Article by Jiayi Wang 

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When we talk about social issues, ‘poverty’ is often seen as the chief culprit. However, as Wilkinson and Pickett point out in The Spirit Level, in wealthy countries, the key determinant of social health and well-being is not poverty but inequality itself. Even if a society becomes wealthier overall, if internal disparities are too big, social problems such as health, crime, and education will arise.

Research by Wilkinson and Pickett, through comparisons of more than twenty developed countries and fifty states in the United States, found that almost all social problems, whether crime rates, mental illness, obesity rates, teenage pregnancy rates, educational achievement, or life expectancy, are positively correlated with income inequality. The more unequal the society, the higher the indices of health and social problems. Their conclusion was: ‘The problem is not whether a society is rich enough, but whether the gap between people is too large. (Wilkinson, R. and Pickett, K, 2009).

This discovery overturns the traditional logic of development. Conventional wisdom holds that as long as the national economy grows and the average income of the people rises, social problems will naturally improve. In reality, however, economic growth can no longer resolve social issues. In the United States and the United Kingdom, GDP continues to rise, yet mental illness and violence also increase. This confirms Wilkinson and Pickett’s view that inequality is a “social toxin” that erodes interpersonal trust and makes social competition anxious, full of comparison and shame.

This phenomenon is now playing out globally, with the inequalities of globalization expanding at an astonishing pace. Nearly half of the world’s population lives on less than 5.5 dollars a day, while the wealth of the 26 richest people in the world is equal to that of the poorest 50%. Since 2020, the wealth of the five richest men globally has doubled, while the wealth of the bottom 60% of the population has declined. Branko Milanovic (2016) pointed out that 60–70% of a person’s income depends on the country and family they are born into. “If you want to be wealthy, the best way is to be born in a wealthy country.” (Milanovic, B, 2016)

Why does inequality intensify? Piketty’s “r>g” theory in Capital in the Twenty-First Century gives us the answer: the return on capital (such as stock gains) has consistently exceeded wage growth, so the money of the wealthy keeps snowballing, while ordinary people can only keep up through wages. Not to mention that nearly 50% of global wealth comes from inheritance; when Amazon founder Jeff Bezos started his business, his parents provided $300,000 in start-up capital; Elon Musk’s father once owned emerald mines in South Africa. As the saying goes, winning at the starting line, the gap with ordinary people only grows wider.

So, why is the wealth gap more frightening than poverty? Because poverty mainly affects the survival of a few, whereas inequality impacts the structure and life of the entire society. It causes those who are unequal to resent the privileged, tears apart the social community, and plunges everyone into comparison and anxiety. Wilkinson and Pickett point out that even in wealthy societies, those with higher incomes can feel uneasy due to excessive social distance. Therefore, inequality is a generational issue at the social and even national level.

To tackle this global challenge, what we need is not just poverty alleviation, but policies that reduce inequality, such as progressive taxation, a global wealth tax, and relieving the debt burden of the global South. More importantly, we should no longer use GDP as the sole measure of economic development, but focus on social equality, trust, and collective well-being.

When we talk about inequality, it is in the hope that society can provide everyone with equal opportunities. A truly healthy society should not allow gaps so large that ordinary people feel ‘no matter how hard I try, it is useless’, nor should it let decades of hard study be outweighed by those born into privilege. After all, equality has never been about ‘robbing the rich to help the poor’, but about allowing every ordinary person to live with dignity.

References:

Milanovic, B. (2016) Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization. Cambridge

Piketty, T. (2014) Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Translated by A. Goldhammer. Cambridge

Wilkinson, R. and Pickett, K. (2009) The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. London: Allen Lane.

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