Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times Equality, a True Soul Food
He is summarizing a British report on the societal effects of wealth inequality.
Currently in America “the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans possess a greater collective net worth than the bottom 90 percent.” I do not understand why everyone, except the 1%, is not shocked and up in arms over this fact. But that is me.
The basic premise of the study, backed up by tons of data is this. With great wealth inequality you create a wide variety of personal and social stressors. There are increases in crime, mental and physical ailments, drug abuse, suicides, cancers, heart attacks, obesity, etc. You will need more prisons and more police. Theoretically you would need more doctors, therapists and hospitals. In our current environment, prisons and police might, maybe, be funded. I would not hold my breath on the other unless they can continue to milk the individual and society dry to pay for these services.
One fact of interest to stress this is that the Netherlands has a very open drug policy. The have a much lower wealth gap. Drug abuse is much lower among the Dutch population than the American population. To me that is very telling.
We could and should do better.
Other great resource to understand this issue:
- The United States of Inequality — Timothy Noah in Slate
- Is the Ruination of America Possible — Sam Harris in The Huffington Post
- Why You Should Feel Cheated, Deceived and Sickened by America’s Stunning Inequality, Even If You’re Doing Well — Paul Buchheit at alternet.org
- There Is a Global Aristocracy in the Making — and the Greedy Super-Rich Think They’ve Earned It — Lindsay Beyerstein at alternet.org