Destructive mindset changes with greater equality

Equality, trust, cooperation over excessive consumption yields wellbeing yields trust yields cooperation yields equality yields trust yields wellbeing
Edited excerpt for Today’s Insight News by Carolyn Bennett

More-equal countries ─ those with a narrower gap between rich and poor ─ in the developed world have markedly fewer health and social problems and are already more sustainable says new evidence published by Pickett and Wilkinson in their book The Spirit Level: why equality is better for everyone. Equality Trust co-founder and director Bill Kerry engages the debate for furthering equality.

More-equal countries’ flatter, less competitive social hierarchies dampen the demand for conspicuous and excessive consumption and encourage a shorter working-hours culture.

Recycling rates are higher in more-equal countries; their business leaders are more likely to support international environmental treaties.

More-equal countries give more in overseas aid to developing countries, which are the ones most immediately threatened by climate change.

Greater equality is conducive to further moves towards sustainability.

More-equal countries have higher levels of trust; it is this bedrock of trust that is needed if we are to make real progress towards sustainable economic models.

However, the present zero-sum seems to rule political discourse in too many countries. Too many people are distrustful and feel they can only win if someone else loses. They are unwilling to contemplate any changes to their lifestyle as they think others will not do the same.

This destructive mindset changes, though, when there are substantive moves toward greater equality, both in terms of fostering more cooperative and community-minded attitudes and maintaining high levels of well-being such that the transition to sustainability does not seem so difficult or unrealistic. Progressives, together with focusing on equality as our core value, must also set out new, popular and transformative ways of achieving that greater equality. …

Transformative routes to equality in the twenty-first century will … need to be innovative and, if they are to be adopted, capable of seizing the popular imagination.

Wholesale embrace of cooperative economics and related campaigns for pay justice – narrowing the ratios between high and low pay within all sectors of the economy – are concrete proposals on the way to narrowing the gap between rich and poor ….

Sources
“Sustainability will not be delivered without Equality” (Bill Kerry), April 04, 2010, Social Europe Journal, http://www.social-europe.eu/2010/04/sustainability-will-not-be-delivered-without-equality/
Bill Kerry is co-founder and director of The Equality Trust and works for the Trust as a part-time consultant. He speaks regularly for the Trust and has written and blogged for various organizations including Oxfam and the pressure group Compass. He is the commissioning editor for the March and April 2010 series of equality articles in the Good Society debate.
The Spirit Level: why equality is better for everyone by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett was published in hardback (Penguin) in March 2009 and in paperback in February 2010, http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/resource/the-spirit-level
Kate Pickett is a Professor of Epidemiology at the University of York and a National Institute for Health Research Career Scientist. She studied physical anthropology at Cambridge, nutritional sciences at Cornell and epidemiology at Berkeley before spending four years as an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago. Her work, with Richard Wilkinson, on The Spirit Level was shortlisted for Research Project of the Year 2009 by the Times Higher Education Supplement. The New Statesman chose their book as one of the Top Ten Books of the Decade, http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,1000075945,00.html
Richard Wilkinson has played an influential role in international research. His work has been published in 10 languages. Wilkinson studied economic history at the London School of Economics before training in epidemiology. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Nottingham Medical School and Honorary Professor at University College London, http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,1000075944,00.html