it seems constantly to be forgotten – that </span><a href="https://xkcd.com/552/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">correlation does not equal causation</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The most famous example of this is the fact that there is a strong positive correlation between ice-cream consumption and drowning accidents. As explained excellently by Fallacy Man at </span><a href="http://thelogicofscience.com/2015/01/28/basic-statistics-part-2-correlation-vs-causation/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Logic of Science</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">:</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-2d5a765f-112a-6baa-416c-2695e851a625" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Both of them increase together and decrease together, yet it would clearly be absurd to claim that ice cream sales are causing people to drown. The reality is that both ice cream sales and drowning accidents are caused by a third variable: time of year. People consume more ice cream in the summer than in the winter and people spend more time in the water in the summer than in the winter (which leads to more drowning accidents). Thus, these factors are correlated, but not causally related.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is why the correlation between increased income inequality and increased ‘bad thing’ is not necessarily evidence that income inequality causes said ‘bad thing’ (or vice-versa).</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wilkinson and Pickett seem to have lost sight of this and spend most of the book citing example after example of correlations between income inequality and ‘bad thing’ x, y and z. Yet, they never actually describe a plausible causal mechanism which is driving these relationships, or rule out that the causality runs the other way, or rule out explanations based on various other factors which could be driving both income inequality and various health and social outcomes, or rule out their findings being the result of statistical quirks (despite insisting that they have, they present no evidence of such in their 300+ page book).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On </span><a href="http://spiritleveldelusion.blogspot.com/2010/05/god-and-movies.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Spirit Level Delusion Blog</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Christopher Snowdon plots a couple of graphs, the first showing belief in God (people responding “God is very important in my life”) versus inequality and the second depicting cinema attendance versus inequality in developed countries.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The point of this is that both of these graphs show strong correlations, in fact, as Snowdon observes, the correlations he finds here are stronger than many of the correlations cited by Wilkinson and Pickett in ‘The Spirit Level’ in support of their thesis that inequality causes all manner of ills.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As Snowdon points out with these examples, it would be extremely hasty to jump from these apparent correlations to the conclusion that religiosity or going to the cinema causes inequality or vice-versa.</span></div>
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<br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As Snowdon explains in his own words:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...even if you exclude chance as a possibility (and that would be very hasty), explaining them in terms of income inequality requires a vivid imagination and a near-obsession with wealth redistribution.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As ever, our willingness to accept statistical associations depends on our susceptibility to the underlying message. Perhaps a socialist atheist would find these associations compelling. Or maybe a Christian film buff could use them as an argument in favour of capitalism. The rest of us might shrug our shoulders and say 'so what?'”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Economist Tim Harford, writing on his </span><a href="http://timharford.com/2015/08/when-it-comes-to-banking-can-we-have-too-much-of-a-good-thing/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">blog</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, recounts a cautionary tale in statistics from econometrician Sir David Hendry:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“In 1980, the econometrician David Hendry investigated a key economic question: what causes inflation? Hendry looked to the data for insight. He speculated that a particular variable, X, was largely responsible. He assembled data on variable X, performed a few deft mathematical tweaks and compared his transformed X with the path of consumer prices in the UK. Graphing the result showed an astonishingly close fit.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The only snag: X was cumulative rainfall. Since consumer prices and cumulative rainfall both rise over time, Hendry had an excellent platform for finding his spurious correlation. Statistical sleight of hand did the rest.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hendry wanted to demonstrate just how easy it was to produce plausible nonsense by misusing the tools of statistics. ‘It is meaningless to talk about “confirming” theories when spurious results are so easily obtained,’ he wrote.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On Normative Sociology</span></h2>
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<a href="http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~jheath/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Joseph Heath</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, discusses the problem of what he calls ‘normative sociology’ </span><a href="http://induecourse.ca/on-the-problem-of-normative-sociology/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">on the ‘In Due Course’ blog</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Professor Heath defines ‘normative sociology’ as the pernicious habit to study what we would </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">like</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the causes of a problem to be to the neglect of the actual causes, with reference to an offhand joke by </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Nozick" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Robert Nozick</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in ‘</span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Anarchy-State-Utopia-Robert-Nozick/dp/063119780X" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anarchy, State and Utopia</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’. Here’s Heath’s explanation:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“When this goes uncorrected, you can get the phenomenon of ‘politically correct’ explanations for various social problems – where there’s no hard evidence that A actually causes B, but where people, for one reason or another, think that A ought to be the explanation for B. This can lead to a situation in which denying that A is the cause of B becomes morally stigmatized, and so people affirm the connection primarily because they feel obliged to, not because they’ve been persuaded by any evidence.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is essentially the converse of David Hume’s </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is-ought fallacy</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Here people are reasoning what </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the cause from what they think </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ought to be</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the cause.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Heath uses racism as an example of this ‘politically correct’ behaviour:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I routinely hear extraordinary causal powers being ascribed to ‘racism’ – claims that far outstrip available evidence. Some of these claims may well be true, but there is a clear moral stigma associated with questioning the causal connection being posited – which is perverse, since the question of what causes what should be a purely empirical one. Questioning the connection, however, is likely to attract charges of seeking to ‘minimize racism.’ (Indeed, many people, just reading the previous two sentences, will already be thinking to themselves ‘Oh my God, this guy is seeking to minimize racism.’) There also seems to be a sense that, because racism is an incredibly bad thing, it must also cause a lot of other bad things. But what is at work here is basically an intuition about how the moral order is organized, not one about the causal order. It’s always possible for something to be extremely bad (intrinsically, as it were), or extremely common, and yet causally not all that significant.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He goes on to further break this down into four main variants:</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: upper-roman; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wanting a policy lever</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: upper-roman; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Worrying about “blaming the victim”</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: upper-roman; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Picking one side of a correlation</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: upper-roman; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Metaphysical views</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I won’t get into the details of the first two variants, but the latter two are of particular relevance here. On ‘picking one side of a correlation’, Heath observes:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.4364000320434576; margin-bottom: 11pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Statistical analysis often reveals a correlation between two things, but as we all know, correlation does not imply causation. If A tends to go hand-in-hand with B, it could be that 1) A causes B, or 2) B causes A, or 3) A and B are mutually reinforcing, or 4) there is some third thing, C, that causes both A and B. It is, however, very very common for statistical correlations to be reported as causal ones. Because this sort of sloppy thinking happens all the time, it’s not so difficult for people who would like to believe that A causes B to respond to evidence of correlation between the two as confirmation of their view.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quite. I would add that there is a fifth explanation of any apparent correlation between A and B: chance. If you look at enough permutations of enough variables, you’re bound to find some that appear to be correlated as a result of pure chance. I think Heath implicitly acknowledges this with his use of the phrase ‘...tends to go hand-in hand…’, suggesting that chance can be ruled out if the same correlation appears repeatedly in different settings or across long periods of time.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the ‘metaphysical views’ point, Professor Heath claims [emphasis added]:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...often there is a sense that the moral awfulness of some action or episode requires that it have enormous consequences. This can easily lead to the view that anyone who denies the causal effects is in some way minimizing or downplaying the moral awfulness.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“A good example of this… involves attitudes towards rising inequality. Many people think this is very bad. And yet, there is also a desire to believe that, if it is very bad, then it must also cause a lot of other bad things. (</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s book The Spirit Level is an example of this tendency</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, as is Joseph Stiglitz’s The Price of Inequality.)”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“And yet, anyone who denies that inequality has these effects is liable to stand accused of seeking to makes excuses for it...”</span></div>
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<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On Inequality & Absolute Wellbeing</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/economics/income-inequality-more-reasons-not-to-care/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Writing for the Adam Smith Institute</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Ben Southwood suggests that we shouldn’t care about income inequality at all.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Referring to an </span><a href="http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/economics/the-case-against-caring-about-inequality-at-all/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">earlier post</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Sam Bowman, Southwood notes the fact that in studies, people have been shown to have </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">extremely</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> poor knowledge about the actual levels and extent of income inequality in their societies. Given a choice of five possible income distributions, survey respondents barely do better than random chance at selecting the one which most accurately depicts the society in which they live. There is an enormous disconnect between reality and the public's perceptions when it comes to income distributions and inequality of incomes.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In an earlier </span><a href="http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/tax-spending/why-does-the-son-rise/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">blog post</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Southwood considers the roles of luck and education on success. For anyone familiar with the literature on this topic it should come as no surprise that investment in education, once you control for selection effects, does not pay the dividends that many seem to think it will. This should serve as a stark reminder that luck plays a role, causality is rarely linear or even obvious and that the desire for an effective policy lever does not mean that one actually exists.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Warren Meyer (AKA Coyote), discussing inequality and absolute well-being on his </span><a href="http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2015/10/do-we-care-about-income-inequality-or-absolute-well-being-2.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">blog</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, compares Denmark and Sweden (countries which are often pointed to by Democrats as ones to be emulated in terms of their redistributive policies) to the US in terms of disposable household income by income decile, using data from the </span><a href="http://www.lisdatacenter.org/data-access/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">LIS Cross-national Data Center</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and finds that:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...all the way down to at least the 10th percentile poorest people, the poor in the US are as well or better off than the poor in Denmark and Sweden. And everyone else, including those at the 20th and 25th percentile we would still likely call ‘poor’, are way better off in the US.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Or, as he summarises it:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...while the middle class in the US is richer than the middle class in Denmark, and the rich in the US are richer than the rich in Denmark, the poor in the US are not poorer than those in Denmark.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And isn't this what we really care about? The absolute well-being of the poor?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He concludes that :</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All this talk about reducing income inequality by emulating Denmark is thus not about making the poor better off, but just about cutting the rich and middle class down to size.”</span></div>
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<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Spirit Level Fallacy</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The final chapter of ‘The Spirit Level Delusion’ Christopher Snowdon titles ‘The Spirit Level Fallacy’. In it, he argues that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...The Spirit Level uses the statistical methods of epidemiology...”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, many of which, he points out, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...were developed by the botanist and statistician Ronald Aylmer Fisher in the 1920s for the purpose of studying plants.”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Snowdon points out that these methods were originally applied to randomised, controlled experiments, where a single variable (such as the application of fertiliser) could be altered between two otherwise identical groups of samples. Things inevitably become more complicated when trying to study groups of people, which are more complex, and differ in many more ways that cannot be controlled by the experimenter. This is taken to the extreme when comparing data for entire nations:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Comparing aggregate data from whole countries is as far from the randomised controlled double-blind trial as it is possible to get under the mantle of science. Neither random nor controlled, ecological studies (ie. comparing whole nations) allow unlimited scope for interpretation. The researcher can focus on any variable over any period of time amongst infinitely varied populations. The pitfalls of using international data to make broad assumptions is so well known that it even has its own term—the ‘</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ecological fallacy</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Snowdon sums it up as:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The Spirit Level relies on the conceit that wealthy countries are basically the same, with inequality being the main difference between them. Consequently any disparity in social problems must be the result of inequality. This is faulty logic and a classic ecological fallacy.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He continues:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It takes a peculiarly blinkered view of the world to portray Sweden, a country which has not fought a war since 1814, as being fundamentally the same as Israel, except in its distribution of wealth. Or to equate Spain and Portugal, both fascist dictatorships until the 1970s, with Belgium. Or to imagine that a culturally homogenous, traditional Asian country like Japan can only be distinguished from the United States by reference to the gap between the richest and poorest 20% of the population.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Hong Kong and Singapore could certainly be cited as proof that economic freedom leads to greater inequality. What cannot be shown is that this inequality has led to ill-health or more social problems. If anything, the reverse is true.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The success of Hong Kong and Singapore in no way proves that inequality makes things </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">better</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. That would be to replace one fallacious argument with another.”</span></div>
<br />
<h1 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 13pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Conclusion</span></h1>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the final chapter of ‘The Spirit Level Delusion’, under the subtitle of ‘Only Connect’, Christopher Snowdon observes that there is a strong correlation between latitude of a country’s capital city and the education attainment of its 15 year olds. He wryly remarks </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Meaningless though this correlation is, it cannot be explained by chance.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Snowdon sums the whole thing up better than I could, so I shall borrow some of his words here:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“In truth, one can find associations anywhere.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...these statistical associations—strong though they are—tell us no more about the world we live in than the graphs that could be produced that show that foreign aid ‘causes’ theft or that recycling ‘causes’ suicide...”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The single-minded focus on income inequality requires us to ignore countless differences between countries comprising hundreds of millions of people. If we can overcome that hurdle of logic, we must take another leap of faith and believe that the widening gap between rich and poor is the single most important development of the last forty years. Seismic changes in society—the decline of religion, women's liberation, the sexual revolution, multiculturalism, individualism—must be ignored in favour of a theory of everything that rests on the populations psychological response to inequality.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“People are unequal in many ways, of which income is just one. The inequality theorists never tell us what is so special about income that makes its uneven distribution so uniquely dangerous that society needs remaking in order to afford protection.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“If we must compete for status, there are worse ways to do so than by comparing the fruits of our labour. For most of human history, status has been earned through violence, promiscuity and oppression.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Even if, through a miracle of socialism, you are able to prevent people from using wealth as a barometer of success, they will find other ways—perhaps more harmful ways—of asserting their position in society.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Driven by a hunger for improved circumstance, society has reached unparalleled heights of happiness, health and prosperity. Pessimists and misanthropes insist that this long road of progress has come to an end. They always have. But given the choice between chasing happiness on and endless road or having our desires curbed and our horizons lowered, most of us will tolerate a little status anxiety for the freedom to keep on moving.”</span></div>
Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-39699654256953882802017-04-12T06:11:00.000+01:002017-04-12T06:11:07.695+01:00The Spirit Level: A Rebuttal - Part III<h1 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is part III of IV of a rebuttal/review of 'The Spirit Level' by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. If you haven't already read them here are Parts <a href="http://revolutioneering.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-spirit-level-rebuttal-part-i.html">I</a> and <a href="http://revolutioneering.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-spirit-level-rebuttal-part-ii.html">II</a><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;">.</span></span></h1>
