Selfishness, Greed and Capitalism

INEQUALITY IS THE CAUSE OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL PROBLEMSsociety; they apply findings of dubious relevance from animalstudies to human behaviour; they use old data whennewer data are less favourable to their argument, and theystrongly imply that statistical significance is evidence ofcausation.This chapter will restrict itself to examining just a fewof the flaws in The Spirit Level.Selection biasAlthough The Spirit Level makes the striking claim that‘more equal societies almost always do better’, its analysisis limited to comparing 22 rich countries, with a 23rd(Singapore) occasionally added in. In some instances, theylook at only a dozen nations. Wilkinson and Pickett’s justificationfor excluding 90 per cent of the world’s countriesis that inequality has the greatest impact in places whichhave ‘reached a threshold of material living standardsafter which the benefits of further economic growth areless substantial’ (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009: 10). Echoingthe ‘end of growth’ arguments discussed in Chapter 7, theyclaim that the ‘levelling off’ of happiness scores in richcountries (see Figure 11) is mirrored by a flattening outof life expectancy once countries reach a certain level ofwealth. 1 Two graphs show happiness and life expectancymatched against national income. Each suggests that1 Life expectancy continues to rise in nearly all countries, so it is thecurve that flattens off rather than the rates. This contrasts withhappiness, which, according to Easterlin, has remained flat in absoluteterms.137