More equal societies do better

[Lummel]

It may or may not be a contradiction, but they are trending in opposite directions, so you'd need to provide some pretty persuasive evidence to show that it's the 'main reason'.

...

I understand the problem the book is interested in.

But again, they are trending in opposite directions.

Since you admit the book is weak on longitudinal data, and that it's based on a snapshot and not any sort of perspective over time, I'm not sure there's really much to even discuss here.

...

And?

You can correlate lots of things statistically.

Doesn't mean you can draw any conclusions from the correlation.

If the all the data on crime and health showed that the USA was typical of the 23 wealthy countries studied but had higher income inequality then we could establish that the spirit level hypothesis didn't apply to the USA (which would obviously be a very interesting issue in itself). A downward trend in crime in the USA by itself - even if the level of crime were to fall to levels in Scandinavia or Japan tells us nothing. The biggest dataset on homicides goes back iirc to the late middle ages and the world wide trend over time has consistently been downwards. Crime has been trending downwards in the UK as well however the correlation between crime and wealth inequality in the UK when compared to other wealth countries still remains strong.

Read the book Swordfish. It's only 200 odd pages long and we've a while to wait until ADWD comes out. It won't turn you into a socialist, honest.

Historically, yes. In particular with murder, the United States has always been much more violent than most of Europe, even when both regions had unrestricted access to firearms.

Ah that's sad! I think the firearms business is a red herring, just like the NRA say. There is a very high availability of firearms in Switzerland but the levels of gun violence are nothing like those in the USA, and in any case you can kill people without guns if you want to.

Well if we leave Europe out of it and look at USA compared with Australia, New Zealand and Canada. All wealthy, democratic, colonial / settler societies, histories of conflict between indigenous people and settlers, frontier societies - but the USA has about 60 homicides per million of population while the other three all have under 20 homicides per million. No doubt americans are all better marksmen, but even so it's an interesting question why apparently fairly similar societies should have such a different level of homicides.

As far as I'm aware "The Spirit Level" was written as a purely epidemiological book and the authors were a little stunned when people started talking about pretty scientific data in left-right political terms. I heard of the book from a medical lecturer as a piece of medical research, and it's presented as such.

...

This argument is science, not politics. Leave party affiliations at the door. Do not speculate. Do not extrapolate beyond available data. Do not assume it is a judgment on yourself, your way of life or your loved ones. If it offers a potential for improvement then double-blind randomised control trial that intervention before accepting it wholesale.

On a less cynical note, It's always difficult to prove causation from corellation. It's possible that the corellation may be spurious or confounded by some unrealised factor. At present it has not been disproved or shown to be seriously flawed, which is about as solid as most scientific evidence gets. And as McCracken says this is not a standalone study in showing that increasing inequality corellates with a variety of poor outcomes. How to fix this, if a fix is necessary, will be bloody tough.

The problem I think is that the political cycle isn't amenable to these types of issues. For the electorial cycle you need to do things that look as though they are working within two or three years. Even if you had verified experimental data that showed how you could effectively deal with the causes of inequality it's hardly likely to be a quick fix.

I'm speculating but I suspect that if we were to roll the clock back to 1900 we would find significantly different attitudes in Scandinavia on issue os social equality than we would see in other European countries. ie There probably already were cultural attitudes that were supportive of social democracy or that Scandinavian social democracy emerged from a set of attitudes and values that were already significantly different from those found elsewhere in Europe.

[Swordfish]

If the all the data on crime and health showed that the USA was typical of the 23 wealthy countries studied but had higher income inequality then we could establish that the spirit level hypothesis didn't apply to the USA (which would obviously be a very interesting issue in itself). A downward trend in crime in the USA by itself - even if the level of crime were to fall to levels in Scandinavia or Japan tells us nothing. The biggest dataset on homicides goes back iirc to the late middle ages and the world wide trend over time has consistently been downwards. Crime has been trending downwards in the UK as well however the correlation between crime and wealth inequality in the UK when compared to other wealth countries still remains strong.

Read the book Swordfish. It's only 200 odd pages long and we've a while to wait until ADWD comes out.

i may, i may not. Really though, I haven't seen anything presented that is making me want to run out and buy it.

It won't turn you into a socialist, honest.

That's exactly what you WOULD say if you were trying to trick me.

I see through your devious plan, Mr Hypnotobook Recommender.

[S John]

Ah that's sad! I think the firearms business is a red herring, just like the NRA say. There is a very high availability of firearms in Switzerland but the levels of gun violence are nothing like those in the USA, and in any case you can kill people without guns if you want to.