<h1 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 13pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Part Three: A Better Society</span></h1>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chapter 13: Dysfunctional societies</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In chapter 13, Wilkinson and Pickett summarise the previous 9 chapters and, in the process, reiterate some of what they originally set out in Part 1 of the book. They look at possible alternative explanations for the relationships observed and rule out cultural factors (all too quickly in my opinion). They rule out ethnic divisions and prevalence of single parenthood. They also rule out – again, too quickly in my opinion – the different histories of the countries considered.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-2d5a765f-1128-2ac4-e477-0802ad2c67b4" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wilkinson and Pickett then finally set out their case for why they believe the relationships they have observed between income inequality and various health and social problems are </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">causal</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They rule out material living standards as the underlying factor, on the basis that their index is not significantly related to average incomes. They also rule out government social expenditure as an explanation. Considering possible third factors, which may significantly influence both income inequality and the various health and social problems, they state:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“As for other possible hidden factors, it seems unlikely that such an important causal factor will suddenly come to light which not only determines inequality but which also causes everything from poor health to obesity and high prison populations.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is an </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">argument from incredulity/ignorance</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and is logically invalid</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Let me suggest some possible alternative causal factors:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Intelligence</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Conscientiousness</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Self-Discipline</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tenacity</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Network Effects</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This list is by no means exhaustive – just what I could come up with with two minutes of thought – yet Wilkinson and Pickett have not ruled out any of these – or any other such factors – as possibilities. Indeed, they haven’t discussed them at all, and appear to have overlooked them entirely.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet it’s easy to see how more intelligent, conscientious, self-disciplined, tenacious and better connected people will </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">tend to be</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> better educated, earn more, stay in better shape and avoid substance abuse or a life of crime than those less well endowed with such attributes. Moreover, there’s no particular reason to think that these attributes would be evenly distributed amongst all members of society anyway; it is well known, for example, that intelligence has a high degree of heritability. It is also not difficult to see how conscientious, self-disciplined, tenacious and well-connected parents might pass at least some of these traits onto their offspring.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don’t want to be misinterpreted here, I am emphatically </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> saying that all of the higher income people in society are necessarily the most intelligent or conscientious people in that society, or that lower income people are lower income because they are stupid or lazy. Of course other factors, such as geography, personal connections, and above all, luck, also play a role.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You can be incredibly intelligent and hard-working and still not succeed (the definition of ‘success’ is a conversation for another day) through no fault of your own, just down to bad luck. Conversely, lazy idiots can and do become successful due to good fortune or having all the right connections or just by being in the right place at the right time.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m saying that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">all else being equal</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, intelligent, conscientious people, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">on average</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, will tend to be more successful (at whatever is the focus of their attention) than stupid, lazy people. Of course, in the real world, all else never is equal.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chapter 14: Our social inheritance</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In chapter 14, the authors discuss social status, friendship, and cooperation and contrast these with rivalry and competition. They reference the well known </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ultimatum game</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> social experiments where people have been found to be willing to punish what they perceive as unfair behaviour, even at a small cost to themselves – this is evidence against the notion that people will always seek to maximise their material self-interest; a notion which is a grotesque caricature of how economists see the World.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wilkinson and Pickett also discuss the differences in the social orders of our closest primate relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos. They talk about the evolutionary development of the modern human brain and discuss again the impact of stress on newborn babies and infants.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They round off the chapter with a discussion of oxytocin and social experiments showing that the brain’s ‘reward centres’ are stimulated by mutual cooperation and that:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...the pain of social exclusion involves the same areas of the brain as are stimulated when someone experiences physical pain.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Near the beginning of chapter 14, Wilkinson and Pickett claim that:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Evidence that material self-interest is the governing principle of human life seems to be everywhere. The efficiency of the market economy seems to prove that greed and avarice are, as economic theory assumes, the overriding human motivations.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I know of no ‘economic theory’ that assumes anything of the sort. The authors seem to have conflated greed (or avarice) with self-interest, but these terms are not synonymous. As an example, it is certainly in my </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">self-interest</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to look after my health and physical well being, but one could hardly call my desire to lead a healthy life </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">greedy</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">avaricious</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. This is a facile interpretation of ‘economic theory’ which betrays a deep ignorance of economics and the history of economic thought on the part of the authors. I can only surmise that neither Wilkinson nor Pickett have had the opportunity to read much Adam Smith, as a cursory reading of his ‘Theory of Moral Sentiments’ ought to be sufficient inoculation against this misapprehension.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Other than this, there’s not a huge amount to comment on in chapter 14. The remainder of the chapter contains nothing new or particularly controversial and Wilkinson and Pickett do not put forward any further arguments or present any new evidence in favour of their main thesis that inequality of income causes all manner of social problems.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chapter 15: Equality and sustainability</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In chapter 15, the authors concern themselves with the environment and global warming / climate change. They ask whether it will be possible to reduce carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions without sacrificing material living standards and consider whether the goals of increased equality of income and reducing CO₂ emissions can be achieved simultaneously, or whether they are at odds with one another.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They pick out a small group of countries which they show circled at the top-left of Figure 15.1 (p. 219), including Barbados, Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, France, Jamaica, Mexico, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland; these are all countries with a high life expectancy, but relatively low CO₂ emissions per capita.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They further expand on this with Figure 15.2 (p. 221), which shows the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) ecological footprint per capita against the UN Human Development Index (HDI) for 2003. Wilkinson and Pickett note that only one country, Cuba, manages to combine a high level of development (defined as having an HDI of above 0.8) with an ‘ecological footprint’ which they define as ‘globally sustainable’.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s interesting that Cuba is the one country which really stands out here. Given the political regime in Cuba I am extremely sceptical of any official figures coming out of the country (as I would be for, say, China or North Korea or Venezuela for similar reasons). The official healthcare statistics coming out of Cuba are particularly dubious. One should always be skeptical when the people reporting a particular statistic have strong incentives to exaggerate or misreport it in order to make themselves look good.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Later in the chapter, in the context of discussing a system of tradable carbon rations, Wilkinson and Pickett state [emphasis added]:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To safeguard the poor</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> it may be necessary to prevent people selling unused parts of their ration till the end of the period it covers, so only allowances already saved could be traded.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Their choice of phrasing here is interesting, they imply that ‘the poor’ (as if ‘the poor’ are a single, unchanging, homogenous group) cannot look after themselves or make decisions that are in their own best interests; that the government needs to restrict poor people's freedom to make their own choices and live their own lives as they see fit, but it’s all for their own good don’t you see? It reeks of arrogant paternalism.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wilkinson and Pickett then discuss the concept of a ‘steady-state economy’ first proposed by Herman Daly. They suggest limiting world oil and coal production as an:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...effective way of limiting global warming. Innovation and change would then be concentrated on using finite resources more effectively for the benefit of humankind.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Full disclosure: I work in the oil & gas industry, so oil (and to a lesser extent natural gas) prices and production directly affect my livelihood. Cynics will take this to mean that I’m a shill for big oil and will dismiss anything I have to say on the topic as being written out of narrowly-defined self-interest.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don’t think imposing arbitrary limits on production or use of certain resources is a very judicious policy. Who is to decide on the limits? How are they to be set? This is simply too complex a solution when a much more straightforward and more equitable one, namely a carbon tax, exists. We want to avoid meddling with markets as much as possible. If we want to provide an incentive to do less of something, tax it, if we want to provide an incentive to do more of something, subsidise it, but don’t go about arbitrarily setting artificial prices or limits on production or consumption, that’s a sure fire way of creating an even bigger mess.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As Arnold Kling </span><a href="http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/sustainable-capitalism/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">points out</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Capitalism is inherently sustainable, relentlessly producing more human satisfaction using fewer resources. What environmentalists call ‘sustainability’ ought to be called primitivism, producing less human satisfaction using more resources.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chris Edwards, of the Cato Institute, also </span><a href="http://www.cato.org/blog/free-market-recycling" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">observes</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...the market is the best friend of the natural world because it generates constant pressure to innovate, to cut costs, and to use resources efficiently. The price system prompts consumers and businesses to minimize consumption of dwindling resources.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Edwards goes on to provide the example of Bob ‘Hoop’ Hooper of Pittsburgh, who makes his living ‘scrapping’ or finding and collecting scrap metal and selling it on to scrap dealers.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On page 229, Wilkinson and Pickett present, in Figure 15.4, a graph of average annual work hours versus the ratio of earnings of the 90th to the 50th percentiles for a range of countries. They have taken this graph from an article titled 'Emulation, Inequality, and Work Hours: Was Thorsten Veblen Right?' by S. Bowles and Y. Park [ref. 352] (published November 2003 and available to read </span><a href="http://www.econ-pol.unisi.it/quaderni/409.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is the original graph:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="525" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/oktCv2eC9_bvI24Tq6BScUBOWAGNOrenYFtKuqiBL0-lz9n7ijIN_U7zjS-1MUPShevDeL6CXsDfKWVAZndqyU9TohSFnFYPP0mEe05JMnJH6XWMfn4gAJjYz03wD9eZighdhew1" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624" /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As pointed out by Christopher Snowdon on </span><a href="http://spiritleveldelusion.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/working-hours.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Spirit Level Delusion Blog</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> this graph differs from the others presented in the Spirit Level in two significant respects:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Firstly, it uses a very different measure of ‘inequality’ than the authors use throughout the rest of the book; namely, the the ratio of earnings of the 90th to the 50th percentiles rather than Wilkinson and Pickett's typically preferred measure of the ratio between the top and bottom quintiles.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As Snowdon observes, this has a considerable effect on the relative rankings of the various countries. The example he gives is that by this measure France is much more unequal than the UK or Italy. Compare the figure above with Figure 2.2 of the Spirit Level (p. 20).</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Secondly, only 10 countries are individually identified on this graph. Again, as pointed out by Snowdon, we do not know which other countries are included or excluded from the data here. Are all of the unlabelled data points rich countries? Poor countries? A mixture of both? Are all of the countries studied in The Spirit Level included in this measure? For example, where are Japan, Portugal or New Zealand?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Something which immediately caught my eye with this chart was that there are a lot of data points. In fact I was sad enough to count them all; and, if I counted correctly, there are 170 countries represented on the previous chart. That’s most of the World, compare that to the far more selective dataset of 21 rich countries that Wilkinson and Pickett chose to study in the rest of the book. Why the disparity?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Snowdon suggests that Wilkinson and Pickett have relied on this chart from a single study, rather than seeking out the actual OECD data because that data doesn’t support their position. He recreates this plot using the OECD data on </span><a href="http://spiritleveldelusion.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/working-hours.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Spirit Level Delusion Blog</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and shows no significant correlation between long working hours and inequality. Snowdon then asserts that there is a stronger correlation between GNI per capita and working hours and provides a second chart to support this claim.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don’t know exactly where Snowdon got his numbers from, but I can’t recreate his chart from the available OECD data (the link that Snowdon provides on his blog appears to be defective). For what it’s worth, I can’t recreate Figure 15.4 from the Spirit Level from this data either (Bowles and Park have rather unhelpfully cited the original source as merely “OECD Labor Market Statistics Data Set”). But, I’ve had a go at plotting both relationships from the OECD data below.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here’s my plot of average annual work hours versus the ratio of earnings of the 90th to the 50th percentiles</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="379" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Pdx_d-Jp5cHQ6M1RRHZZPHReuAwSsz6DaMTpKus94wwzRtOLf-aVlei2n95qKHcaobINEw0AYaGW32yYVKkERcQ3CRpIkjaF1M7vGQZ5JimQZ4rE_xkRoaeIM4k7WKkDQ03M-Jo" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="530" /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And here’s my plot of average annual work hours versus GNI per capita:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="379" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/HYGgAN-DJa3UxL52H3vG7pJrqFJTnCNiRQs5O1N8BRt9Wf_DHzEcd7apjmRX9tnvifMprRNUcjKJjTSQzUQHp-f5ktdOyT6hshyeIgRhTefjWvesu2SRjJTiQxMRApRCm6-78Wk" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="530" /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For reference I’ve used average annual working hours from </span><a href="http://stats.oecd.org/viewhtml.aspx?datasetcode=ANHRS&lang=en" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and income distribution data from </span><a href="http://stats.oecd.org/viewhtml.aspx?datasetcode=IDD&lang=en#" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for the year 2004.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Based on this data, working hours appear to correlate with both income inequality (at least based on the ratio of earnings between the 90th and the 50th percentiles) </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> with GNI per capita. The inequality data appears to be a tighter fit to the trend (R</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 6.6pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">2</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> value of 0.56 compared to 0.41), however both datasets appear to show relatively strong correlations.</span></div>
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<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chapter 16: Building the future</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In chapter 16, Wilkinson and Pickett begin by stating that focussing their attention on inequalities </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">within</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> our societies:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...does not mean ignoring the international inequalities between rich and poor countries.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They assert that more equal countries are more likely to take positions which are beneficial to developing countries on issues such as international trade agreements, or negotiations on reducing carbon emissions. They do not, however, provide any evidence to support this assertion.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In chapter 8 of ‘The Spirit Level Delusion’, Christopher Snowdon argues that ‘The Spirit Level’ is a “deeply political book” and that Wilkinson and Pickett are essentially using it to push a socialist agenda. That their goal here is bigger government and higher taxes largely for their own sake rather than there being any evidence that these things would improve prosperity, happiness, or any of the chosen measures of wellbeing cited in the book – with the sole exception of reducing inequality of income in much the same way as we could reduce inequality of height by chopping off the feet of anyone over 6 feet tall.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This all becomes obvious in chapter 16 of ‘The Spirit Level’. Having, in previous chapters, satisfied themselves that achieving equality of income is a goal worthwhile pursuing, the authors go on to ask the question of how we can make our societies more equal? To this end, they advocate a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“continuous stream of small changes”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> rather than a revolution. They assure readers that reducing material inequality does not mean </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“lowering standards or levelling to a common mediocrity”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Although, quite how this could be even possible for those of currently above average means is not explained.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_R._Henderson" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Professor David R. Henderson</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, </span><a href="http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/06/post_10.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">links</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to an article by Branko Milanovic in the Review of Economics and Statistics titled "</span><a href="http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/REST_a_00432#.VgUoEflVhBd" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Global Inequality of Opportunity: How Much of our Income is Determined by Where We Live?</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">" </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here’s the paper’s abstract:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Suppose that all people in the world are allocated only two characteristics over which they have (almost) no control: country of residence and income distribution within that country. Assume further that there is no migration. We show that more than one-half of variability in income of world population classified according to their household per capita in 1% income groups (by country) is accounted for by these two characteristics. The role of effort or luck cannot play a large role in explaining the global distribution of individual income.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Milanovic backs up his assumption of zero migration by pointing out that:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Assignment to country is fate, decided at birth, for approximately 97% of the people in the world: less than 3% of the world's population lives in countries where they were not born.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Professor Henderson reproduces the following graph from Milanovic’s paper:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="457" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/ny0kXwJTXQhHtzTXET1QTiKwyDLlnWL8CaZqEzNBjUmx2W4ULa2mDRZVZ6tHUYx-bspNmLU_Sxjv3T6gaEsavcpxn83DrhE8k6r4i8d8QyQWxAUHz0XZJwLl7yANaFQPjw=s1600" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624" /></span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The graph isn’t labelled particularly well, let me try and explain it:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The x-axis is an individual’s position within their own country’s income distribution. The y-axis is the same individual’s position on the global income distribution. The figures for this particular graph are for the year 2008.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, for example, someone at the 20th percentile within the USA is at about the 85th percentile globally, or someone at the 100th percentile in India is at the 80th percentile globally.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As professor Henderson alludes to, the last sentence of the paper’s abstract is not entirely accurate. Read it again [emphasis added this time]:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The role of effort </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">or luck</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> cannot play a large role in explaining the global distribution of individual income.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What is being born into a rich society if not luck? Surely it is luck whether one happens to have been born on one or the other side of an imaginary line? But I’m getting sidetracked here. The point I wanted to make with the previous chart was that the global income distribution differs substantially from that of the income distributions of wealthy, industrialised, ‘western’ countries, such as the US and the UK. Of the five countries featured in the chart, the global income distribution looks most like that of China. That is, if you want to imagine a World which is, overall, about as wealthy as the real World which we presently inhabit, but in which there is total equality of income, the level of that equal income would be roughly that of the median Chinese worker today (or rather 2008).</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/people/rweagley/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Robert O. Weagley</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, writing in </span><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2010/06/24/one-big-difference-between-chinese-and-american-households-debt/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Forbes</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in 2010 gives the average annual household income in China, converted to dollars as $10,220 (this is equivalent to about £6,700). Imagine a World in which every household earns £6,700. I don’t think that this is quite the Utopia that Wilkinson and Pickett envisage when they dream about eliminating inequality of incomes, but this is the reality that they, and that we all, would be faced with if we could today flip a magical switch to suddenly equalise all incomes worldwide.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Please note that I am emphatically not arguing that it is fair or just or desirable that there are many people in the World today living on incomes far lower than this, or that such a state of affairs necessarily has to be maintained in order that we in rich countries can continue to enjoy levels of income and wealth unimaginable to most people living in Sub-Saharan Africa, or South Asia, or Latin America, or large parts of the Middle-East.