The Outlier

I went to my final Imagination Festival event today, which looked at income inequality. I’ve read quite a bit on this, so I didn’t learn much.

The chart below is one of the reasons I don’t want to live in the U.S. It plots income inequality against 11 eleven health and social problems: physical health, mental health, drug abuse, education, imprisonment, obesity, social mobility, trust and community life, violence, teenage pregnancies, and child well-being. The U.S. is an outlier.

This chart focuses on infant deaths per 1,000 live births.

It’s not only the injustices inherent in the “freedom and liberty for all” U.S. version of democracy that appall me. It’s also the role of religion in American public life. Politicians trip over each other to assert their religious credentials, so how come this is the result? I can’t abide hypocrisy and hubris. Otherwise I might be in politics myself.

The irony is I’ve chosen to live in the U.K. which, under Cameron, is ever eager to nip at the heels of America--lowering taxes on corporations and the rich, cutting benefits to the poor, privatising larger swaths of the economy. I read about friends in the states having fundraisers to pay medical bills and I want to scream at Cameron: DO NOT TOUCH the NHS. It’s infuriating to see U.K. leaders not learn from U.S. disasters in health care, privatised prisons, hyper-inflation in education, and other neoliberal-inspired follies.

The charts are from "The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better.” Written by an economist and an epidemiologist, it highlights the "pernicious effects that inequality has on societies: eroding trust, increasing anxiety and illness, (and) encouraging excessive consumption”.
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