Murder by Economic Policy

Nick Kristof writes, "There’s growing evidence that the toll of our stunning inequality is not just economic but also is a melancholy of the soul." He cites the work of epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett.

The Constant Weader comments:

I call this murder by economic policy. Republicans and ConservaDems have been working for decades to take from the poor and give to the rich. The obvious effects of their policies are more hungry children, more poorly-educated children, young people's curtailing their educations & thus making themselves poor candidates in the shrinking job market, millions of Americans going without adequate health care (50 million Americans still have no health insurance), & seniors doing without the basic necessities of life. But Wilkinson & Pickett suggest it's worse than we think: those policies result in mental health disorders and unnecessary early deaths.

Another interesting finding of Wilkinson & Pickett was that these higher mortality rates & stress levels in iniquitous countries & states were true across all income levels (though they admit their raw data are sketchy for the top one percent). That is, don't think you're not at risk just because you're in a higher income bracket. Everybody (with the possible exception of the ultra-rich) suffers.

"The Spirit Level," partly because it is such a devastating condemnation of conservative "starve-the-government" public policy, has been the subject of a lot of criticism, the most sweeping charge being that the authors have not really "proved" a cause-&-effect relationship between income inequality & early death. But do we need "proof"? If, as the authors show, closing the income gap leads to lower mortality rates, it is unnecessary to know exactly why it works. What's important is that it does work. Denmark, where taxes are much higher than ours but where income inequality is much lower, is famous for being the "happiest" country in the world.

After listening to Republicans, teabaggers & most other stripes of politicians, including President Obama, you might not think that higher taxes will make you happier. But if those higher taxes go into public programs that help reduce income inequality, then higher taxes will, ultimately, cheer you right up. So will laws that promote income equality: a higher minimum wage, for instance, and unionization facilitation.

We don't have to be a second-rate country, or as Mr. Kristof pointed out last year, Worse than a Banana Republic. But we've chosen legislators & Presidents & state governors who have pledged through their policies, to take us down.