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am here simply pointing out that these statistics are inconsistent with Wilkinson and Pickett’s stated belief that reducing material inequality does not mean: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“lowering standards or levelling to a common mediocrity”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There seems to be an incredibly widespread misconception, where everyone thinks that they are much further down the income distribution scale than they actually are and there are plenty of wealthy ‘others’ who can or should be paying for everything which they expect the government to provide, but this is simply not the case. This is a point to which I shall return shortly. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wilkinson and Pickett reference George Bernard Shaw as their inspiration for the idea that:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Wealth, particularly inherited wealth, is a poor indicator of genuine merit…”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I agree. Inherited wealth is useless as an indicator of ‘merit’, but so are many other things, such as degrees Celsius, bananas and musical tastes. This point, whilst true, is entirely uninformative. Here, we could easily get lost down an enormous rabbit hole by getting into the question of exactly what constitutes ‘merit’ anyway and how are we supposed to measure it? Wilkinson and Pickett do not explore these questions in their book (I don’t blame them for that – this is a topic that could easily warrant it’s own work of several volumes). As such, the discussion of whether ‘merit’ even exists as a coherent concept is best saved for another day.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wilkinson and Pickett state that they see no indication of lower standards of achievement within more equal societies, and reference a study</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of over 1600 baseball players, in 29 different teams, over a 9 year period, which found that:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“..major league baseball teams with smaller income differences among players do significantly better than the more unequal ones.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One could also reference the findings of Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, which they report in their 2009 book ‘</span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-England-Lose-phenomena-explained/dp/0007301111" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why England Lose</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Kuper and Szymanski looked at the spending of 40 English Premier League and Championship football clubs over a 19 year period between 1978 and 1997 and found a very strong positive correlation between player salaries and league success (i.e. the teams which tend to do well are also the teams which tend to pay the highest player salaries). They report that over this period, spending on player salaries explained a massive 92% of the total variation in league position.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kuper and Szymanski also report that for the more recent period of 1998 to 2007, spending on player salaries explained 89% of the variation in league position for a larger group of 58 clubs. They print a chart on page 62 of their book</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> which shows this correlation for the 1998 to 2007 period. They report an R</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 6.6pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">2</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> value of an impressive 0.88; it is clear from the chart that the data fit this correlation extremely closely and there are remarkably few outliers.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have re-created this chart below:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="387" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/MUYNWerrwK8Ipbb-FgOIh5FKYlY6vXFMs9fisxdFwWcBkuB4k9oir7rhLkST_XYJHldZNo9vKn0YZM4kwoXHETjzPgvxVmGodMjBN9ahSw11s3YDxMgSRDB4vIEE8MDNnMjEwG87" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="531" /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘Ws’</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is the team's spending on players wages relative to the average and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘p’</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is the team's average league position over the 9 year period considered.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course, with Kuper and Szymanski’s finding, as with Wilkinson and Pickett’s, the causation plausibly runs either or both ways here. The usual caveat of ‘correlation does not necessarily imply causation’ still applies, as always. In this particular case though, I’d be extremely surprised if there wasn’t some sort of causal relationship between player salaries and team performance. Teams which are more successful will tend to attract more fans, more TV rights, more lucrative sponsorship deals, etc. In short, they will make (or at least turn-over) more money than less successful teams. This enables them to pay higher transfer fees and higher player (and coaching staff, etc.) salaries, which helps them to attract and retain the best talent, which in turn makes them more likely to win games and achieve success in the league. There’s a self-reinforcing cycle here: greater financial success tends to bring greater sporting success and greater sporting success tends to bring greater financial success.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, we have one study showing teams that pay players </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">more equally</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> enjoy more success and one study showing teams that simply pay players </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">more</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> have more success, albeit in two different sports and two different countries. Which effect is larger? I’m not sure it’s possible to say based on the available data; unfortunately Wilkinson and Pickett don’t provide us with any actual figures from the study they cite and the paper itself is behind a paywall. I’m not sure how comparable the figures would be with Kuper and Szymanski’s anyway.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wilkinson and Pickett go on to discuss some recent trends in income inequality in the US and the UK. They observe that income inequality in the UK, as measured by the ratio of income of the richest 10% to the poorest 10% of the population, has risen between 1975 and 2006. From Figure 16.1 (p. 240), it can be seen that this largely occurred between about 1979 and 1992 – with a particularly large jump between 1986 and 1988. By this measure, by 1992 inequality had risen to almost 1.5 times what it had been in 1975. It then declined slightly between 1992 and 1996 and then remained relatively stable at around 1.3 to 1.4 times the 1975 level for the next decade.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s a similar story for the United States, as illustrated in Figure 16.2 (p. 240), albeit the rise in inequality there has been slightly more gradual – with the exception of a fairly substantial jump between 1982 and 1983. Most of the increase occurred over the period 1976 to 1993, by which point inequality had peaked at 1.4 times the 1975 level. It declined slightly over the next few years, but remained around 1.3 to 1.4 times the 1975 level for the next decade from 1994 to 2004.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The authors use this data to make the point that income differences can and do change substantially over time and can change quite rapidly.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They continue:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Confining his attention largely to the USA, [Paul] Krugman argues that, rather than market forces, rising inequality was driven by ‘changes in institutions, norms and political power’. He emphasizes the weakening of trade unions, the abandonment of productivity sharing agreements, the influence of the political right, and government changes in taxes and benefits. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He could also have added the failure to maintain adequate minimum wage legislation.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Krugman could have added the failure to maintain “adequate”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> minimum wage legislation to his list. He didn’t here, however he has previously espoused support for minimum wage legislation on his New York Times blog ‘The Conscience of a Liberal’.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don’t want to get too sidetracked on the folly of minimum wage legislation. That is a horse that has been repeatedly flogged, but stubbornly refuses to die. It has been addressed by a multitude of economists that aren’t Paul Krugman, perhaps most </span><a href="http://cafehayek.com/2013/12/again-more-on-the-minimum-wage.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">thoroughly</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><a href="http://cafehayek.com/2013/12/does-paul-krugman-recognize-that-he-just-emasculated-the-case-for-minimum-wage-legislation.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">consistently</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by </span><a href="http://cafehayek.com/2013/11/open-letter-to-u-s-labor-secretary-thomas-perez.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Don Boudreaux</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> on his </span><a href="http://cafehayek.com/?s=minimum+wage" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cafe Hayek</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> blog, but also notably by </span><a href="http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/03/the_vice_of_sel.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bryan Caplan</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="http://offsettingbehaviour.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/minimum-wages.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Eric Crampton</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct1Moeaa-W8" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anthony Davies</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/three-axes-the-minimum-wage-and-fair-trade/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Arnold Kling</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="http://www.thebigquestions.com/2013/12/02/minimum-insight/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Steven Landsburg</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (in a direct response to Krugman), </span><a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/679626" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thomas MaCurdy</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2014/07/27/where-is-the-monopsony-power/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam Ozimek</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="http://www.aei.org/publication/ny-times-on-the-minimum-wage-1987-0-00-vs-2014-at-least-10-10-maybe-18-they-had-it-right-27-years-ago/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mark Perry</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (who cheekily cites Paul Krugman’s own Microeconomics textbook), </span><a href="http://theunbrokenwindow.com/2015/04/10/adventures-in-indignation/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Michael Rizzo</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="http://utopiayouarestandinginit.com/2015/02/23/thomas-sowell-on-the-minimum-wage/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thomas Sowell</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/07/britains_new_mi.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scott Sumner</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2015/04/01/selfenforcing-discrimination-n1978280" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Walter Williams</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and of course the great </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca8Z__o52sk" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Milton Friedman</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ll restrict my comments here merely to the following: I think that government mandated minimum wages are an egregious infringement of freedom of contract. In addition, they are a truly terrible anti-poverty measure; there are means of achieving the ends that supporters of minimum wage legislation typically espouse, which are simultaneously far more effective, more equitable and with fewer negative unintended consequences. I’ll restrain myself from any further comment at this time and I leave it as an exercise for the reader to follow-up with any or all of the sources I’ve provided in the links above.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Since Wilkinson and Pickett are so fond of their political cartoons (they begin every chapter of ‘The Spirit Level’ with one) I thought I’d share one of my own favourites with particular relevance here (cartoon by </span><a href="http://www.henrypayne.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Henry Payne</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, pointer from </span><a href="https://www.aei.org/publication/blog/carpe-diem/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mark Perry</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">):</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="350" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/dHz29KlYsqDXiAX0LiTdPspUFk0sGoop9erVkD1nwRrUs5yIF0eIyK7Lmr0jiHskIhOMmU5dNwk3QXqp2zaoQ8znvMv7pDej0RfMVLvGiEq9snwQM992FaJxeHayV6JtafyWG4o" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="462" /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wilkinson and Pickett attribute the rise in inequality in the UK and US, at least in part, to:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...free-market ideology and... policies designed to create a more ‘flexible’ labour force.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They again resort to the kind of loaded, emotive language that we saw in the book’s preface, when describing the spread of free-market ideas throughout the Anglosphere:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Stronger linguistic and ideological connections meant that English speaking countries caught the disease quickly from each other and caught it badly.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They cite a study</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> which analysed trends in inequality during the 1980 and 1990s, in Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, Sweden, the UK, and the US and which found that the biggest single factor correlating with rising inequality was declining trade union membership. By this point, I’m growing incredibly weary of repeating the mantra ‘correlation does not equal causation’ to myself over and over again as I read through ‘The Spirit Level’.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Under the heading of ‘Political will’, the authors state:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The strength of the evidence that a more equal society is a better society has a key role to play in changing public opinion.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unfortunately for their thesis, their supposed evidence consists of nothing more than a few variables which happen to be correlated with one another and with inequality of income amongst a remarkably small sample of countries. Some of which seem to be more strongly associated with overall wealth (GDP/GNP) than with income inequality and some of which don’t hold up under closer scrutiny.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They continue:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Public opinion polls suggest that there is a substantial desire for narrower income differences. In Britain over the last twenty years polls have shown that the proportion of the population who think that income differences are too big has averaged around 8o per cent and has rarely dipped below 75 per cent – even though most people underestimate how big income differences actually are.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They do not give a source for these figures, but reference a 2004 </span><a href="http://www.demos.org/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Demos</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> working paper entitled “What do Americans Think About Inequality?” by L. McCall and J. Brash</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for similar figures from the United States.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s take it on faith that the figures Wilkinson and Pickett cite here are accurate. Around 75% to 80% of Brits believe that “income differences are too big”. So what? The general public have not only uninformed, but systematically biased beliefs about all sorts of things, including inequality.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bryan Caplan comments on this at </span><a href="http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/05/systematically_3.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">EconLog</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, where he discusses an </span><a href="http://www.nber.org/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">NBER</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> working paper by </span><a href="http://www.iza.org/en/webcontent/personnel/photos/index_html?key=113" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Vladimir Gimpelson</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, of the Higher School of Economics, Moscow, and </span><a href="http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/treisman/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Daniel Treisman</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of the University of California, Los Angeles, entitled “</span><a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w21174.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Misperceiving Inequality</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here’s the paper’s abstract:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Since Aristotle, a vast literature has suggested that economic inequality has important political consequences. Higher inequality is thought to increase demand for government income redistribution in democracies and to discourage democratization and promote class conflict and revolution in dictatorships. Most such arguments crucially assume that ordinary people know how high inequality is, how it has been changing, and where they fit in the income distribution. Using a variety of large, cross-national surveys, we show that, in recent years, ordinary people have had little idea about such things. What they think they know is often wrong. Widespread ignorance and misperceptions of inequality emerge robustly, regardless of the data source, operationalization, and method of measurement. Moreover, we show that the perceived level of inequality — and not the actual level — correlates strongly with demand for redistribution and reported conflict between rich and poor. We suggest that most theories about political effects of inequality need to be either abandoned or reframed as theories about the effects of perceived inequality.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What follows are several other excerpts from this paper, which illustrate the wide gulf that exists between actual levels of, or trends in, inequality and the public’s perception thereof [emphasis added]:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“What if the masses have little notion of how much wealth the elites have accumulated and whether the gap is growing or shrinking? What if even the rich cannot gauge how strong is the motive for the poor to revolt? In such cases, the neat link between actual inequality levels and political outcomes evaporates. The goal of this paper is to show that such </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">uncertainty and misperception are ubiquitous</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. We present evidence from a number of large-scale, cross-national surveys that in recent years </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ordinary people have known little about the extent of income inequality in their societies, its rate and direction of change, and where they personally fit into the distribution. What they think they know is often wrong. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This finding is robust to data sources, definitions, and measurement instruments. For instance, perceptions are no more accurate if we reinterpret them as being about wealth rather than income.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“A strange inconsistency underlies much recent scholarship. On the one hand, theories assume that individuals correctly perceive the income distribution. On the other hand, scholars complain that the data available to test these same theories--in developed democracies and, even more so, in poorer, less free societies--are "dubious" (Ahlquist and Wibbels 2012) and "massively unreliable" (Cramer 2005). Yet, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">if experts throw up their hands at the quality of the data, it is strange to assume the general public is better informed</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. And if analysts fault the figures available today--despite the most sophisticated statistical agencies the world has ever seen--data quality must have been much worse during the nineteenth century heyday of revolution and democratization.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The implications of this point for theories of redistribution, revolution, and democratization, are far reaching. If these are to be retained at all, they need to be reformulated as </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">theories not about actual inequality but about the consequences of beliefs about it, with no assumption that the two coincide</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. We show that, although actual levels of inequality--as captured by the best current estimates--are not related to preferences for redistribution, perceived levels of inequality are... The actual poverty rate correlates only weakly with the reported degree of tension between rich and poor; but the perceived poverty rate is a strong predictor of such inter-class conflict.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here’s Caplan again:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Gimpelson and Treisman heavily rely on the ISSP survey, which showed respondents around the world five different income distributions, then asked them which one best-described their own country.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And what were the results? [again, emphasis is mine]:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Respondents turn out to be wrong about their country's income distribution most of the time.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Worldwide, 29 percent of respondents chose the ‘correct’ diagram if we refer to their country's post-tax-and transfer Gini and 24 percent got it right if we use the pre-tax-and-transfer measure. For reference, a purely random choice among the five possible answers would get the answer right 22.5 percent of the time for post-tax-and-transfer incomes and 20 percent of the time for pre-tax-and-transfer incomes. In other words, respondents worldwide were able to pick the ‘right’ diagram only slightly more often than they would have done if choosing randomly.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not very encouraging for anyone counting on a well-informed populace. Were most people at least close to the right answer?:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“To check this, we examined what proportion of respondents were within one diagram of the correct one (for instance, if the correct diagram was B, we measured how often the respondents picked A, B, or C). With only five options to choose between, getting within one place of the correct option is not a very difficult task. Picking randomly among the five diagrams, respondents should be within one place of the correct diagram 68 percent of the time if focusing on post-tax-and-transfer income and 43 percent of the time if focusing on pre-tax-and-transfer income. In fact, for post-tax-and-transfer income they were right 69 percent of the time, just one percentage point better than if they picked randomly.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Personally, I found this next finding to be the single best illustration to sum up the disparity between actual inequality and perceptions of it. People who owned a second home were asked where they thought they fell on their country’s income distribution [emphasis added]:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Owning two houses is usually a sign of wealth... Yet most such property owners did not consider themselves especially rich. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On average, 60 percent of the secondary residence owners placed themselves in the bottom half of the income distribution</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. In Uzbekistan, only three percent of respondents lived in households with a second residence, yet almost two thirds of these thought their incomes were below the national median. Such anomalies were somewhat rarer in the developed countries. Still, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in France, Italy, and Great Britain, 40 percent or more of second residence owners placed themselves in their country's bottom half</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">40% of people who own two homes in Britain think that they are in the bottom half of the income distribution! That is astounding!