After watching the TED video ,“How economic inequality harms societies” by Richard Wilkinson, I think economic inequality is a problem that Americans should take seriously and try to solve. The video gives a clear analysis on proving why and how economic inequality actually harms societies. Wilkinson starts his speech by saying, “inequality has always been an issue, even since the french revolution, but the difference between now and then is that we have evidence to compare more and less equal societies, and we can see what it does”. He uses life expectancy as his first graph to explain that life expectancy and wealth doesn't show a relationship compared to other countries, but if you look within each society you’ll see a huge social gradients in health running across the graph.” “So income means something very important within our societies, and nothing between them”. He explains this paradox by telling us that, ”within our societies, we're looking at relative income or social position, social status -- where we are in relation to each other and the size of the gaps between us”. He then assures us he didn't just pick out the data that backs his argument by including “Internationally comparable data on life expectancy, on kids' maths and literacy scores, on infant mortality rates, homicide rates, proportion of the population in prison, teenage birthrates, levels of trust, obesity, mental illness -- which in standard diagnostic classification includes drug and alcohol addiction -- and social mobility”. He shows a graph with all the countries he’s using to prove his claim that sows how much richer the richest are than the poorest in each country. He does this before he goes through all the different data he collected to give you a background on which countries are considered more “equal” and “unequal” (USA is unequal and Japan is more equal). After giving you statistical background he goes on to show what being equal and unequal does to a society. The graph shows japan doing much better than the U.S. in all of the data categories taken. All the data shows “so far says is the same thing. The average well-being of our societies is not dependent any longer on national income and economic growth. That's very important in poorer countries, but not in the rich developed world”. The difference is trust. ”It's simply the proportion of the population who agree most people can be trusted”. In the U.S. only 15 percent feel they can trust others, but in Japan 60 percent trust other people.
Lanie, I completely agree with you that economic inequality is a very serious issue and should be dealt with immediately. Richard Wilkinson does a great job of showing statistical proof to help back up his claim that, “Inequality has always been an issue…” as he states at the beginning. I found it very interesting as how the United States of America had more of an “unequal” society when dealing with the gap between the rich and the poor. He tells about how the statistics are not only in correlation with things like life expectancy, mortality rates, homicide rates, obesity, and mental illness, but also with things like trust. Countries with a smaller gap between the rich and poor tend to trust other people more! This shows that economic inequality affects us on every level. While I do think we should look to fix economic inequality I do not think it would be an easy task what so ever. You’d have to take money from the rich to lessen the financial gap. I don’t think the rich would go for that at all. While I do believe economic inequality is a huge problem for society, I do not think there is a viable solution.
ReplyDeleteNo one can deny the fact that Richard Wilkinson's points were very eye opening, but showing numbers about a problem doesn't fix the problem. Economic inequality is just part of capitalist societies, when some people flourish others don't. Not everyone can win if you want to succeed you have to be successful. Its just as unfair to take money from the rich who earned it as it is for poor people to have nothing. In nature there is natural selection, the stronger smarter animals survive while the weaker animals don't. And our economic system works the same way, but it's different in how poor people can become rich through hard work, and rich people can become poor through something like bad luck on betting the stock market. And if you look back in history where world leaders try to even the economic gap by taxing the rich or raising taxes, you'll see that its consistent with socialists such as Hitler. Im not saying that if you support economic equality that you support Hitler but it seems the only way to fix it is through socialistic ideas, and I personally want America to stay as far away from socialism as possible.
ReplyDeleteAj, I have to respectfully disagree. His presentation shows that there are currently places in the world with healthier people due to smaller income gaps. He also accepts that there are many different methods for achieving this. Currently in the world places exist in contrast to ours in which people live wealthier (healthier) with less money. Is this not something to strive for?
