The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger
by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. Bloomsbury. 2010. 331 pages. $28.
Societies won’t make major cuts in their carbon emissions until they first reduce their socioeconomic inequalities, argue health professors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. Wide gaps between the more-affluent and less-affluent members of a society are powerful drivers of consumerism—people buy and consume far more than they need in order to appear to hold higher social statuses.
Inequality has risen in most developed countries over the last few decades, according to Pickett and Wilkinson; as inequalities rise, so do unhealthy consumer buying habits and a wide range of associated ills: debt, minimal personal savings, obesity, crime, scarce charitable giving, and mood disorders such as anxiety and depression.
The authors favor a “steady-state economy” that would ration the extraction of the earth’s resources and keep their use well below present-day levels. Technology may ameliorate the situation by reducing the environmental and production costs of most goods, thus making them more affordable to more consumers. But true social equality will take a fundamental transformation of societal values.
The Spirit Level is a philosophical and political evaluation of national economics and how they might have to adapt to be viable in the future.
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