</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This quote from Professor Caplan nicely sums up this disparity between perceptions and reality:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Only 1% of people who own a second home think they're in the top decile of their country's income distribution!”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No wonder there’s such overwhelming popular support for more redistribution – almost everyone, apart from the extremely rich, believes that they are below average when it comes to income (and/or wealth – the two are often conflated) and therefore that more redistribution would benefit them and people like them (e.g. their friends and family) financially, when this simply cannot be true for a substantial chunk of the population.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here’s the conclusion reached by Gimpelson and Treisman [emphasis added]:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“[N]either the pre-tax nor the post-tax actual income Ginis are positively related to support for redistribution at either the country or the individual level. However, perceived inequality is highly significant in both cases. In countries </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">where inequality was generally thought to be high, more people supported government redistribution. But demand for redistribution bore no relation to the actual level of inequality</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. In fact, given the average belief about inequality, higher actual inequality was associated with lower demand for redistribution. Breaking down perceptions into their general and idiosyncratic components, we found a stronger effect of the general perception in the country than of the individual's idiosyncratic perceptions. Still, both seemed to matter in the way expected.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">More recently, and on a similar note, a 2015 Ipsos MORI survey titled ‘</span><a href="https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3664/Perils-of-Perception-2015.aspx" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Perils of Perception: Perceptions are not reality: what the world gets wrong</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...highlights how wrong the public across 33 countries are about some key issues and features of the population in their country.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Such as, in Great Britain people:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...massively overestimate the proportion of wealth that the wealthiest 1% own. The average guess is 59% when the actual figure is 23%. In fact, [Brits are] the most wrong on this out of any of [the populations of] the 33 countries included in the study.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A similar picture is seen looking across all 33 countries studied:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“[The general public in] most developed countries greatly overestimate the proportion of adult wealth the wealthiest 1% in their country own. Britain is the most inaccurate (estimating it to be 59%, over twice the real figure of 23%), but France, Australia, Belgium, New Zealand and Canada are all at least 30 percentage points out of line. [The populations of a] few countries, though, underestimate how much of their country’s wealth is concentrated in the hands of the top 1% - Peru, India, Israel, Brazil and Russia (where the top 1% actually own an incredible 70% of all wealth). There is a lot of variation between the countries on what they think the figure should be, though most [people] think it should be lower than it really is – with [Russians] again standing out as having the highest gap between the amount of wealth they think the top 1% should acceptably own (23%) and the true figure (70%).”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Simply stating that there is a widespread public perception that X is true does not mean that X is in fact true and this is a terrible line of argument. It is an example of a logical fallacy known as an </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">argumentum ad populum</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (appeal to the people) or appeal to popular belief, also known as the </span><a href="http://theupturnedmicroscope.com/comic/logical-fallacies-bandwagon/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">bandwagon fallacy</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The next section is entitled ‘Corporate Power – The Elephant in the Living Room’. The authors start out this section with the claim that:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“We may all decry the vast wealth of the super-rich…”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m glad they added the qualifier ‘may’ there, although even with that qualifier, this sentence is still at least somewhat misleading and I think clearly intended to elicit a very specific response.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don’t decry the vast wealth of the super-rich; at least not in and of itself. I don’t care that Sir Richard Branson has his own island, I don’t care how many yachts Bill Gates has and I don’t care how big Elon Musk's house is. As far as I know, they have paid for all of these things with money that they’ve earned legitimately, by providing things that other people have valued and have voluntarily exchanged their money for. I don’t want to take any of those things away from any of them and, even if I did, I would have no right to.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve never seen anything to suggest that condemnation of the vast wealth of the super-rich (those super-rich who have earned their wealth legitimately through voluntary trade with others) is motivated by anything deeper or more sophisticated than sheer envy.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Harking back to earlier in this chapter, I think it’s shocking that there are households living on just £6,700 per year and that half of the World still live on even less than this, but soaking the rich and stifling trade and development with high taxes is not a solution to this problem. There simply are not enough super wealthy people around to pay for everything for everyone else. As an illustration, there are around 60 million people in the UK; there were only 41 British billionaires in 2014 (based on the 2014 </span><a href="http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Forbes rich list</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">). If the UK government were to tax 100% of the assets of all British billionaires, the proceeds would just about cover the health budget for a single year – £140 billion – which makes up just under one fifth of total government expenditure – after which all of the money would be gone and there would be no billionaires left to plunder the next year.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wilkinson and Pickett then talk about </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘concentrations of power in our economic institutions’</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Which they illustrate with the following:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“In 2007 chief executives of 365 of the largest US companies received well over 500 times the pay of their average employee…”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“After reviewing empirical research, the International Labour Organization concluded that there is little or no evidence of a relationship between executive pay and company performance…”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Top business pay has far outstripped anything in the public sector. In the USA, the twenty highest-paid people working in public traded corporations received almost 40 times as much as the twenty highest-paid people in the non-profit sector, and 200 times more than the twenty highest-paid generals or cabinet secretaries in the Federal Government.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the last of these points my reaction is simply ‘good’. I’m glad that the highest paid corporate executives are more highly paid than the highest paid government employees. I would rather live in a world where that was the case than the opposite. Think about what that would mean. If the highest paid government employees were paid more generously than anyone in the private sector it would strongly suggest that the government would be overpaying these people.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What’s the fundamental difference between someone working in the private sector and a government employee? One earns their salary from money received from paying customers who </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">voluntarily</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> hand over that money in exchange for whatever good or service the businessperson is providing. The others salary is paid out of money obtained through the coercive practice of taxation.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I can’t remember where I first heard or read this now, but someone once said that the surest sign that you’re doing something worthwhile is if someone is willing to pay you to do it. Of course, this doesn’t apply to anyone being paid by the government, because the people ultimately paying are taxpayers, who are not necessarily all ‘willing’ to pay for everything the government decides to spend their money on. By contrast, in the private sector salaries are ultimately paid for by the customers, who are willing to pay for the goods and services they receive in return, otherwise they wouldn’t have. The fundamental difference is the difference between a voluntary relationship and a forced, coercive one.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is also a point to be made about many of the most financially successful people in the private sector having put their own money and livelihoods on the line in many cases and having taken a massive risk to get to where they are and be able to reap the rewards of that. It’s worth bearing in mind that for every Bill Gates or Elon Musk there are hundreds or thousands of would-be entrepreneurs who have failed to make their millions. If one were to average out the earnings of all of the failed business ventures with the successes the picture would look a lot less rosy in terms of average entrepreneur / CEO earnings. Investing your own money in a private venture is often a high-risk, high-reward endeavour, as opposed to the low-risk endeavour of working as a government employee.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the point of CEO pay far outstripping that of the average employee of the largest companies and the lack of strong evidence between executive pay and company performance. It is fairly widely acknowledged that one of the real (but unstated) reasons for high executive pay was that it is essentially a bribe to encourage the CEO not to run the company into the ground, destroy its reputation or business relationships, or pillage it into oblivion. The more power someone has within an organisation, the easier it is for them to wield that power recklessly, irresponsibly or outright maliciously and the greater the damage likely to be done if they do so. Wilkinson and Pickett may well already be aware of this hypothesis.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One factor blamed by Wilkinson and Pickett for the widening of income differences in recent years is the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“denationalization of major industries”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wilkinson and Pickett make the claim that:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...these productive assets [multinational corporations] remain effectively in the hands of a very few, very rich people, and make our claims to real democracy look pretty thin.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This misses the fact that in order to remain ‘productive assets’ (i.e. to continue to make money), companies have to continue to satisfy the needs and wants of consumers. The money that successful companies earn, that makes their owners ‘very rich people’, is money voluntarily handed over to them by us, the consumers, in exchange for something of value provided by these companies. If you, as a consumer, are not happy with any particular company's offering you are free to withhold your custom from them. And this is something that each of us, as individual consumers, can do. What could be more democratic than that? In this regard, private enterprise is more democratic than anything the state does.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They acknowledge that the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘experiment with state ownership in the centrally planned economies of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe’</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was a failure and then turn to look at possible alternatives to both laissez faire capitalism and top-down state-run communism.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wilkinson and Pickett believe that the ‘institutional framework’ of profit-making businesses [emphasis added]:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“..seem[s] to invite them into an </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">exploitative relationship with society</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> – hence perhaps why we have needed a ‘fair trade’ movement.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Again , the authors miss the fact that in a free market the only way a business makes a profit is by satisfying the needs and wants of willing consumers.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They go on to ask:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“So how can the inequality-generating forces in the profit-making sector be contained and democratized?”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They repeat their extraordinary and unproven claim:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...further improvements in the quality of life no longer depend on further economic growth…”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And suggest possible ‘solutions’ might be:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...to plug loopholes in the tax system, limit ‘business expenses’, increase top tax rates, and even legislate to limit maximum pay in a company to some multiple of the average or lowest paid.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“We need to address the concentrations of power at the heart of economic life.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wilkinson and Pickett don’t give details on what tax loopholes we could close. All of their other proposed solutions further limit the freedom of individuals.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They suggest ‘democratic employee-ownership’ as a possible solution, which:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“..avoids concentrating power in the hands of the state, but… has major economic and social advantages over organizations owned and controlled by outside investors…”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They also suggest the possibility of using tax concessions to encourage employee share-ownership systems. However, they warn that:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...many share-ownership schemes amount to little more than incentive schemes, intended to make employees more compliant with management…”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...research shows that employee share-ownership, on its own, is not enough to make much difference to company performance.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And suggest that it has to be combined with ‘more participative management methods.’</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This harks back to a point first made by the authors in chapter 6 and reiterated here:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Having control at work was the most successful single factor explaining threefold differences in death rates between senior and junior civil servants…”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They don’t go into much detail about how they see employee-ownership functioning or exactly what is meant by ‘more participative management methods’ or how it is to be brought about or encouraged. Despite the lack of details, I see this as a more encouraging and likely more productive avenue of exploration than increasing tax rates on the rich.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They point out that employee-ownership has the advantage of being bottom-up rather than top-down. I couldn’t agree more. This suggestion seems out of place as it is in stark contrast to most of their other ‘solutions’, which involve top-down diktats from government or further reducing the freedom of individuals.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They talk about employee ownership as involving:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...a very substantial redistribution of wealth from external shareholders to employees…”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When listing some of the supposed advantages of employee-ownership, Wilkinson and Pickett assert that ‘it improves productivity and so it has a competitive advantage’, although they do not substantiate this claim. If employee owned companies really are more productive than other types of companies, then no incentives should be needed to encourage companies to organise themselves in this way. Employee owned companies will outcompete other companies in the free market and we would expect to see them become the dominant organisational structure. This is unless one can make the case that we’re stuck in a local maxima in terms of organisational productivity, but there is an even more productive global maxima. This is certainly possible and it would be an interesting line of thought to pursue, however Wilkinson and Pickett do not.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They believe that employee-owned workplaces should be constituted:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...in ways which prevent employees from selling their companies back to external shareholders.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Again, I’m somewhat sympathetic to the employee-ownership idea, but I don’t think that should preclude private property rights or the freedom to buy and sell, that is, to trade with, whomever you see fit on whatever terms you find mutually agreeable.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wilkinson and Pickett then put forward the position that:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“In conventional employment people are specifically hired to work for purposes which are not their own.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“You might disagree with the purpose to which your work is being put...”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Really? Who are these people? Who is working at a job in which they disagree with its purpose? Are there lots of anti nuclear power activists working at Sellafield? Greenpeace eco-warriors employed by ExxonMobil? Save the Whales advocates working on Japanese whaling vessels? I doubt it.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One isn’t obligated to work in any particular occupation, field or industry or for any particular employer. People will not gravitate towards working in industries or occupations with which they have fundamental political, environmental, or ethical disagreements.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“If, for instance, you get to know that some aspect of a design or manufacturing process is harming children’s health, you would want to change it and would probably start by finding out what colleagues thought about it.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why not do this now? What is stopping anyone who has concerns about the uses to which their work is being put – or anything else that their employer does – from at least investigating whether or not their concerns are justified?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you fundamentally disagree with what your company does with your labour then I suggest that you may want to look for another line of work. If you choose not to find another line of work, or another role, or at least challenge practices with which you disagree, then perhaps your disagreement is less fundamental and less important to you than you profess.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Under the heading ‘Running with the Technological Tide’ the authors make some good points on technological change, the need to reform copyright and patent laws, and emphasise that governments should not use their power to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“prop up and defend the restrictions of [old institutional structures]”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I couldn’t agree more.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unfortunately, the middle part of this section is ruined by some nonsense about public goods, in which the authors argue:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Once society has incurred the capital costs of making a bridge or road, maximum benefit from the initial investment is gained only if use is unrestricted by charging. Hence, people should be provided free access.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Once the capital cost has been incurred, the more people sharing the benefits the better.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is not necessarily true, and is at best rather naive. A road is the perfect example to illustrate why not. There is a limit to how many cars can use a road at any given time. If too many people want to use it at the same time, you end up with congestion and traffic jams, which aren’t good for anybody. It is analogous to the classic </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">tragedy of the commons</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> scenario.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The final section of this chapter is entitled ‘The Future of Equality’. In it, as in much of the book, Wilkinson and Pickett display an astounding level of hubris, never acknowledging the slightest possibility that they may be mistaken or overselling their case. No, according to the authors their cause </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...must be taken up and pursued...”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...we need to recognise what a damaging effect [the rich] have on the social fabric.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They talk about various potential benefits to American and British society from moving to something more akin to Japanese or Norwegian inequality levels. This argument rests, of course, on the assumption that inequality is the cause of all of the health and social problems discussed, a claim which now looks extremely dubious. There is also no mention of any costs associated with these tectonic shifts in society. Talking about benefits is all well and good, but in order to assess whether a goal is worthwhile pursuing one must also take account of the costs.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They end the section and the chapter with their now tired and worn-out catch-phrase:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...the rich countries have got to the end of the really important contributions which economic growth can make to the quality of life...”</span>Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-16461069901408450532017-04-05T06:12:00.000+01:002017-04-05T06:12:02.607+01:00The Spirit Level: A Rebuttal - Part II<div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is part II of IV of a rebuttal/review of 'The Spirit Level' by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. If you haven't already read Part I you can find it <a href="http://revolutioneering.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-spirit-level-rebuttal-part-i.html">here</a>.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<h1 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 13pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Part Two: The Costs of Inequality</span></h1>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In Part Two of the book, Wilkinson and Pickett go on to look at each of their indicators of health and social problems in turn and consider whether they are individually correlated with income inequality.</span></div>