Well if we leave Europe out of it and look at USA compared with Australia, New Zealand and Canada. All wealthy, democratic, colonial / settler societies, histories of conflict between indigenous people and settlers, frontier societies - but the USA has about 60 homicides per million of population while the other three all have under 20 homicides per million. No doubt americans are all better marksmen, but even so it's an interesting question why apparently fairly similar societies should have such a different level of homicides.

You know, I always chalked it up to remnants of the frontier culture. Some sort of residual pioneer/cowboy attitude. But as you point out, there was a bit of that frontier culture going on in Australia, NZ, and Canada as well, so that can't be the whole story. I actually have no idea why we tend to be more violent in the US than in other western nations. But we are one of the few that appears in Pelton's 'The World's Most Dangerous Places.' Maybe we just have crappy conflict resolution skills.

Edit - perhaps it has something to do with our more violent (and total) separation from Great Britain compared with NZ, Aus, and Canada. Our nation was born from violence, and we've been at it for more or less our entire history.

[McCracken]

Well as i've said before one mof the main factors is the large amount of income inequality in the USA, that combined with easy access to guns and it no wonder the USA has such a huge murder rate.

I really find the historical violance angle hard to believe and cetainly have never heard of any evidence to support it. Lots of countries have had horrificaly violent pasts aswell such as Britian and Germany yet thier murder rate is much lower.

[S John]

Well as i've said before one main factors is the large amount of income inequality in the USA, that combined with easy access to guns and it no wonder the USA has such a huge murder rate

Honestly, while that may play some role I think the factors are mostly cultural. In other words, if the US system was more socialist in nature (blegh) then I still think we'd have a higher murder rate than Canada, UK, NZ, etc. I'm pretty sure of it, actually.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

Well as i've said before one mof the main factors is the large amount of income inequality in the USA, that combined with easy access to guns and it no wonder the USA has such a huge murder rate.

I really find the historical violance angle hard to believe and cetainly have never heard of any evidence to support it. Lots of countries have had horrificaly violent pasts aswell such as Britian and Germany yet thier murder rate is much lower.

You've shown no evidence of the former, while there a lot of evidence for the latter. When "income equality" was way different in the US, we had a much higher violent crime rate than we do now.

S. John is correct (and sadly otterless).

[S John]

S. John is correct (and sadly otterless).

Don't worry, the otter will return after West Virginia gets knocked out of the NCAA basketball tournament.

[Swordfish]

Honestly, while that may play some role I think the factors are mostly cultural. In other words, if the US system was more socialist in nature (blegh) then I still think we'd have a higher murder rate than Canada, UK, NZ, etc. I'm pretty sure of it, actually.

Yes. This.

[Sariel]

I'm pretty sure that elephants would be able to fly if we didn't eat as much gum.

See, I can make up stuff too. Sadly, my creation is not as close to popular talking points.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

I'm pretty sure that elephants would be able to fly if we didn't eat as much gum.

See, I can make up stuff too. Sadly, my creation is not as close to popular talking points.

Also, it's untrue and not historically verifiable.

[TrueMetis]

And nothing changes, and the scientist usually gets fired, gets their reputation torn to shreds in the press, and never works seriously again.

This only happens if the scientist actually did something wrong. Take Phil Jones the head of CRU, publicly he's a wreck sure, but in the scientific community he is still at the same standing. Maybe even higher for the way he acted in light of the events which was pretty much perfect.

[Lyanna Stark]

On a less cynical note, It's always difficult to prove causation from corellation. It's possible that the corellation may be spurious or confounded by some unrealised factor. At present it has not been disproved or shown to be seriously flawed, which is about as solid as most scientific evidence gets. And as McCracken says this is not a standalone study in showing that increasing inequality corellates with a variety of poor outcomes. How to fix this, if a fix is necessary, will be bloody tough.

Like Iskaral ppointed out upthreads, there are also significant changes in legislation or science that can have large scale impacts on society and people's well being (his example of Roe vs Wade and the slow burning effect of minimising the next generation of dispossessed is excellent).

In Sweden they used to say that what got Sweden out of extreme poverty and marginalisation was the peace, the vaccin and the potatoes. Sometimes a change in legislation, or a policy adopted, or a scientific step forward can make massive changes to societies.

I think wealth distribution is one important factor to look at and to investigate further. It seems pretty clear that a very large wealth inequality is bad, but it seems it's still poorly understood just how large a "good one" or "adequate one" would be, and also how it interacts with other factors. Japan and Norway are hardly very similar countries so there are clearly other factors at work than only wealth distribution.

As for the US prison population in particular, it is my understand that it's maybe "easier" to end up in prison in the US than say in UK or Norway? As in, more crimes carry a possible prison sentence and judges may be more prone to go for a prison sentence instead of say, a fine.

Tormund:

You've shown no evidence of the former, while there a lot of evidence for the latter. When "income equality" was way different in the US, we had a much higher violent crime rate than we do now.

