Many of us social democrat types have long thought that the Anglo-American model of capitalism is brutal, evil, smelly & should be eradicated like a feral, rabid dog.:warning: The evidence has now been collated & released that seems to confirm it once & for all. http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidence :bears: According to these studies, extreme inequality such as exists in the US & UK are closely correlated across the industrialized nations with the following : ill health, mental illness, drug abuse, school drop out rates, imprisonment rates, violence, teenage pregnancy, obesity, low UNICEF child well being indices, low social mobility, low levels of social trust & community integration, low levels of spending on aid & exploitative international trade policies. Any of you right wing liberal-capitalist types still wanna argue that this political & economic model is justifiable? Might be an interesting discussion.
I would go into the philosophical reasons why equality in any society containing human beings is impossible, and how often it's pursuit leads to far greater damage than it does good, but I don't even need to since apparently it is very easy to disprove the validity of the interpretation of the data being used by the Equality Trust: http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=4942784#post4942784 This post from a thread at some forum asking about the validity of the data, conclusions, and causality claims from the website you posted here. In a nutshell this fellow is stating that mathematically other factors (such as IQ) in their data control income(poverty) even IN THE ABSENCE of any dynamics in equality! This is akin to someone gathering data on hamburger price, temperature, and hamburger sales at McDonald's over a year's time. They then state, with an agenda of course, that the temperature essentially controls how many hamburgers are sold at McDonald's on any given day, and show graphs and charts to demonstrate. The crowd is awestruck. But when someone uses the data and controls temperature (keeps it static, removes it's variance from the system), they find that actually hamburger price is a far better indicator of hamburgers sold, and does this almost completely independent of temperature! The crowd is less awestruck, and they go home since it's too damn cold to buy a hamburger.
Firstly, the difference between correlation & causality isn't lost on me. Secondly, I don't have a clue what the guy in that post is suggesting since the income of the poorest wasn't one of the things the equality trust were linking to inequality anyway. Doubly so since the whole idea of 'state iq' is totally retarded by definition to begin with. Is he just trying to make a point about drawing conclusions from correlations or is he actually saying 'state IQ' is a factor? I don't understand. And if a mod can please move all this to TAA I'd be appreciative! It's been hours, where are you?:bangh:
absolute equality maybe not - crooked timber and all that - but greater equality is possible, surely. like hut says in the other version of this thread, the scandinavians are doing it better than the rest of us, and enjoying lower crime rates, greater community involvement, better sex, etc.
congrats, you're the only person on either fightbeat or fanatics who grasped the point of what I posted. Doesn't say much about how I presented it (clearly should have called it 'the case for social democracy' or something), but you win a e-lypop nonetheless.
im not as up on economics as a person should be, but richard layard seems to have been beating this drum for a while. i read his 'Happiness' a few years back and liked it. all the happiness gurus seem to make the same recommendations - more equality, more exercise, more meditation.
