Deadly inequality

Polly Toynbee makes a good point, but fails to draw the right conclusions. She says:

Yet another report shows how inequality can also cause early death. It's not diet or ignorance that kills the poor, but low ranking in the pecking order.

She's referring, I guess (you wouldn't expect links in the Groan, would you?) to this. It merely corroborates what we already know - that social inequality kills.
What Polly doesn't say is what should be done about this. The solution is not more progessive taxes, though these might be justifiable upon other grounds. The reason for this is simple. If people in power - like bosses - can't convert that power into money, they'll convert it into something else, like status. Remember the 1970s? It's no coincidence that high taxes were accompanied by absurd distinctions in status, like "executive toilets". Much the same was true of the old Soviet Union, as Trotsky pointed out.
Taxes, than, aren't the solution.
Instead, the answer is to abolish the pecking order itself - abolish inequalities in status and power.
Herein, though, lies an embarrassment for Polly. Status inequalities - in both the state and private firms - are commonly justified on the (largely erroneous) grounds that there is an elite which has the skill and expertise to run things.
Polly, largely, subscribes to this myth.  In this sense, she is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Comments

[dearieme]

Geeze, you'd need a helluva lotta status and power to abolish inequalities in status and power.

[dearieme]

Another researcher (foot of the BBC stuff) demurs about the purported relationship. My own guess is that it's the noise that makes them age faster. At least that's testable.

[Paulie]

"....abolish inequalities in status and power".

Too right.

If left-wing students could be channeled into one useful activity, it would be to get them chucking stink-bombs into the first-class compartments of trains.

[a]

"abolish inequalities in status and power" i.e. abolish human nature. If Poll wants to abolish 'the pecking order' you have to wonder if there's any end to her arrogance.

From my experience, there are gross inequalities of status and power even in a convoy of stoned hippies trundling round Wiltshire, or at the Stonehenge festival - let alone a Guardian editorial conference.

Or is there a similarity there ?

[bird dog]

She has status and power and money.
Would she please give it to someone else, someone deserving?

[dsquared]

Chris, surely it's worth pointing out that although the high top rates of tax of the 1970s were accompanied by funny executive perks and private toilets, they were also accompanied by greater equality and lower levels of inequality-related social problems. Although you're right to say that there would be some attempt to claw back the effect of more progressive taxation, it seems a bit of a strong claim to suggest that the new equilibrium would not be better than the old one at all.

[dearieme]

Hold on, Pilly Tinear can't use that research! It used "twin studies" which I understand are opposed by the Left because, when applied to such topics as IQ and personality, they yield results which are Incorrect, or at least bloody inconvenient.

[wjd123]

There is utility in eglatarianism in that it helps bind the individual to society. There is also danger in that it can asks too much of the individual: communism for example.

Before it collapsed externally. communism collapsed in the minds and hearts of those who were ruled by it:a state of psychological anarchy.

I would argue that America is increasingly being turned into a country where psychological anarchy reigns. Physical security hasn't broken down but trust in the law has.

Our laws are enforced according to the whims of those charged with enforcing them. Bush makes a mental finding and the law is put aside. Twelve million illegals enter the country while our government allows it to happen by not funding and enforcing its laws. When it is finally forced to acknowledge the situation congress responds by attempting to pass a law making it a legal fait accompli, corporations are afforded the opportunity--for a price--to help write laws that favors them over consumers. Respect for the law is constantly being weakened by such activities.

Psychologically the individual begins to see the law as something to be used when it is to his or her advantage and put aside when it's not.

The goal is to be a winner, and society be damned. The result is that social needs become harder to address. The individual becomes detached from an increasingly dysfunctional society. The law and government becomes less and less relevant.

A society of laws is weakened from within when respect for the law is weakened. Equlity under the law along with the laws ability to promote a functional society is weakened. The individual retreats into a psysociological anarchy of the mind which ultimately underminds society and all its institutions.