S. John is correct (and sadly otterless).

It's very likely a combination of both. You have both cultural factors and wealth distribution issues. Plus as I pointed out before: specific factors, like Roe vs Wade, universal health care, certain vaccines, etc can have huge impact on societies.

[Lyanna Stark]

Lummel

I'm speculating but I suspect that if we were to roll the clock back to 1900 we would find significantly different attitudes in Scandinavia on issue os social equality than we would see in other European countries. ie There probably already were cultural attitudes that were supportive of social democracy or that Scandinavian social democracy emerged from a set of attitudes and values that were already significantly different from those found elsewhere in Europe.

Yes, I believe this is correct. However one of the major driving forces behind Scandinavia's very strong social democracy was the extreme poverty and hardship of that time. People often forget that Scandinavia industrialised later than Britian and some continental European countries. It's a cold, remote region that nobody really cares about unless you like timber. The mass exodus to the US was staggering, compared to the existing population.

Scandinavia also mostly avoided feudal structures during the medieval and later years but was strangely feudal in many ways by the late 19th century instead, and the living and working conditions for serfs and agricultural workers were extremely harsh. With that in mind, workers and poor had a lot to win by moving in a direction of social democracy, perhaps more so than in other parts of Europe.

So I guess the existing circumstances were very much perfect for social democracy.

[Happy Ent]

It's a cold, remote region that nobody really cares about unless you like timber.

I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here.

[Lyanna Stark]

I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here.

:lol:

It's a nice place for trees? :P

[The Fan]

Honestly, while that may play some role I think the factors are mostly cultural. In other words, if the US system was more socialist in nature (blegh) then I still think we'd have a higher murder rate than Canada, UK, NZ, etc. I'm pretty sure of it, actually.

Ok, let's try it anyway.

[McCracken]

You've shown no evidence of the former, while there a lot of evidence for the latter. When "income equality" was way different in the US, we had a much higher violent crime rate than we do now.

S. John is correct (and sadly otterless).

well heres some evidence which could easily been found from my previous link

http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidence/violence

plus from more evidence in this article, Kawachi, I., et al. Crime: social disorganization and relative deprivation. Social Science & Medicine 48 (1999) 719-731

link

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VBF-3VPJ8MY-3&_user=10&_coverDate=03%2F31%2F1999&_rdoc=1&_fmt=full&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_cdi=5925&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=0cc9ff346a21bde1763e517476ac5f69&searchtype=a

you need athens to access it so here is some quotes

"We argue that two sets of societal characteristics influence the level of crime: the degree of relative deprivation in society (for instance, measured by the extent of income inequality), and the degree of cohesiveness in social relations among citizens (measured, for instance, by indicators of social capital' and collective efficacy'). We provided a test of our conceptual framework using state-level ecologic data on violent crimes and property crimes within the USA. Violent crimes (homicide, assault, robbery) were consistently associated with relative deprivation (income inequality) and indicators of low social capital."

plus

"We observed a moderately strong correlation between poverty and homicide (r=0.53), though the relationship was weaker than that between income inequality and homicide (r=0.74). Hsieh, C.C. and Pugh, M.D., 1993. Poverty, income inequality, and violent crime: a meta-analysis of recent aggregate data studies. Criminal Justice Review 18, pp. 182202 Full Text via CrossRef | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus (106)Hsieh and Pugh (1993) carried out a meta-analysis of the 34 aggregate data studies on the relationships between poverty, income inequality and violent crime. Despite differences in methodology, the majority of studies agreed that violent crime is related to both poverty (pooled r=0.44) as well as to income inequality (pooled r=0.44)."

There are lots of studies that show violence is linked to income inequality.

[The Iceman of the North]

well heres some evidence which could easily been found from my previous link

http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidence/violence

Based on this link, it appears as if you can't explain the high murder rate in the US solely on income inequality. Thus those claiming it on some vaguely defined 'cultural component' and those pointing at income equality might both be correct.

[danro]

So I guess the existing circumstances were very much perfect for social democracy.

Actually I think the time was getting ripe for a communist revolution...

But unlike many other places the ruling class were wise enough not to take up arms against the masses and risk losing everything. Without the bloody class struggle the proletariat was never radicalised enough to carry the communists to power and we ended up with the more level-headed social democrats. A peaceful compromise that ultimately benefitted almost everyone.

Oh, and speaking of the Swedish social democrats. Isn't Håkan Junholt the spitting image of Hjalmar Branting?

[McCracken]

No one's claiming that it is the sole factor. Their are lots of other factors but income ineqality is found to be a important factor in creating high murder rates. As i said before i imagine the very high disparity in income and the easy access to guns in the US will be why it's murder rate is so dramaticaly higher than other first world countires.