Richard G. Wilkinson - The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger

Contents

PART ONE
Material Success, Social Failure

PART TWO
The Costs of Inequality

PART THREE
A Better Society

ROBERT B. REICH

Professor of Public Policy, University of California
Former U.S. Secretary of Labor

Most American families are worse off today than they were three decades ago. The Great Recession of 20082009 destroyed the value of their homes, undermined their savings, and too often left them without jobs. But even before the Great Recession began, most Americans had gained little from the economic expansion that began almost three decades before. Today, the Great Recession notwithstanding, the U.S. economy is far larger than it was in 1980. But where has all the wealth gone? Mostly to the very top. The latest data shows that by 2007, Americas top 1 percent of earners received 23 percent of the nations total incomealmost triple their 8 percent share in 1980.

This rapid trend toward inequality in America marks a significant reversal of the move toward income equality that began in the early part of the twentieth century and culminated during the middle decades of the century.

Yet inequality has not loomed large as a political issue. Even Barack Obamas modest proposal to return income tax rates to where they stood in the 1990s prompted his 2008 Republican opponents to call him a socialist who wanted to spread the wealth. Once president, Obamas even more modest proposal to limit the income tax deductions of the wealthy in order to pay for health care for all met fierce resistance from a Democratically controlled Congress.

If politicians have failed to grapple with the issue of inequality, few scholars have done better. Philosophers have had little to say on the subject. Some who would tax the rich to help the poor frame their arguments as utilitarian. Taking a hundred dollars from a rich person and giving it to a poor person would diminish the rich persons happiness only slightly, they argue, but greatly increase the happiness of the poor person. Others ground their arguments in terms of hypothetical consent. John Rawls defends redistribution on the grounds that most people would be in favor of it if they had no idea what their income would otherwise be.

Nor have economists, whom we might expect to focus attention on such a dramatic trend, expressed much concern about widening inequality. For the most part, economists concern themselves with efficiency and growth. In fact, some of them argue that wide inequality is a necessary, if not inevitable, consequence of a growing economy. A few worry that it cuts off opportunities among the children of the poor for productive livesbut whether to distribute wealth more equally, or what might be gained from doing so, is a topic all but ignored by todays economic researchers.

It has taken two experts from the field of public health to deliver a major study of the effects of inequality on society. Though Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett are British, their research explores the United States in depth, and their work is an important contribution to the debate our country needs.

The Spirit Level looks at the negative social effects of wide inequalityamong them, more physical and mental illness not only among those at the lower ranks, but even those at the top of the scale. The authors find, not surprisingly, that where there are great disparities in wealth, there are heightened levels of social distrust. They argue convincingly that wide inequality is bad for a society, and that more equal societies tend to do better on many measures of social health and wealth.

But if wide inequality is socially dysfunctional, then why are certain countries, such as the United States, becoming so unequal? Largely because of the increasing gains to be had by being just a bit better than other competitors in a system becoming ever more competitive.

Consider executive pay. During the 1950s and 60s, CEOs of major American companies took home about 25 to 30 times the wages of the typical worker. After the 1970s, the two pay scales diverged. In 1980, the big-company CEO took home roughly 40 times; by 1990, it was 100 times. By 2007, just before the Great Recession, CEO pay packages had ballooned to about 350 times what the typical worker earned. Recent supports suggest that the upward trajectory of executive pay, temporarily stopped by the economic meltdown, is on the verge of continuing. To make the comparison especially vivid, in 1968 the CEO of General Motorsthen the largest company in the United Statestook home around 66 times the pay and benefits of the typical GM worker at the time. In 2005, the CEO of Wal-Martby then the largest U.S. companytook home 900 times the pay and benefits of the typical Wal-Mart worker.

What explains this trajectory? Have top executives become greedier? Have corporate boards grown less responsible? Are CEOs more crooked? Are investors more docile? Is Wall Street more tractable? Theres no evidence to support any of these theories. Heres a simpler explanation: Forty years ago, everyones pay in a big companyeven pay at the topwas affected by bargains struck among big business, big labor, and, indirectly, government. Big companies and their unions directly negotiated pay scales for hourly workers, while white-collar workers understood that their pay grades were indirectly affected. Large corporations resembled civil service bureaucracies. Top executives in these huge companies had to maintain the good will of organized labor. They also had to maintain good relationships with public officials in order to be free to set wages and prices; to obtain regulatory permissions on fares, rates, or licenses; and to continue to secure government contracts. It would have been unseemly of them to draw very high salaries.

Since then, competition has intensified. With ever greater ease, rival companies can get access to similar low-cost suppliers from all over the world. They can streamline their operations with the same information technology their competitors use; they can cut their labor force and substitute similar software, culled from many of the same vendors. They can just as readily outsource hourly jobs abroad. They can get capital for new investment on much the same terms. They can gain access to distribution channels that are no less efficient, some of them even identical (Wal-Mart or other big-box retailers). They can attract shareholders by showing even slightly better performance, or the promise of it.