Dear oh dear

My own personal view of the matter is that the entire ‘pro-invasion left’ are engaged in an elaborate plot to persuade us of the validity of the views of the ‘later’ Wittgenstein over the ‘earlier’ Wittgenstein. For example it is obvious that words like ‘torture’, ‘democracy’ and ‘intervention’, in their hands, no longer have the meaning i see written in front of me when I check them up in the dictionary. The only possible explanation I can come up with is that they are implicitly arguing that ‘meaning is use’. So that, for example, ‘we are intervening to bring democracy’ to a country now means ‘we are going to blow your country to smithereens, and then run it’.

Similarly. Geras describes himself as a ‘socialist’, even, Allah help us, a ‘Marxist.’. What could be possibly mean? His views don’t seem to be compatible with those of any Marxist I have ever heard of before, although I think Richard (Dirty) Desmond once described himself as a ‘socialist’.

Seriously though. He describes himself as a ‘Marxist’ although he seems to disagree with almost literally everything Marx ever wrote. What could he mean? Does he know himself any more?

Like Zell Miller is the one and only true Democrat, Geras is the one and only true Marxist. All other Marxists moved too far to the left and became Michael-Moore-like hateful anti-American traitors.

I’m glad that Matt point out the issue with the Gini coefficient. This is a really a nonsense metric. The Gini gets messed up by having Bill Gates and Warren Buffet even though their existence harms no one.

The issue is not “inequality” but poverty. And if we measured poverty in the same way that India does (fewer than 1600 calories per day), I doubt many people in the U.S. would be considered poor. There are more poor people in India than there are people in America. This puts the issue of poverty in perspective.

If we want to do something about poverty in the world, we need to support free trade. There is nothing that will lift the poor out of poverty more than allowing them access to our markets. And we benefit from trade as well – it is a “win-win” situation.

I’m looking at the HDR and I have some questions and quibbles.

First, it says that 20 percent of the United States population is functionally illiterate. First off, it doesn’t say where it got the data, while it specifies where it got for each other country. And I wonder to what extend this measure is influenced by immigration from countries like Mexico. I’m not saying it’s invalid, but just some concerns.

Also, I’m skeptical about the income measures they include. Again, I don’t see where they got the data. Second, income measures are out of whack with the poverty rate, at least to some degree. I don’t know how the US stacks up when you factor in transfer programs, black market labor, etc.

The bottom line is I’m not sure how much this international comparison reveals.

Matt,

I know this is largely a boring semantic argument, but I don’t think Temkin’s an outlier. So far as I’m concerned, egalitarianism is a commitment to the intrinsic value of equality or, conversely, the intrinsic disvalue of inequality. That’s why it’s called egalitarianism. Caring about the bad effects that usually follow being worse off is not the same thing as caring about being worse off. Egalitarians have to care about people being worse off no matter whether that has any bad effects on them. I find that implausible, so I find egalitarianism implausible.

Larry Temkin’s view implies nothing about what ought to be done, though. He thinks equality has some intrinsic value (and refers to other non-person afecting intrinsic values). He seems happy, though, with judgments about actions being such that person-affecting values always trump non-person affecting values (or at least, always trump equality). Is this crazy?

Chris,

Don’t put opinions on me that I don’t have.

1. I do not see the immigrant populations of France and the UK as 5th columns (as the increasingly unhinged Melanie Phillips does) and have blogged along that line. I would suggest that the pro-war left have taken that line, despite what you would like them to think to fit your prejudices.

2. I do not preach a constant mantra of hate against Muslims, and my Muslim friend in Afghanistan would be somewhat surprised to see me characterised in this manner. In fact, she has very similar opinions to me on the issue of the reactionary elements in Islam – although hers are more strongly held given her current location and her commitment to rebuilding her country.

You also, rather touchingly I might add, have a rather naive view that liberal democracy is some sort of default setting which requires no defending in the face of threats. It is essential that we confront threats early, rather than allowing them to grow. If you are concerned about the effects of the current terrorism threat on our basic liberties (and you hide the important argument about the trade-off and balances in this area), then you ought to consider what the effects would be on Western societies in terms of basic liberties and our foreign policy if a nuclear bomb was set off in any Western city?

Why not fight a smaller fight now, while we still have a chance to ensure it can be used to bring security both to others and ourselves?

Why not fight a smaller fight now, while we still have a chance to ensure it can be used to bring security both to others and ourselves?

Bombing and occupying countries is quite a eccentric way to fight the terrorism threat. I like contrarian ideas, but this one doesn’t seem to work at all.

Geras’s remarks are a bit strange really. Why does the quote:

“S]ome hope that the aftermath of the hurricane will force people to confront the issue of inequality.”

imply (as Geras says it does) that the person who wrote it doesn’t believe inequality existed before Katrina, or isn’t with us continuously, or is specific to America? The point is surely that it is with us continuously and was there before the hurricane, but wasn’t being confronted?

‘You also, rather touchingly I might add, have a rather naive view that liberal democracy is some sort of default setting which requires no defending in the face of threats.’

Eric is of course here arguing that Venezuela and Haiti have to defend themselves against the US. He is a lefty after all!

What I find particularly crazy about Tempkin’s view is not even so much that he thinks inequality _as such_, that is, independent of any effects of it, is bad (though I think that’s very weird, too) but that he thinks that many purely natural things that might be called “unequal” in some sense are also “injustices”. An example- two people are walking down a path. One steps in a hole and hurts his leg while the other one doesn’t. On Tempkin’s account this is not only an instance of inequality but also an injustice. I suppose we should be happy if the doesn’t think that this sort of injustice means we should do something [hurt the other person’s leg, maybe?] I don’t think he thinks this sort of supposed injustice is morally different _as injustice_ from what is normally called injustice. But,it’s also, frankly, a pretty crazy view to think this is properly called an injustice at all. (My knowledge of Tempkin mostly comes from reading some papers he presented at Penn a few years ago and talking to him, so maybe he has other more sane views, but this one is nuts.)