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<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chapter 4: Community life and social relations</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In chapter 4, the authors look at the relationship between income inequality and general levels of ‘trust’ within a society and find that the two are correlated. Putting aside any reservations we may have about how exactly we measure ‘trust’ in any objective or meaningful way, this is an unsurprising finding; it does not mean that the causality necessarily runs from income inequality to low levels of trust. The causality could plausibly run either or both ways here; it’s easy to imagine how inequality of incomes could cause low levels of trust and vice-versa and it could be a self-reinforcing loop. Wilkinson and Pickett present no evidence for the direction of causality or indeed that this is a causal relationship at all.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Christopher Snowdon addresses this point in Chapter 3 of ‘The Spirit Level Delusion’ where he also shows that the apparent trend between ‘trust’ and income inequality is entirely due to the four Nordic countries: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland having much higher reported levels of ‘trust’ than anywhere else. There is no trend across all of the other rich countries of the World, which suggests this has nothing to do with income inequality, but is far more likely due to something else particular to these four countries.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Later in the same chapter, Snowdon also shows that there is no correlation between income inequality and average unemployment over the 10 year period 1995 - 2005 across wealthy countries. Neither is there any correlation with the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Quality-of-Life Index. As he sums up:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“If more equal countries ‘almost always do better’ we would expect to see evidence of it here. That we do not is a serious blow to the inequality hypothesis.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chapter 5: Mental health and drug use</span></h2>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In chapter 5, the authors turn to mental illnesses and find that the prevalence of mental illness is correlated with income inequality between the 12 countries for which suitable data is available. However, they note that looking at differences between US states there is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">no such correlation to be found for adult males</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (and they report only </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">weak correlations</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for adult women and for children).</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Given that Wilkinson and Pickett themselves note the absence of correlation for the US data, and given that for the international comparisons ‘suitable data’ is only available for 12 countries (</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_error" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">small sample error</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">?) I think that the authors have here fallen victim to the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasty_generalization" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hasty generalisation</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> fallacy (see also </span><a href="http://thelogicofscience.com/2015/01/27/the-rules-of-logic-part-3-logical-fallacies/#Hasty%20generalization%20fallacy" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for a good explanation). Whilst the data they present is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">indicative</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that there </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">may</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> be some relationship between income inequality and prevalence of mental illness, I don’t think it’s sufficient to draw any concrete conclusions from. I think in their eagerness to show that all manner of ‘bad things’ are correlated with income inequality, Wilkinson and Pickett have here failed to remain objective observers of the evidence. I think also that this has the potential to undermine some of their other points, which may have more merit to them.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To be clear, I’m not claiming that there </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">isn’t</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a relationship between income inequality and the prevalence of mental illness in a society. Rather, I am claiming simply that Wilkinson and Pickett have not provided sufficient evidence to draw any firm conclusion that there </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> such a relationship.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In Chapter 2 of ‘The Spirit Level Delusion’, entitled ‘Messing with our minds’, Christopher Snowdon scrutinises the claim put forward by Wilkinson and Pickett in ‘The Spirit Level’ that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Rates of mental illness are five times higher in the most unequal countries compared to the least unequal countries”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, along with similar claims made by others.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He writes that Wilkinson and Pickett first produced what would eventually appear in a slightly augmented form as Figure 5.1 in ‘The Spirit Level’ (p. 67) for psychologist Oliver James’s 2007 book ‘Affluenza’. Snowdown notes that this graph first appeared in a preliminary study published in an epidemiological journal in 2006</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, it is available online </span><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2652881/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I have included a copy of the original graph below.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="tileshop.jpg" height="421" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/nHALEpADbtg_EhWoZ91gKzwvP8H6p9dgcmcrGYD6VVm617GNjp55t0ZtJRv4H6Fb2FLQXIX6zx3OQrPD9M9p89JLFIPHUDFvvip7MQ-7pqXuqzOix4swbmN9Zw4C-cOcffIzouxL" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624" /></span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Figure 5.1 in ‘The Spirit Level’ differs only slightly from the above graph. The main change is that for ‘The Spirit Level’ Wilkinson and Pickett have included on the chart the figures for Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Snowdon points out that:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Gauging rates of mental illness is hampered by the failure of many countries to collect or publish reliable data. Only a handful of nations – notably Germany and the USA – produce useable data and at least a dozen EU countries, including Portugal, Ireland and Greece, produce nothing at all.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a result Wilkinson and Pickett, somewhat understandably, used figures from various different sources to compile their graph.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Snowdon then goes on to discuss where the figures that have been used to generate this graph have come from. The figures for all of the European countries – with the notable exception of the UK – came from a 2004 study from the World Mental Health Survey Consortium (WMH), set up by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Snowdon points out that there was another WHO project known as the International Consortium in Psychiatric Epidemiology (ICPE), which came up with </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">very different figures</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> just one year earlier. For example, prevalence of mental health disorders in the Netherlands was estimated at 23.3% according to the ICPE, but 14.9% by the WMH. For Germany, the figures are 24% from the ICPE, but 9.1% from the WMH (and 31% in the ‘German Health Interview and Examination Survey’).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As summarised by Snowdon:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The EU average for mental disorder prevalence, based on evidence from 27 studies and 16 countries, is 27%. Studies of Western European nations have found rates of mental disorder in the range of 20-40%. In the WMH study, however, the range is half of that: 8-19%. In short, the WMH study appears to underestimate the prevalence of mental disorders in Europe. It is inconsistent with nationwide studies produced at around the same time and with the ICPE survey.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Later, he continues:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Note that only Europe was affected – the ICPE and WMH give similar estimates for the USA and Mexico.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is highly significant because Wilkinson and Pickett rely entirely on the WMH study for their European figures. All the figures from the less-equal English speaking nations are drawn from elsewhere. At the very least this is comparing apples with oranges. Although there are simply not enough studies for us to compare rates of mental illness with any confidence, a reasonably approach would be to exclude the WMH figures and look at the rest. If we do this, a very different picture emerges...”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That picture is one of broad similarity between different countries and of a total lack of a trend between income inequality and the prevalence of mental disorders:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The most striking feature of the literature on psychiatric epidemiology is how little variation exists from country to country.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Snowdon cites the Nordic countries as counterexamples to Wilkinson and Pickett's ‘inequality’ explanation and points out that Finland has an estimated rate of clinical depression that is higher than that in either the US or Canada, and is above the EU average. And that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Sweden and Norway hold the dubious honour of having the highest rates of alcoholism in Europe.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the end of Chapter 5 of ‘The Spirit Level’, Wilkinson and Pickett consider illegal drug use in rich countries, and again find a correlation with income inequality. They hypothesise that the link between income inequality and mental illness/drug use is being driven by status effects. People who earn much less than the average in a society are, in general, perceived – and more importantly perceive themselves – as low status. Their low income, as a marker of low social status, it is suggested, erodes their self-esteem and self-confidence and leads to them being more likely to develop various neurological disorders, such as depression, anxiety and ADHD. It also makes them more likely to consume illegal drugs in an attempt to ‘self-medicate’ against their feelings of low status and inferiority. This is certainly a plausible narrative; it’s a shame for Wilkinson and Pickett’s thesis that they just don’t present a lot of strong evidence to back it up.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A common theme that I picked up on, running through chapters 3 and 5 is that the explanation favoured by Wilkinson and Pickett for these social problems, namely inequality of income, in fact takes a bit of a back seat to an alternative, but not wholly unrelated, explanation: social inequality (or inequality of status) and hierarchy. This is illustrated by the example of the Wake Forest School of Medicine monkey experiment discussed at the end of chapter 5. The macaques in the experiment have no concept of money or income, but they do have a concept of social status and hierarchy.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This point is picked up on by Christopher Snowdon in the final chapter of ‘The Spirit Level Delusion’, titled ‘The Spirit Level fallacy’:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The desire of status is not unique to modern society, nor is it even unique to human beings. Wilkinson and Pickett, along with Marmot and Layard, refer to studies of monkeys and baboons competing for status, but these studies only serve to remind us that the desire of status is innate, instinctive and inevitable. Whatever else these primates are fighting over, it is not money.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></h2>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chapter 6: Physical health and life expectancy</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In chapter 6 the authors consider the material and psychosocial determinants of health. They discuss the ‘epidemiological transition’, which describes the shift, in wealthy industrialised countries, when infectious diseases (e.g. tuberculosis, malaria) were replaced as the major causes of death by chronic diseases linked to lifestyle factors (e.g. heart disease, cancer).</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The authors also discuss the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitehall_Study" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Whitehall I and Whitehall II studies</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. These were long-term follow-up studies of civil servants to investigate the causes of heart disease and other chronic illnesses. These studies found an inverse association between position in the civil service hierarchy and death rates from heart disease as well as some cancers, chronic lung disease, gastrointestinal disease, depression, suicide, sickness absence from work, back pain, and self-reported health.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wilkinson and Pickett point out that whilst those in lower status jobs were more likely to be obese, to smoke, to have higher blood pressure, and be less physically active, these differences account for only around one third of their increased risk of death from heart disease.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The factors which seem to make the biggest difference are considered to be job stress and people’s sense of control over their work. Other factors which the authors identify as having a significant impact include our happiness, whether we’re optimistic or pessimistic, and whether we feel hostile or aggressive towards others. The authors also mention the importance of social support and networks of friends and family and how important they are in determining people's overall health and wellbeing.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So far, so good as far as chapter 6 is concerned – I have no beef with any of this.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They go on to look at 77 neighbourhoods of Chicago and find a strong negative correlation between homicide rates and average male life expectancy at birth, considering all causes of death </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">except</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> homicide. In other words, in the most violent neighbourhoods (those with the highest murder rates) the men who aren’t murdered </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">also tend to die younger from other causes</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> than those in less violent neighborhoods. This is, I think, an uncontroversial and a not very surprising finding.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wilkinson and Pickett then show (Figure 6.2, p. 80) that there’s a lack of correlation between health expenditure per person in absolute terms and life expectancy, across the rich countries studied. They then ask:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“If average levels of income don’t matter, and spending on high-tech health care doesn’t matter, what does?”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a good question. The answer they offer is – unsurprisingly – income inequality. They back this up with four graphs depicting the correlations observed between income inequality and life expectancy and between income inequality and infant mortality rates, across rich countries and across US states (Figures 6.3 to 6.6, pp. 82-83).</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In chapter 1 of ‘The Spirit Level Delusion’, entitled ‘Bad for our health?’, Christopher Snowdon challenges the supposed link that Wilkinson and Pickett claim to have found between income inequality and life expectancy in developed countries:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Wilkinson's 1992 article in the British Medical Journal inspired a flurry of research, and in The Spirit Level, the authors refer to a ‘vast literature’ on the subject. There is, however, no mention of how much of this vast literature was written by Wilkinson himself, nor that much of the rest was critical of his theory.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">His BMJ study was debunked at length in the same journal in 1995 by </span><a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/311/7015/1282" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ken Judge</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Judge pointed out numerous errors in Wilkinson's research, including the use of ‘inappropriate’ data. He criticised Wilkinson for using the lowest 70% of families as a measure of inequality when a more conventional measure is the bottom 10% or 20% of individuals. ‘The suspicion,’ wrote Judge ‘must be that the choice is derived from the data’ (ie. Wilkinson was cherry-picking). When Judge recalculated the data based on the more usual measure of income per head, the association between life expectancy and inequality disappeared.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Judge concluded:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘In retrospect, it seems extraordinary that a predominantly monocausal explanation of international variations in life expectancy should ever have been regarded as plausible. It is much more likely that they are the product of many influences, which probably interact over long periods of time.’”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That’s a pretty damning review.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Snowdon also cites a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘large study of wealthy European countries’</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> from 2002, which </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘showed no association between inequality and life expectancy’.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The study referenced is ‘Income inequality, the psychosocial environment, and health: comparisons of wealthy nations’ by Lynch et. al. published in the Lancet in 2001 and available </span><a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(01)05407-1/abstract" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The interpretation of this study’s findings given on the Lancet’s website is as follows [emphasis added]:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Income inequality</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and characteristics of the psychosocial environment like trust, control, and organisational membership </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">do not seem to be key factors</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in understanding health differences between these wealthy countries. The associations that do exist are largely limited to child health outcomes and cirrhosis. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Explanations for between-country differences in health will require an appreciation of the complex interactions of history, culture, politics, economics, and the status of women and ethnic minorities.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In short, attributing the differences in life expectancy and other health outcomes between rich countries to differences in income inequality alone is overly simplistic and naive at best.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This would fall into what economist Arnold Kling, blogging at </span><a href="http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/unwinnable-arguments-and-normative-sociology/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">askblog</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, refers to as an ‘unwinnable argument’, which he defines as:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“In general, an unwinnable argument about causality is any argument in which one tries to affirm that X is the sole cause of Y or that X is not at all a cause of Y under circumstances of high causal density.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The example Professor Kling uses is that of the high incarceration rate of young, African-American males. Considering his </span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Three-Languages-Politics-Arnold-Kling-ebook/dp/B00CCGF81Q" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">three-axis model</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, he states:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Progressives, conservatives, and libertarians each have a desired cause for this.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Progressives: racism in the criminal justice system</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Conservatives: high propensity of young African-American males to commit crimes</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Libertarians: the war on drugs”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is a lot of wisdom in his claim that [original emphasis]:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...trying to argue that one of these is </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> cause is an unwinnable argument. Each of these causal forces has an element of truth, or at least plausibility. The chances are slim of coming up with an empirical analysis that decisively rules in favor of one cause and rules out all other causes.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kling goes on to make two further claims [original emphasis]:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1. When there is a desired cause... chances are the issue involves an unwinnable argument.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2. If your objective is to win an unwinnable argument, then you will tend to engage in normative sociology. To turn your desired cause into </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> cause, you have to filter out evidence that might support another causal factor and only discuss evidence that supports your desired cause.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He then concludes that [emphasis added]:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...it is counterproductive to try to win an unwinnable argument. It is almost as counterproductive to try to reason with someone who is convinced that they can win an unwinnable argument.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am not saying that it is counterproductive to try to make an argument for or against something being a causal factor. However, I think that it does help to keep in mind that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">when a desired causal factor is involved it is challenging to remain objective</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in assessing the evidence.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Snowdon continues:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“In The Spirit Level, Wilkinson and Pickett cite a 1996 editorial from the BMJ which discussed the ‘big idea’ that ‘the more equally wealth is distributed the better the health of that society’. At that time the BMJ was broadly supportive of the theory but research into it was still in its infancy. Wilkinson and Pickett do not mention the editorial that appeared in the same journal six years later which concluded:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘Now that good data on income inequality have become available for 16 Western industrialised countries, the association between income inequality and life expectancy has disappeared.’”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alex Tabarrok </span><a href="http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/06/politically-incorrect-paper-of-the-day-3.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">discusses</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the apparent relationship between health and wealth, commenting on the seven-part documentary series ‘</span><a href="http://www.unnaturalcauses.org/episode_descriptions.php" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’ he references </span><a href="http://m.qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/131/2/687" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">recent research</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by David Cesarini, Erik Lindqvist, Robert Ostling and Bjorn Wallace:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Wealthier people are healthier and live longer. Why? One popular explanation is summarized in the documentary Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making us Sick?”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘The lives of a CEO, a lab supervisor, a janitor, and an unemployed mother illustrate how class shapes opportunities for good health. Those on the top have the most access to power, resources and opportunity – and thus the best health. Those on the bottom are faced with more stressors – unpaid bills, jobs that don’t pay enough, unsafe living conditions, exposure to environmental hazards, lack of control over work and schedule, worries over children – and the fewest resources available to help them cope.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The net effect is a health-wealth gradient, in which every descending rung of the socioeconomic ladder corresponds to worse health.’</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If this were true, then increasing the wealth of a poor person would increase their health. That does not appear to be the case. In important new research David Cesarini, Erik Lindqvist, Robert Ostling and Bjorn Wallace look at the health of lottery winners in Sweden (75% of winnings within the range of approximately $20,000 to $800,000) and, importantly, on their children. Most effects on adults are reliably close to zero and in no case can wealth explain a large share of the wealth-health gradient:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘In adults, we find no evidence that wealth impacts mortality or health care utilization, with the possible exception of a small reduction in the consumption of mental health drugs. Our estimates allow us to rule out effects on 10-year mortality one sixth as large as the crosssectional wealth-mortality gradient.’</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The authors also look at the health effects on the children of lottery winners. There is more uncertainty in the health estimates on children but most estimates cluster around zero and developmental effects on things like IQ can be rejected (“In all eight subsamples, we can rule out wealth effects on GPA smaller than 0.01 standard deviations”). Overall for children:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘Our results suggest that… the effect of permanent income on children’s outcomes is small. With the exception of obesity risk, we estimate precise zero or negative effects in subpopulations for which theories of child development predict larger benefits of wealth… The small impact of wealth on proxies for parenting behavior may explain why the shocks to permanent income appear to have few discernible intergenerational impacts.’</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One point to note is that they are looking primarily at children born prelottery although they do not find any health effects in infants born postlottery.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As the authors note, Sweden is an affluent society with an extensive social safety net. Nevertheless, there is still a significant health-wealth gradient in Sweden. We might get larger causal estimates of wealth on health elsewhere but the Swedish results bound how far we can reduce the gradient.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The bottom line: Is inequality making us sick? No.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></h2>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chapter 7: Obesity: wider income gaps, wider waists</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In chapter 7 of ‘The Spirit Level’ the authors consider obesity and how the prevalence of overweight and obese individuals has increased in rich countries over recent decades.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They identify positive correlations between obesity in adults and being overweight in children with income inequality across rich countries and US states.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This also ties-in to the discussions in previous chapters, particularly chapter 6, about stress and its impact on the body. For example, stress can cause some people to comfort eat (or conversely, cause some people to lose their appetite). Stress may also have an impact on the unborn child of a pregnant woman, with effects that may persist throughout that child’s life.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wilkinson and Pickett believe that there is a causal relationship between income inequality and the prevalence of overweight and obese people. The evidence which they cite for this is that:</span></div>