DeleteIt is not hard to agree with Richard Wilkinson during his Ted talk on “How economic inequality harms societies”. He even begins by stating that he believes all agree with his claim. It is important to see life expectancy and gross national income do not correlate; therefore, a rich country may not be as rich as it seems. The United States is shown to have a high gross national income per head but surprisingly this does not correlate with overall health. Richard claims that it all boils down to the gap in income between the rich and the poor. He uses a graph that ranks countries by how rich the richest fifth of the population is compared to the poorest fifth. This graph shows America as having one of the highest income gaps in the world. Throughout his presentation he shows multiple curves representing a different aspect of health and in each case the countries with larger gaps in income were suffering. For these reasons I believe Americans have to stop being passive and take action. There are multiple factors that affect the size of the gap. Most of which are controversial like taxing the rich or increasing the size of the government to provide more for people with less. I believe what really needs to change is American culture of needing to have more than our neighbors also known as entitlement. People should think about what they have and how it could change the life of someone else. They should stop looking for a scapegoat (the government) and provide. It is easy to see that this is not what Americans plan to do. That is why we should take political action to decrease the income gap in America.
ReplyDeleteLanie, I agree with you wholeheartedly that economic inequality is an issue that has got to be fixed. I was somewhat surprised to see the gap between the rich and the poor in the United States.It's one thing for us Americans to hear about the gap on the news or through talking to our peers, but Richard Wilkinson went out and actually showed us the statistics. I would have never guessed that America has one of the highest income gaps worldwide. What I also thought was interesting was how Wilkinson showed that countries around the world that have higher gaps in income were suffering in multiple ways. They suffer through infant mortality, in education, in their health care, etc. Not only that. He also brought in the psychological factors of the hierarchy." More to do with feelings of superiority and inferiority, of being valued and devalued, respected and disrespected. And of course, those feelings of the status competition that comes out of that drives the consumerism in our society. It also leads to status insecurity." These are emotions that most Americans feel every day of their lives. I found that to be eye opening, and I think Americans need to take action as soon as possible to make this income gap smaller.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Richard Wilkinson that economic inequality is an issue but I believe that there is no way to fix this issue. We can not just simply keep taxing the wealthy just because they are wealthier than the most of us. You have to work hard to get to that point to where you want to be. Not everything is handed out in a silver platter. A lot of the people who are wealthy are wealthy for a reason, and it is unfair if we tax them more just because they have more money. I agree with AJ on this because it seems to me that the only was we could achieve this is through socialism. Most billionaires have started with nothing and worked their way up to what they have now. I believe that with hard work anyone could achieve anything. It would not be fair to be taxing these people a lot more just because of what they have earned.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both, Lanie and Richard Wilkinson. As Wilkinson mentions, as a whole, "we can look at the evidence and compare societies." As he shows he data, we can clearly see the gap and results he tries to emphasize. It impacts our society in a way we do not see it right away. Never has it crossed our mind that the reason for such illness could be our economic status. However, as Lanie also mentions, it is very important to get find a solution to this matter, but one can not just throw out a solution and take action on it without carefully examining the results. The first idea an individual thinks of is to increasingly tax the wealthy. This is not the way to go! People mainly draw to this conclusion for the simple fact that the wealthy hardly contributes to society, while this is true for some, it is not true for all. Punishing the wealthy for being wealthy will only make tensions worse and the divide even greater.There much exist some other solution that includes equal representation for all economic status. Somewhere in the government or economic system we can find the issue to this great uneven distribution, but pointing fingers at each other will not drive us any closer to a solution.
ReplyDeleteI feel like economic inequality lies on the individual, meaning that it is up to them to make the amount they want. Everyone has the ability to get a job and make money. Therefore it is the fault of the individual if there is economic inequality. I understand that he gives charts and graphs of the different countries with money and those without, and how the equality in those countries are different, but that's up to the people in the country. I feel that if someone works harder than another to get the money they have, then they deserve it. Who cares if there's inequality, that's just how the world of economics work. I say we shouldn't try to make peoples economic standing different then what they work for, if you don't try hard, you'll make less, if you work for it, you'll make more, deal with it.
ReplyDeleteEconomic inequality is and issues that needs to be solved. But not a whole lot of people are going to jump on board to support that Chang. The wealthy wasn't to keep all their money and racing them higher does nothing because they are still wealthy regardless. I agree with Tania that the wealthy did earn it. Most of them worked hard to get what they have and shouldn't be taxes high for actually being very successful in their field of work.
ReplyDeletei feel economically we are unequal because it its up to us how much money we make but this goes in to perfect world. these day people are making either more or less than what they deserve. we can make the change but like everyone says its easier said then done. but making an effort is better than just sitting there and crying about it.
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