<ol style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: upper-roman; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is not due to poor nutritional knowledge among the uneducated. In a survey, 84% of middle-aged British women knew that they should be eating 5 portions of fruit and veg per day. Another study found obese people were better than thin people at guessing the calorie content of snack foods.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: upper-roman; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Studies which ask people to subjectively describe their place in the social hierarchy. Obesity was found to be strongly linked to people's subjective sense of status. In the words of Wilkinson and Pickett: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...obesity was more strongly related to people’s subjective sense of their status than to their actual education or income.”</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: upper-roman; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After the fall of the Berlin Wall, inequality increased in the former East Germany and this was followed by increases in the BMI of children, young adults and mothers.</span></div>
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</ol>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The first two points above are not actually evidence in favour of the existence of a causal link between income inequality and the prevalence of overweight / obese individuals. Rather, point I. is evidence against one of many possible alternative explanations: That it is due to poor nutritional knowledge of poor people. And point II. is evidence of a link between people’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">self-perceived social status</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and overweight / obesity prevalence, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of any link between the latter and income inequality.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The third piece of evidence that Wilkinson and Pickett cite, that BMI in children, young adults and mothers in the former East Germany increased after an increase in (income) inequality following the fall of the Berlin wall, strikes me as a rather weak argument.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The 2001 </span><a href="http://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(02)40334-4/abstract" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">study</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> which they cite, by Hesse, Voigt et. al. published in the Journal of Pediatrics noted that there were increases in height over the same time period as the increases in weight and BMI were observed. It seems likely that these changes were driven in large part by improved nutrition in the former East Germany after the fall of the wall. Indeed, the authors’ conclude:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The results show that the change in socioeconomic conditions was associated with alteration in anthropometric measures within a short period. This may have been caused by changes in the nutrient supply and composition as well as reduced physical activity.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The fact that nutrition improved in the former East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall and that children were both taller and less skinny as a result is something to be celebrated, not disparaged or feared.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Furthermore, the main reason inequality increased in the former East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall was that many of the residents were becoming richer due to liberalisation of the economy and trade rules and increasing trade with ‘the West’. With the dissolution of the iron curtain, people were also more able to flee the Soviet administered communist East to the more market-oriented West.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The paper that Wilkinson and Pickett cite for rising inequality in the former East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall is: B. Martin, ‘Income inequality in Germany during the 1980s and 1990s’, published in the Review of Income and Wealth (2000) 46 (I):1-19. I found a version online </span><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-4991.2000.tb00388.x/abstract" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, it costs $38 for the PDF, sadly I can’t find a version that’s available for free.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here’s an excerpt from the abstract which caught my attention [emphasis added]:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“While income inequality in West Germany has generally not altered in an economically relevant way over the period 1985 to 1996, inequality in East Germany has increased after reunification. Despite this increase, inequality remains substantially higher in the western part of the country. Convergence of eastern mean income to the western level generally overcompensated the rise in inequality in East Germany, so that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the level of inequality in unified Germany is lower in 1996 than in 1990</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This neatly illustrates an important consideration to bear in mind when looking at any statistics pertaining to inequality (or any statistics, really). That is, whether or not any statistic appears to show inequality rising or falling or staying more-or-less constant depends in large part on how you subset the data. Where and how you go about slicing and dicing the data will affect what that data appear to show. This is well known in statistics circles, and statisticians have a name for it: </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Simpson’s paradox</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Look only at West Germany over the period 1990 to 1996 and you would conclude that inequality is neither rising nor falling; look only at East Germany over the same period and you’d conclude that inequality is rising; look at the whole of Germany and you’ll conclude that inequality is falling.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Which of these stories is ‘true’?</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The answer is they all are, but all of them are only an extremely narrow glimpse at the whole picture, as is any statistical measure. The famous apocryphal line: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” contains far more wisdom than is often appreciated.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In chapter 1 of ‘The Spirit Level Delusion’, entitled ‘Bad for our health?’, Christopher Snowdon scrutinises the evidence Wilkinson and Pickett put forward in support of their claim of a link between income inequality and obesity. Wilkinson and Pickett use data from the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF). Snowdon points out that:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The IOTF does not have the resources to collect its own data and instead relies on individual epidemiological studies carried out by different researchers, using different methodologies over a period of many years. They are by no means definitive.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He cites the IOTF’s figure for Sweden, which was based on data from just one city, and their 30% figure for Greece, based on a limited age group, which has since been abandoned in favour of a figure of 17.5%.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As Snowdon observes:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“This gives an indication of how much statistics can fluctuate depending on study design.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I would caution against reading too much into these findings.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></h3>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chapter 8: Educational performance</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In chapter 8, Wilkinson and Pickett look at education and the relationship between income inequality and educational performance and attainment.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unsurprisingly, they find a negative correlation between income inequality and the average maths and literacy scores for 15-year-olds, both across rich countries and across US states. They also find a strong positive correlation between income inequality and high school dropout rates across US states.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The authors also look at children’s literacy scores and how they vary with the parents education levels across just 4 countries (</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_error" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">small sample error</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> again?): Finland, Belgium, the UK and the USA. They find, again unsurprisingly, that the children of more educated parents score better than those of less educated parents and that this holds true across the 4 countries. They also note four other points of significance:</span></div>
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<ol style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: upper-roman; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even if your parents are well educated, the country you live in makes a difference to your educational success.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: upper-roman; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For those lower down the educational scale, the country they live in makes a bigger difference than for those at the top.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: upper-roman; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The social gradient of this effect is steeper in less equal countries (the UK & the USA) than in more equal ones (Finland & Belgium).</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: upper-roman; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The average scores across the social gradient are higher in more equal countries (Finland & Belgium) than in less equal ones (the UK & the USA).</span></div>
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</ol>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wilkinson and Pickett go on to discuss a possible reason for these observations: the quality of family life, particularly in the first few years of life. They then emphasise the importance of early childhood education programmes and suggest a number of other policy proposals, including: generous levels of statutory paid parental (maternity & paternity) leave, family allowances and tax benefits, social housing, healthcare, programmes to promote work/life balance, and enforcement of child support payments.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The authors then consider an experiment reported in 2004 by World Bank economists Karla Hoff and Priyanka Pandey, where they took 321 high-caste and 321 low-caste 11 & 12-year-old Indian boys and gave them puzzles to solve. When the boys didn’t know which caste one-another were from, they performed equally well (the low-caste boys actually performed marginally better on average), but once they had all announced their castes to one-another, the high-caste boys did markedly better than the low caste boys at the same tasks. This resulted from a combination of the high-caste boys performing slightly better in the second set of tests and the low-caste boys performing considerably worse (respectively ‘living up to’ and ‘living down to’ expectations).</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There have been various other studies with similar findings. Wilkinson and Pickett cite a study by Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson of Stanford and New York Universities respectively, where they found the same effect amongst white and black high-school students in the US. There have been others – there have been lots of studies into ‘stereotype threat’ showing that girls live down to the gender stereotype of not being as good at mathematics as boys when they are primed to think about the fact that they are girls and that such a stereotype exists, but perform equally well without such priming. So it is with low-caste Indian boys, as with black American high-school students, as with otherwise mathematically capable girls.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wilkinson and Pickett close the chapter with a finding that children in less equal societies are actually more aspirational than those in more equal ones and posit that some of this difference may be accounted for by less skilled work being less stigmatised in more equal societies.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chapter 9: Teenage births: recycling deprivation</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In chapter 9, the authors turn their attention to teenage pregnancy and motherhood rates. They find a correlation between income inequality and births per 1000 women aged 15 – 19 years. They hypothesise that this may be explained by young women in ‘relative poverty’ perceiving motherhood as a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“fast lane to adulthood”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, when they have limited other options open to them in terms of education or careers, etc.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In chapter 3 of ‘The Spirit Level Delusion’, Christopher Snowdon looks at family relationships, including teenage births, divorce rates, and the proportion of children living in single-parent households, and how they relate to income inequality. He shows that there is not a link between income inequality and divorce rates in rich countries; there may even be an inverse relationship here. Snowdon also shows that there is no correlation between the proportion of children living in single-parent households and income inequality.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is a correlation between income inequality and teenage birth rates. However, as Snowdon notes, the authors of the UNICEF report from which the figures are taken [emphasis added]:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">explicitly reject the possibility of a single unifying explanation</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for why teen birth rates vary, saying ‘teenage birth rates are </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the result of a complex interplay of forces</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and there is no one equation that can adequately explain or predict their outcome.’”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Wilkinson and Pickett seem unable to look beyond [income] inequality for an explanation… There are many cultural, historical and religious reasons why teen birth rates vary between countries.”</span></div>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></h2>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chapter 10: Violence: gaining respect</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In chapter 10, Wilkinson and Pickett examine the link between income inequality and violence, focussing mainly on the relationship of income inequality to homicide rates per million people. They find that the two are correlated.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One point which caught my eye in chapter 10 was Wilkinson and Pickett’s observation that Finland and Singapore have respectively far more and far fewer homicides per million people than would be expected, based on their income inequality levels, if they were to conform to the general trend (Figure 10.2, p. 135). They hypothesise that this may have something to do with the fact that Finland has the highest rate of gun ownership per household and Singapore amongst the lowest (they cite a 1997 UN Firearm Regulation study for the figures of gun ownership [ref. 215]). </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">According to more recent </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">figures</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (yes, I know, the link is to Wikipedia, which is </span><a href="https://xkcd.com/978/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not a reliable source</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">), Finland has the 16th highest gun ownership rate per capita on a list of 178 countries – the US has by far the highest rate. Other countries with higher rates of gun ownership than Finland include: Switzerland (4th highest gun ownership rate in the World), Sweden (9th), Norway (10th), France (11th), Canada (12th), Austria (13th) and Germany (15th) – all of which also have </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">lower</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> homicide rates than Finland. Indeed, Switzerland, Norway, Austria and Germany all have lower homicide rates even than Singapore! This suggests that rates of gun ownership do not explain much, if any, of the wide difference in homicide rates seen between Finland and Singapore.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is also an ad hoc argument being made by Wilkinson and Pickett. Why do they suspect that Finland’s high homicide rate is causally related to the high rate of gun ownership there, but the high homicide rate in the US (which has the highest rate of gun ownership in the World) is because of inequality? If a high rate of gun ownership can explain Finland’s homicide rate then it can go at least part of the way to explaining that of the US. But if it can’t then you have to abandon the thesis that inequality is a primary causal factor when it comes to homicides, a thesis that rests almost entirely on the peculiarly high homicide rate in the US. At the end of the day, Wilkinson and Pickett’s case depends on a single outlier, whilst simultaneously explaining away </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">other contradictory outliers</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> ad hoc.</span></div>
<br />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chapter 11: Imprisonment and punishment</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In chapter 11, the authors look at the relationship between incarceration rates and income inequality and find a very strong positive correlation. They discuss the high rates of incarceration and the harsh prison environment in the US and contrast this with more equal (in terms of incomes) countries such as Japan and the Netherlands. They observe that custodial sentences are more likely to be handed out and these sentences are more likely to be longer in more unequal countries, particularly the United States. They also observe that longer sentences are well known to not be particularly effective at reducing crime or recidivism rates – the more effective deterrent is higher conviction rates.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In chapter 4 of ‘The Spirit Level Delusion’, Christopher Snowdon observes that Wilkinson and Pickett’s case is based on the number of people incarcerated in each country and not on the number of crimes and that if one looks at number of recorded crimes against income inequality one observes a trend in the opposite direction.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Snowdon takes a more sophisticated view than the monocausal one espoused by Wilkinson and Pickett whereby every ‘bad thing’ is caused by income inequality. He goes on to say (p. 76), however:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“None of this should be taken as evidence that equality ‘causes’ crime. The wide variation between Scandinavian countries shows that many factors are at work.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He continues:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Wilkinson and Pickett are almost certainly correct when they argue that too many Americans are sent to prison for minor offences. The absurd ‘three strikes and you’re out’ law that exists in two dozen US states has filled prisons with minor offenders serving life sentences. Half of US prisoners are in jail for non-violent offences and America’s obsessive war on drugs is arguably misguided. Many of its prisoners could be freed without a significant increase in crime ensuing.”</span></div>
<br />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chapter 12: Social mobility: unequal opportunities</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In chapter 12, Wilkinson and Pickett consider social mobility and conclude that it is negatively correlated with income inequality, for an admittedly small dataset of only 8 countries (</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_error" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">small sample error</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> yet again?).</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Something which caught my eye in this chapter was:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Data from the 1980s and 1990s show that about 36 per cent of children whose parents were in the bottom fifth of the wealth distribution end up in that same bottom fifth themselves as adults, and among children whose parents were in the top fifth for wealth, 36 per cent of them can be found in the same top fifth.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bizarrely, Wilkinson and Pickett interpret this as follows:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Those at the top can maintain their wealth and status, those at the bottom find it difficult to climb up the income ladder, but there is more flexibility in the middle.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have an alternative interpretation:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘Most of those at the top cannot maintain their wealth and status, whilst most of those at the bottom are able to climb up the income ladder, there is even more flexibility in the middle.’</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">36 per cent, or just over a third, of children whose parents incomes were in the bottom fifth of the distribution also being in the bottom fifth themselves, means that just under two thirds (64 per cent to be precise), or a significant majority, manage to improve their standing and move up into higher quintiles. That is, for every person born into and remaining stuck in the bottom quintile (although many of those will still earn more than their parents in both nominal and real terms), there are (roughly) two who manage to move up the income distribution to a higher quintile.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The exact reverse scenario applies to those born to parents in the top quintile, with almost two thirds of them ending up making relatively less income than their parents (although many of those will still be earn more than their parents in both nominal and real terms).</span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This suggests a large degree of income mobility. How Wilkinson and Pickett manage to draw the exact opposite conclusion from this data I have absolutely no idea!</span>Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-66698068040909628942017-03-29T06:04:00.000+01:002017-03-29T06:04:01.796+01:00The Spirit Level: A Rebuttal - Part I<h1 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 13pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Introduction</span></h1>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a rebuttal of the 2009 book ‘</span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spirit-Level-Equality-Better-Everyone/dp/0241954290/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1428829047&sr=8-1&keywords=the+spirit+level" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Spirit Level</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’ (subtitle: ‘Why Equality is Better for Everyone’) by </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_G._Wilkinson" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Richard Wilkinson</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Pickett" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kate Pickett</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have split it into four parts and intend to publish one part per week on the blog. This is part I and covers the front matter, and part I of the book. Parts II and III will cover those respective parts of the book and part IV will be a collection of some other thoughts and conclusions of sorts.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-3e6c773c-1122-45dc-1857-ddfff013587f" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘The Spirit Level’ was originally strongly recommended to me by a close friend whose thoughts and opinions I very much value and respect and I thought that I’d note down my general thoughts and impressions as I read through it. I originally set out simply to write a review of ‘The Spirit Level’. Through the course of reading the book and ‘</span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spirit-Level-Delusion-Fact-Checking-Everything/dp/0956226515/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1428829047&sr=8-2&keywords=the+spirit+level" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Spirit Level Delusion</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’ by </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Snowdon" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Christopher Snowdon</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, a direct response to and critique of ‘The Spirit Level’, this has ended up becoming more of a rebuttal.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Before we get into the rebuttal/review, I want to note that although many of my comments may seem rather negative and overly critical, it was not my intention to ‘disprove’ Wilkinson and Pickett’s thesis. My intention is to improve my own understanding, and if possible, to help improve others understanding too, and to attempt to arrive at a position that is as close to the truth as is possible. If many of my comments seem particularly critical it is only because I have felt the need to elaborate more on points of significant doubt or major disagreement with the authors’, than on points of agreement, particularly points of general or widespread agreement.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On a similar note, I am not necessarily opposed to redistribution of income or wealth on ideological grounds. There </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">are</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> good theoretical arguments to be made in favour of redistribution of wealth and/or income; I will not get into the details of these here, suffice to say that I find some of these arguments at least somewhat compelling. Wilkinson and Pickett’s arguments I generally find far less compelling for a variety of reasons, which we will get into over the next </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">66</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> pages (yes </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">66</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> pages – this is pretty comprehensive).</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For reference I am using the UK paperback version of ‘The Spirit Level’, published by Penguin, with a new postscript, in 2010. Similarly, I am using the UK paperback version of ‘The Spirit Level Delusion’ published by Little Dice, also in 2010. Any page, section or figure/table numbers I give refer to these versions of the books, page references or figure/table numbers may not exactly correspond in other versions or formats of the books.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Without further ado, on with the review.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<h1 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 13pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cover</span></h1>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The subtitle of ‘The Spirit Level’ is ‘Why Equality is Better for Everyone’, which seems to presuppose the conclusion, although the charitable reading is that the authors are simply writing with the advantage of hindsight after having done the research.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<h1 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 13pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Preface</span></h1>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reading the preface, the following statement caught my eye:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“At an intuitive level people have always recognized that inequality is socially corrosive.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I really shouldn’t need to point out, but I will, that:</span></div>
<ol style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: upper-roman; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">People’s intuitions are often misguided and lead to incorrect conclusions. Not always, but often – often enough that we should always stop to think things through more carefully than just accepting the direction our intuition or ‘gut feel’ guides us towards. We should not necessarily be swayed simply by what has an intuitive appeal (or indeed by what we intuitively disapprove of), we need to endeavour to consider the evidence impartially (in so far as that is possible), without presupposing our conclusions.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: upper-roman; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Describing inequality as “socially corrosive” is loaded, emotive language, not to mention vague and ambiguous. It appears to have been used to evoke a specific emotional response from the reader.</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I also note that the authors do not define at the outset precisely what they mean by ‘inequality’. There are all sorts of different inequalities that could be being referred to: inequalities of wealth, health, leisure (time), income, education, political power, legal status, physical inequalities, intellectual inequalities, emotional inequalities, and inequality of opportunity (which may come about for a great many different reasons). Not until more than halfway through chapter 2, do Wilkinson and Pickett state explicitly that in ‘The Spirit Level’ they are here discussing </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">income inequality</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></h2>
<h1 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 13pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Part One: Material Success, Social Failure</span></h1>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chapter 1: The end of an era</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The first chapter of the book opens with the claim that it is:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...a remarkable paradox that, at the pinnacle of human material and technical achievement,we find ourselves anxiety-ridden, prone to depression, worried about how others see us, unsure of our friendships, driven to consume and with little or no community life.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I do not see the paradox, far less find this remarkable. People have always been, and always will be, understandably anxious and worried about their friendships and social interactions and about how others see them. Well, most people at least. This is a perfectly natural result of our evolution as social animals and is to be fully expected. There is no obvious link between our level of technological advancement and/or material prosperity on the one hand and our social and interpersonal anxieties on the other. Until and unless the authors can put forward a compelling case otherwise, this need not be considered further.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The authors go on to state:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Economic growth, for so long the great engine of progress, has, in the rich countries, largely finished its work. Not only have measures of wellbeing and happiness ceased to rise with economic growth but, as affluent societies have grown richer, there have been long-term rises in rates of anxiety, depression and numerous other social problems. The populations of rich countries have got to the end of a long historical journey.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a remarkable claim. It is also deeply unscientific, on par with claims that humans are the ‘most evolved’ species or that we’ve come to the end of our evolution, or claims that we have already invented everything worthwhile inventing. Economic growth continues (albeit slowly in much of the wealthier countries considered in ‘The Spirit Level’ and with various other caveats) whether Wilkinson and Pickett believe it or not and whether they believe it is or is not beneficial. It has certainly not </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“largely finished it’s work”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in the same sense that evolution has not </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“largely finished it’s work”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. For examples, see </span><a href="http://www.aei.org/publication/christmas-shopping-1958-vs-2012-illustrates-the-miracle-of-the-marketplace-which-delivers-better-and-cheaper-goods/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="http://cafehayek.com/2014/01/a-note-on-growth.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="http://www.timworstall.com/2014/01/29/the-terrible-curse-of-fuel-poverty/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="http://cafehayek.com/2014/02/how-does-this-fact-affect-judgments-about-income-inequality.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="http://www.aei.org/publication/video-1989-radio-shack-commercial-for-its-most-powerful-transportable-cell-phone-at-a-cost-today-of-1500-on-sale/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="http://www.aei.org/publication/the-good-old-days-are-now-thanks-to-the-miracle-of-the-marketplace-a-1964-stereo-12-electronic-items-today/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="http://cafehayek.com/2015/03/quotation-of-the-day-1279.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><a href="http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2015/03/we-still-havent-figured-out-how-to-measure-prosperity.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Also in chapter one, Wilkinson and Pickett consider differences in average life expectancy and self-reported happiness between a range of countries and how both vary with gross national income (GNI) per capita. The data show large, rapid gains in both life expectancy and happiness for increasing GNI per capita, for those countries in the lower half of the income distribution (below roughly $20,000 per person), but then the trends more-or-less level off, showing little further improvement in either lifespan or happiness with increasing GNI per capita for those countries in the upper half of the income distribution (above around $20,000 per person). As the authors state, this result probably shouldn’t surprise us and can largely be explained by the picking of low-hanging fruit in terms of healthcare, sanitation, nutrition etc. and by the law of diminishing returns (diminishing marginal utility): each extra dollar you earn is worth less to you than the one before it. This is neither new ground, nor controversial and shouldn’t surprise anyone. It is widely acknowledged that, all else being equal, happiness increases with income, but only up to a point. That point being an income level at which you can reasonably comfortably pay for a roof over your head, clothes on your back, food on your table, schooling for your kids and a pint in the pub.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Once you’re earning enough to pay for the essentials and a little bit of leisure/entertainment, and you’re not constantly worrying about paying your rent/bills, any extra income is not necessarily going to have a substantial effect on your overall wellbeing or happiness. For example, if you give a pay rise of £5,000 to someone currently earning only £15,000 that will make a massive difference to their life and wellbeing. However, if this person is already earning a six-figure salary, the same £5,000 pay rise probably is not going to affect them all that much. File this under: ‘so obvious it shouldn’t need to be said’.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes, I also know it’s “</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not possible”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to make interpersonal utility comparisons. Scott Sumner attempts to deal with this problem </span><a href="http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/06/interpersonal_u.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. As with Professor Sumner’s example, I can’t </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">prove</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that a £5,000 pay rise would make less of a difference to someone earning £150,000 than to someone earning £15,000. It is just an educated guess based on 30 or so years of observation.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This undermines the general thesis of the book. By pointing out that the same additional income is far less significant to the already wealthy, it illustrates that everyone is already </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">more equal</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> than one would suppose by narrowly considering only income (or wealth).</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What’s the actual material difference between someone who earns £15,000 per year and someone who earns £150,000? Narrowly focussing exclusively on their incomes, the latter is ten times better off. But are they </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">really</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> ten times better off, in terms of actual wellbeing or quality of life? This is very difficult to answer because ‘quality of life’ is so subjective and because of the aforementioned difficulties of making interpersonal utility comparisons. However, it is telling that Wilkinson and Pickett don’t even ask this question.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here’s my amateurish attempt at an answer, this argument is not original to me – I have come across is several times in different forms, but can’t remember where I first encountered it:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Take the following hypothetical example:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rich works as an investment banker, a job in which he earns what would be considered by most a very generous salary: £1,000,000 per year. Joe works as a bus driver and earns £20,000 per year.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s no doubt that Rich is much better off financially than Joe. Joe will be lucky to earn in an entire lifetime what Rich can earn in just one year.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How much better off is Rich, compared to Joe?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One possible answer is that Rich’s salary is 50 times Joe’s salary, therefore Rich is 50 times better off than Joe.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The above answer has an appealing simplicity to it, but I don’t think it paints the whole picture.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In strictly financial terms, yes Rich is 50 times better off than Joe. But surely we care about more than just how many digits appear on people’s paychecks? We also care about people’s wellbeing or quality of life. However, these are far more abstract and difficult to measure or observe than people’s salaries or bank accounts.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is Rich’s wellbeing or quality of life really 50 times that of Joe’s? I’m not sure it’s possible to quantify such things with any amount of precision or confidence, but here is one (enlightening) way to look at it: the millionaire may have multiple houses, but they can still only stay in one at a time; they may have more pairs of trousers, but they can still only wear one at a time; they may eat higher quality food, but they can still only eat one meal at a time; they may have a newer, shinier, faster car, or even a fleet of cars, but they can still only drive, or be driven in, one at a time – a 7 year old Hyundai may not be as cool or as fast around a track as a new Bugatti, but it still performs the same essential function. Having 7 cars to choose from – a different one for every day of the week – doesn’t necessarily make your life 7 times better than if you had just one.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">See also </span><a href="http://cafehayek.com/2014/08/quotation-of-the-day-1083.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="http://cafehayek.com/2014/08/a-note-from-indur-goklany.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="http://cafehayek.com/2015/06/quotation-of-the-day-1381.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><a href="http://utopiayouarestandinginit.com/2015/02/18/hayek-on-a-central-misunderstanding-about-inequality/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In Chapter 3 of ‘The Spirit Level Delusion’, entitled ‘The pursuit of happiness’, Christopher Snowdon points to an even more fundamental point regarding the Income vs. Happiness and Inequality vs. Happiness relationships looked at by Wilkinson and Pickett. Snowdon points out that the ‘levelling off’ that is observed in Figure 1.2 of ‘The Spirit Level’ can likely be largely explained by the fact that in most wealthy countries reported happiness is close to 100% and, as a matter of arithmetic, it is simply not possible for it to exceed 100%.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here’s Snowdon:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...happiness cannot rise above 100% and no one argues that money can guarantee happiness for everyone.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He asks rhetorically:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“What socialist miracle do Wilkinson and Pickett have in mind that would propel happiness beyond the 100% that would be required for the curve to keep rising?”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He continues:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Having dug out the World Values Survey to show the levels of happiness for dozens of countries against income, you might expect Wilkinson and Pickett to draw up another graph showing happiness against inequality. Considering the overall ‘equal societies are happier’ hypothesis, it’s hard to believe such a graph does not appear. It should show a downward trend, with the most equal countries having the highest scores and the least equal countries having the lowest.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">However:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...this is not what happens at all.” “...there is no correlation with inequality.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“There is, however, a clear correlation with income.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This can be seen by comparing Figures 3.2 and 3.3 on pages 54 and 55 of ‘The Spirit Level Delusion’. As Snowdon points out, there is no correlation between income inequality and rates of self reported happiness for the set of rich countries considered (R² = 0.0024), but there </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a moderate positive correlation between GNI per capita and self-reported happiness (R² = 0.387).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chapter 2: Poverty or inequality?</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In chapter 2 of ‘The Spirit Level’, the authors compare the level of income inequality between a group of 21 of the World’s richest, most developed countries – and between each US state – and consider whether there are any correlations between income inequality and a variety of measures of health and social wellbeing, which they list as:</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">level of trust</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">prevalence of mental illness, including drug and alcohol addiction</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">life expectancy and infant mortality</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">prevalence of obesity</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">children’s educational performance</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">number of teenage births</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">number of homicides</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">imprisonment rates</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">social mobility (not available for US states)</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They combine all of the above (with each of the above items carrying equal weight) into what they refer to as an ‘Index of Health and Social Problems’. They go on to show a strong correlation between income inequality and this index (particularly so between the group of rich countries considered), but only a weak correlation between gross national income (GNI) per capita and this index. They do likewise for another index, the UNICEF ‘index of child wellbeing’.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Figure 2.2 (p. 20) shows a very clear correlation between income inequality and Wilkinson and Pickett’s ‘Index of Health and Social Problems’ for the 21 developed countries considered.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Figure 2.3 (p. 21) shows a weaker trend between national income per capita and the ‘Index of Health and Social Problems’. However, with the notable exception of the USA – which is an extreme outlier on this measure – there </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is still a trend</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> here. For example, the three richest countries considered: Norway, Switzerland and Denmark all score better than the three poorest: Portugal, Greece and New Zealand.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Figure 2.4 (p. 22) shows a correlation between income inequality and the ‘Index of Health and Social Problems’ for the US states.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Figure 2.5 (p. 22) was the one that really interested me though. Wilkinson and Pickett claim that it shows only a weak correlation between national income per capita and the ‘Index of Health and Social Problems’ for the US states. However, what I thought notable was the large empty space in the top right of the figure – indeed, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">almost the entire top right half of the graph is empty</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">!</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This shows that whilst there are </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">both rich and poor states</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> which do well on the ‘Index of Health and Social Problems’, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">all of the states which do badly are poorer states</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. For example, all of the states with an average ‘National income’ per person of over $25,000 are in the better half of performers when it comes to the ‘Index of health and social problems’. Sure, there are only 4 states with an average income per person in this range, but this is indicative of the overall trend. Conversely, the 7 worst performing states on the ‘Index of health and social problems’ are </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">all</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in the lower half in terms of average incomes.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Georgia and Nevada are the only two states that look particularly bad by this measure; both do pretty poorly on the ‘Index of health and social problems’ despite not being particularly poor states. However, inequality does not look like a promising candidate for an explanation here. Whilst Georgia is one of the more unequal states (it ranks about 13th most unequal overall), Nevada is not (it appears to rank about joint 19th most equal, along with Montana and Washington).</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is notable that there are no rich states whatsoever with poor ratings on the index, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">regardless of the level of inequality</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in those states. This one chart devastatingly undermines the overall thesis of the book, as it suggests that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">absolute wealth is important in avoiding bad outcomes</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Overlooking this problem entirely, Wilkinson and Pickett posit that the relationship between income inequality and these various health and social problems is a causal one. They confidently assert:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“This evidence cannot be dismissed as some statistical trick done with smoke and mirrors.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">However, this claim is never substantiated. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of statistics can see how the sub-setting of countries (after all, only 21 countries are considered by the authors) </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">may</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> result in a type 1 error (a false positive); this risk is expertly explained by Fallacy Man on </span><a href="http://thelogicofscience.com/2015/04/07/basic-statistics-part-3-the-dangers-of-large-data-sets-a-tale-of-p-values-error-rates-and-bonferroni-corrections/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Logic of Science blog</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I’m </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> saying that Wilkinson and Pickett necessarily have made a type 1 error due to the way they’ve sub-setted the data, only that it’s a possibility and that it’s incumbent on them to demonstrate that they’ve taken reasonable steps to preclude this possibility. This is something which they have not done.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We also don’t know how many different relationships the authors’ tested in order to find the correlations that their thesis rests on. If you look at enough permutations of enough variables, you’re bound to find some that appear to be correlated as a result of pure chance. Findings that have only a 5% probability of being the result of chance come up 1 time in every 20 after all. Randall Munro nicely captures this idea in </span><a href="https://xkcd.com/882/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this xkcd comic</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Also in chapter 2, Wilkinson and Pickett repeat their remarkable claim that we have:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...got to the end of what economic growth can do for the quality of life...”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and that:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Having come to the end of what higher material living standards can offer us, we are the first generation to have to find other ways of improving the real quality of life.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As already observed, this is a remarkable and deeply unscientific claim which has no supporting evidence. Indeed, such a claim is at odds with history, from which it can be observed that economic growth has been by far and away the primary driver of improvements in quality of life for ordinary people for all of recorded human civilisation. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; the authors have provided precisely zero evidence for these assertions.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The whole chapter seems to have been written begging the question that income inequality </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">causes</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> all sorts of health and social problems. But by the end of chapter 2, the authors have yet to backup this claim.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’d like to give the authors the benefit of the doubt, I really would, but I just can’t suppress the feeling that they’ve simply set out to confirm their priors. I hope that this is just the result of careless writing and/or sloppy editing and that the research Wilkinson and Pickett have carried out has been intellectually honest and scientifically rigorous, but this is far from apparent from my reading of their book.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chapter 3: How inequality gets under the skin</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In chapter 3, the authors describe why they believe humans are so vulnerable to inequality, and discuss the rise in anxiety in recent decades and the link between income inequality and social status. Significantly, the authors point out, that they </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">do not</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> attribute the rise in anxiety to income inequality; they state, on page 35:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“That possibility can be discounted because the rises in anxiety and depression seem to start well before the increases in [income] inequality...”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">However, this is somewhat at odds with the chapter’s title and with the general overarching narrative of the book. There is a subsection of this very chapter titled ‘Inequality Increases Evaluation Anxieties’ which consists of nothing but conjecture and runs contrary to the statement quoted above. This strikes me as disingenuous at best, and even pernicious. Wilkinson and Pickett openly acknowledge that there is no evidence that income inequality causes anxiety, and then – within ten pages of this admission – assert that income inequality nevertheless causes anxiety. The mind boggles at the level of doublethink required here.</span></div>
Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-34207323909853567302017-02-17T18:08:00.002+00:002017-02-17T18:08:43.085+00:00Dillow's Second Law<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"nobody knows anything"</blockquote>
That is from his <a href="http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2017/02/replacing-wenger.html">latest post</a> at <a href="http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/">Stumbling and Mumbling</a>.Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-26301164786806488762017-02-02T07:21:00.000+00:002017-02-02T07:21:07.184+00:00The Wisdom of Milton FriedmanHere, he is commenting on JFK's famous statement: "ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country."<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"It is a striking sign of the temper of our times that the controversy about this passage centered on its origin and not on its content. Neither half of the statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society. The paternalistic "what your government can do for you" implies that the government is the patron, the citizen the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man's belief in his own destiny. The organismic, "what you can do for your country" implies that government is the master or the deity, the citizen, the servant or the votary. To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshiped and served. He recognizes no national goal except as it is the consensus of the goals that the citizens severally serve. He recognizes no national purpose except as it is the consensus of the purposes for which the citizens severally strive."</blockquote>
Hat tip to <a href="http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2017/01/ominous_inaugur.html">David Henderson</a>.Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-55379996694553052052017-02-01T06:55:00.000+00:002017-02-01T06:55:09.694+00:00Scots Favour Free Trade: Adam Smith would be ProudYouGov's Antony Wells of <a href="http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/9800">UK Polling Report</a> links to a <a href="http://www.panelbase.com/media/polls/W7181w9tablesforpublication300117.pdf">new Scottish poll</a> conducted by Panelbase for the Sunday Times.<br />
<br />
Asking about free trade and immigration in the context of the UK having left the EU, by 65% to 11% (20% were neutral and 4% didn't know) Scots were overwhelmingly in favour of companies in other EU countries remaining free to sell goods as easily in Scotland as in their own countries.<br />
<br />
The view isn't quite as rosy for immigration, with people favouring free immigration from other EU countries by just 40% to 36% against (19% were neutral and 4% didn't know). Still, that's a net +4% approval rating for a free movement policy.<br />
<br />
I hope Holyrood are paying attention.<br />
<br />
<br />Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-83519088379661764402017-01-31T07:02:00.000+00:002017-01-31T07:02:11.361+00:00The Wisdom of Bryan Caplan<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">"<a href="http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2017/01/the_most_ill_ad.html">Since I think</a> that most news is overblown fluff, I have little sympathy for the endless pieces about "What we've learned about the world in 2016." Against the background of all of human history, 2016 taught us next to nothing. If you just discovered that horrible people often gain vast political power with widespread popular support, you're in dire need of remedial history. If you've just discovered that politicians' personalities matter at least as much as their policy views, you're in dire need of remedial political science. If you've just discovered that demagogic appeals to national identity work, you're in dire need of remedial psychology."</span></span></blockquote>
Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-59997193595175689682017-01-14T08:14:00.000+00:002017-03-27T20:33:09.635+01:002017 PredictionsFollowing the same vein as <a href="http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/01/06/predictions-for-2017/">Scott Alexander</a>, here are my predictions for 2017:<br />
<br />
UK:<br />
1. Theresa May remains Prime Minister at the end of 2017: 95%<br />
2. Jeremy Corbyn remains leader of the Labour Party at the end of 2017: 90%<br />
3. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act is not repealed: 95%<br />
4. An early General Election is not called: 95%<br />
5. Scotland remains part of the UK, with no formal plan to secede: 99%<br />
6. Nicola Sturgeon remains First Minister of Scotland at the end of 2017: 99%<br />
<div>
7. UK GDP growth lower than in 2016: 50%</div>
<div>
8. UK unemployment to be higher at end of year than beginning: 60%<br />
<br />
US:<br />
9. Donald Trump remains President at the end of 2017: 90%<br />
<div>
10. No serious impeachment proceedings are active against Trump: 80%<br />
11. Construction on Mexican border wall (beyond existing barriers) begins: 80%<br />
<br />
Europe:</div>
<div>
12. The UK triggers article 50, beginning the process of withdrawing from the EU: 80%</div>
<div>
13. Germany does not declare plan to leave EU: 99%</div>
<div>
14. France does not declare plan to leave EU: 95%<br />
<div>
15. No country currently in Euro or EU announces new plan to leave: 80%</div>
<div>
16. Marine Le Pen is not elected President of France: 50%</div>
<div>
17. Angela Merkel is re-elected Chancellor of Germany: 70%</div>
<div>
18. Fewer refugees admitted 2017 than 2016: 95%</div>
<br />
World Events:<br />
<div>
19. US will not get involved in any new major war with death toll of > 100 US soldiers: 60%</div>
<div>
20. North Korea’s government will survive the year without large civil war/revolt: 95%</div>
<div>
21. No terrorist attack in the USA will kill > 100 people: 90%</div>
<div>
22. ...in any First World country: 80%</div>
<div>
23. Assad will remain President of Syria: 80%</div>
<div>
24. Israel will not get in a large-scale war (i.e. >100 Israeli deaths) with any Arab state: 90%</div>
<div>
25. No major intifada in Israel this year (i.e. > 250 Israeli deaths, but not in Cast Lead style war): 80%</div>
<div>
26. No interesting progress with Gaza or peace negotiations in general this year: 95%</div>
<div>
27. No Cast Lead style bombing/invasion of Gaza this year: 90%</div>
<div>
28. Situation in Israel looks more worse than better: 70%</div>
<div>
29. Syria’s civil war will not end this year: 60%</div>
<div>
30. ISIS will control less territory than it does right now: 80%</div>
<div>
31. No major civil war in Middle Eastern country not currently experiencing a major civil war: 90%</div>
<div>
32. Ukraine will neither break into all-out war or get neatly resolved: 80%</div>
<div>
33. No major revolt (greater than or equal to Tiananmen Square) against Chinese Communist Party: 95%</div>
<div>
34. No major war in Asia (with >100 Chinese, Japanese, South Korean, and American deaths combined) over tiny stupid islands: 99%</div>
<div>
35. No exchange of fire over tiny stupid islands: 90%</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Economics:<br />
36. Oil (Brent Crude) will end the year higher than $50 a barrel: 70%<br />
37. …higher than $60 a barrel: 50%<br />
38. FTSE 350 will not fall > 10% this year: 60%<br />
<br />
Work/Personal:<br />
39. I will not change careers this year: 99%<br />
40. I will not change employers: 95%<br />
41. I will not change jobs: 90%<br />
42. I will not relocate to a different locale: 99%<br />
43. I will not move house: 95%<br />
44. I will redecorate at least 1 room in my current house: 90%<br />
45. Still driving my current car at end of 2017: 95%<br />
46. I will travel to at least 2 foreign countries: 99%<br />
47. ...but no more than 3: 95%<br />
48. My marital status will not change: 99%<br />
49. I will not acquire any additional pets: 90%<br />
50. I attend at least 2 weddings this year: 90%<br />
51. I weigh >140 pounds at the end of 2017: 95%<br />
52. I weigh < 150 pounds at the end of 2017: 80%</div>
</div>
Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-36591084907366769142017-01-12T07:01:00.000+00:002017-01-12T07:01:04.540+00:00Quotation of the DayIs from <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast21mar_1">NASA</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"As long as you stay away from the South Pole and don't fall into a volcano, Earth is a pretty comfortable world."</blockquote>
Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-73374033951548944872017-01-10T06:45:00.000+00:002017-01-10T06:45:06.845+00:00Quotation of the Day<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Is from Thomas Sowell, via <a href="https://pjmedia.com/trending/2016/12/27/14-amazing-thomas-sowell-quotes-in-honor-of-his-last-column//?singlepage=true">Tyler O'Neil</a>:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif;">"Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on 'income distribution,' the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned."</span></blockquote>
Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-32124277684510420322016-12-21T13:08:00.002+00:002016-12-21T13:13:52.422+00:00Quotation of the DayIs from Bertrand Russell in his 1932 essay '<a href="http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html">In Praise of Idleness</a>':<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The conception of duty, speaking historically, has been a means used by the holders of power to induce others to live for the interests of their masters rather than for their own."</blockquote>
Hat tip to <a href="http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2016/12/against-busyness.html">Chris Dillow</a> for today's quote.Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-22142977519707529872016-12-20T06:27:00.000+00:002016-12-20T07:59:23.006+00:00Great Sentences<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"In most cases, when a boring, bureaucratic job turns interesting, there’s trouble."</blockquote>
That's from <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/12/maple-syrup-heist">this Vanity Fair article</a> by Rich Cohen, describing the maple syrup industry in Quebec and the theft of some 540,000 gallons (13.4 million dollars worth) of syrup from the FPAQ (Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers) reserve in 2012.<br />
<br />
Maple syrup trades at roughly $1300 a barrel, more than 20 times the current price of crude oil.<br />
<br />
Hat tip to <a href="http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/12/thursday-assorted-links-87.html">Tyler Cowen</a> for the link.Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-11581420987278677082016-12-14T06:55:00.000+00:002016-12-14T18:16:50.380+00:00Quotation of the DayIs from Chapter 9 of Robert M. Pirsig's novel 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance':<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The real purpose of scientific method is to make sure Nature hasn't misled you into thinking you know something you don't actually know."</blockquote>
Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-17352054415373349942016-11-30T17:45:00.000+00:002016-11-30T17:45:00.202+00:00Quotation of the DayIs from David Henderson, <a href="http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2016/11/in_praise_of_in.html">blogging at EconLog</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I would love to have politicians who are effective at protecting and increasing our freedom. But sometimes the best we can do is get politicians who are ineffective at reducing our freedom."</blockquote>
Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-34787284240136171502016-11-23T06:59:00.000+00:002016-11-23T06:59:00.524+00:00Quotation of the Day<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Hell! there ain’t no rules around here! We are tryin’ to accomplish somep’n!"</blockquote>
- Purportedly said by Thomas Edison to Martin André Rosanoff circa 1903, first reported in the September 1932 issue of Harper's Magazine.Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-78283834065443972112016-11-18T07:52:00.000+00:002016-11-18T07:52:21.877+00:00Quotation of the DayEdgar Mitchell, 6th man on the moon, describing his experience of seeing the Earth from the Moon:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch'."</blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/images/297755main_GPN-2001-000009_full.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/images/297755main_GPN-2001-000009_full.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-74611745937486064782016-11-11T06:55:00.000+00:002016-11-11T06:55:02.168+00:00Quotation of the DayIs from <a href="http://timharford.com/2016/11/rich-the-banker-whats-not-in-a-name/">Tim Harford (AKA The Undercover Economist)</a>, blogging at <a href="http://timharford.com/">timharford.com</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"...even when the myth is delightful and the truth is dull, the truth still matters."</blockquote>
Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-25810818009809477692016-11-10T06:52:00.000+00:002016-11-10T06:52:00.229+00:00Quotation of the Day<div class="tr_bq">
Is from Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part VII, Section II, Chapter III, 'Of those Systems which make Virtue consist in Benevolence':</div>
<blockquote>
"Those actions which aimed at the happiness of a great community, as they demonstrated a more enlarged benevolence than those which aimed only at that of a smaller system, so were they, likewise, proportionally the more virtuous. The most virtuous of all affections, therefore, was that which embraced as its object the happiness of all intelligent beings. The least virtuous, on the contrary, of those to which the character of virtue could in any respect belong, was that which aimed no further than at the happiness of an individual, such as a son, a brother, a friend.</blockquote>
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<blockquote>
In directing all our actions to promote the greatest possible good, in submitting all inferior affections to the desire of the general happiness of mankind, in regarding one's self but as one of the many, whose prosperity was to be pursued no further than it was consistent with, or conducive to that of the whole, consisted the perfection of virtue."</blockquote>
Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-28227373315355934842016-11-09T07:03:00.000+00:002016-11-09T07:03:06.063+00:00Quotation of the DayIs from Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part VII, Section II, Chapter I, 'Of those Systems which make Virtue consist in Propriety':<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The principle of suicide, the principle which would teach us, upon some occasions, to consider that violent action as an object of applause and approbation, seems to be altogether a refinement of philosophy. Nature, in her sound and healthful state, seems never to prompt us to suicide. There is, indeed, a species of melancholy (a disease to which human nature, among its other calamities, is unhappily subject) which seems to be accompanied with, what one may call, an irresistible appetite for self-destruction. In circumstances often of the highest external prosperity, and sometimes too, in spite even of the most serious and deeply impressed sentiments of religion, this disease has frequently been known to drive its wretched victims to this fatal extremity. The unfortunate persons who perish in this miserable manner, are the proper objects, not of censure, but of commiseration. To attempt to punish them, when they are beyond the reach of all human punishment, is not more absurd than it is unjust. That punishment can fall only on their surviving friends and relations, who are always perfectly innocent, and to whom the loss of their friend, in this disgraceful manner, must always be alone a very heavy calamity."</blockquote>
Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-77596494377370725992016-11-08T06:53:00.000+00:002016-11-08T06:53:01.195+00:00Quotation of the DayIs from Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part VII, Section II, Chapter I, 'Of those Systems which make Virtue consist in Propriety':<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Men of letters, though, after their death, they are frequently more talked of than the greatest princes or statesmen of their times, are generally, during their life, so obscure and insignificant that their adventures are seldom recorded by co-temporary historians. Those of after-ages, in order to satisfy the public curiosity, and having no authentic documents either to support or to contradict their narratives, seem frequently to have fashioned them according to their own fancy; and almost always with a great mixture of the marvellous."</blockquote>
Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-77995200654997950812016-11-04T06:31:00.000+00:002016-11-04T06:31:01.718+00:00Quotation of the Day<i>"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong."</i> - VoltaireAllyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-88099011714770859752016-11-03T07:09:00.001+00:002016-11-03T07:09:01.057+00:00Quotation of the DayIf from Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part VII, Section II, Chapter I, 'Of those Systems which make Virtue consist in Propriety':<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Those philosophers [the stoics] endeavoured, at the same time, to show, that the greatest misfortunes to which human life was liable, might be supported more easily than was commonly imagined. They endeavoured to point out the comforts which a man might still enjoy when reduced to poverty, when driven into banishment, when exposed to the injustice of popular clamour, when labouring under blindness, under deafness, in the extremity of old age, upon the approach of death. They pointed out, too, the considerations which might contribute to support his constancy under the agonies of pain and even of torture, in sickness, in sorrow for the loss of children, for the death of friends and relations, etc. The few fragments which have come down to us of what the ancient philosophers had written upon these subjects, form, perhaps, one of the most instructive, as well as one of the most interesting remains of antiquity. The spirit and manhood of their doctrines make a wonderful contrast with the desponding, plaintive, and whining tone of some modern systems."</blockquote>
Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7008820862248422532.post-82085876712135189882016-11-02T07:02:00.000+00:002016-11-02T07:02:05.850+00:00Quotation of the DayIs from Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part VI, Section III, 'Of Self Command':<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Men of merit considerably above the common level, sometimes under-rate as well as over-rate themselves. Such characters, though not very dignified, are often, in private society, far from being disagreeable. His companions all feel themselves much at their ease in the society of a man so perfectly modest and unassuming. If those companions, however, have not both more discernment and more generosity than ordinary, though they may have some kindness for him, they have seldom much respect; and the warmth of their kindness is very seldom sufficient to compensate the coldness of their respect. Men of no more than ordinary discernment never rate any person higher than he appears to rate himself. He seems doubtful himself, they say, whether he is perfectly fit for such a situation or such an office; and immediately give the preference to some impudent blockhead who entertains no doubt about his own qualifications. Though they should have discernment, yet, if they want generosity, they never fail to take advantage of his simplicity, and to assume over him an impertinent superiority which they are by no means entitled to. His good-nature may enable him to bear this for some time; but he grows weary at last, and frequently when it is too late, and when that rank, which he ought to have assumed, is lost irrecoverably, and usurped, in consequence of his own backwardness, by some of his more forward, though much less meritorious companions."</blockquote>
Allyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04820794840061267359noreply@blogger.com0