Matt — we should probably go soemwhere else to discuss this as I think it is not what others are interested in! But, in the interests of time, I understand your point (Look at Dan Hausman’s paper about equality on the equality exchange, where he makes much the same point). Some days I agree that its wrong to call inequality which is not generated by agency unjust, but other times it seems entirely natural to me. Here’s the intuition contrary to yours. If we say that non-agent-generated inequalities are not unjust, are we saying that there is nothing unjust about leaving them as they are? At least I think the following: there are strong moral reasons to address those inequalities (which might get trumped by reasons concerning liberty, benefitting the least advantaged, etc, but are strong nonetheless). We might say that those reasons are not reasons of justice, and I suppose that’s fine, but isn’t that merely a semantic dispute? Or, do you think there are no moral reasons for addressing such inequalities?
(You can pprobably tell that I’m thinking about this and can’t quite firgure out what I think, so am eager for you to show me I’m heading in the wrong directon…)

The main thing about Geras is his cynicism. A week or so ago, he admired Trotsky’s characterization of Marx and Engels “complete and ingrained independence of official public opinion at all times and under all conditions.” Now you don’t have to be a genius to understand that Geras was being self-referential. He too has an “ingrained independence” about the war in Iraq in clear defiance of the rest of the left and at this point a big majority of people living in the USA and Great Britain. This galled me so much that I wrote the toad telling him how shameless he was to quote Trotsky on this or any other matter. It is like Mitterand or Thorez quoting Marx in the 1950s to justify French control of Algeria.

In a similar vein, I was struck by Nick Cohen pn hte “middle-class left” a while back, saying

This seems to imply that Cohen himself
(i) has abandoned at least one of these viewpoints
(ii) never gave either of them serious thought when he held them

…bring people out of poverty? Gees. Have you ever read a description of a Chinese factory? Go read something written by Charles Kernaghan.

I’m generally a fan of Cohen, even post-Iraq, but when he starts banging on about the left these days he really does go insane. What leftist believes in “a free market in sexual relationships”? What does that even mean?

Javier—for basic facts and figures, both pre-redistribution and post-redistribution, take a look at Timothy Smeeding & Lee Rainwater’s Poor Kids in a Rich Country (Russell Sage 2004). Or, for papers written to a more academic audience, see Smeeding’s articles from the past decade.

Thanks anon, I’ll see if I can get my hands on it.

Actually, I’ve just run through Timothy Seeding’s online paper on American poverty in comparative perspective. One thing to note is that Seeding doesn’t rely on data about consumption patterns, he uses an income metric of poverty. Thus I’m not sure it evades the problem sketched by Nicholas Eberstadt:

In the Labor Department’s latest Consumer Expenditure Survey (2003), the average reported income for the bottom fifth of households was $8,201, while reported outlays came to $18,492 – well over twice that amount. Over the past generation, that discrepancy widened significantly: back in the early 1970’s, the poorest fifth’s reported spending exceeded income by 40 percent.

Unfortunately, economists and statisticians have yet to come up with a clear explanation for this gap (which is not explained by in-kind payments like food stamps or other assistance). The divergence may be in part a measurement problem: partly a matter of income under-reporting, partly a consequence of increasing income variability in our more “globalized” economy. But whatever its cause, it does drive home the unreliability of using reported household income as a benchmark for poverty.

Thus for some reason earnings inequality has not been tracked by consumption inequality.

Could increasing household debt account for some of the discrepancy?

I don’t know about evidence specific to the poorest Americans, but hasn’t the increase in household spending outstripped that of income in the US overall, over the past several years?

I don’t understand what the Eric/Chris controversy is about here. Chris made a fairly simple point; that Norman G was saying some fairly odd things about inequality in the USA (in particular, he was claiming it was unreasonable to suggest that the USA had worse inequality than other OECD countries, which it does). I don’t think it’s unreasonable to surmise that Norm was saying this because he has become more sympathetic to George W Bush than he might otherwise have been, because of the war. If your views on the war have led you to be more inclined to agree with George W Bush about the subject of inequality in America, then they’ve led you toward the right and away from the left.

That’s an amazing figure. Is that for the US or ‘the West’?

I clicked the comments thread here specifically looking for some howlers to cheer me up on this dreary day, and #15 and #17 do not disappoint. Thanks guys!

John,

the difference between being worse off and bad effects is the difference between their status in relation to others – in this case, not having as much of x as some other people have – and an absolute bad – in this case, not having enough of x to avoid some bad consequences. I hope that helps.

On the person affecting thing, Temkin needs to be able to show not only that the person affecting view, i.e., that someone being better off – in the absolute sense – makes a state of affairs better, is false, but that any case which shows the falsity of the person affecting view relies on a claim about the value of equality to do so. On Harry’s point about non-agent-generated inequalities, it looks like to me that whilst we probably have an obligation, which might well be a justice based obligation, to assist someone who injures their leg, that does not have a relational status – it doesn’t matter whether or not anyone else has or has not injured their leg. For egalitarianism to fly, it at least has to make some difference – not necessarily a decisive difference, but some at least – whether or not the injury results in an inequality, and simply from the bare fact of the inequality, rather than any effects that flow from it.

bigmacattack: I may be misunderstanding your adjustment, but it seems to me that you have it around backward. I say this knowing that I have limited information, and so am quite willing & able to be convinced otherwise by solid argument.

As far as I can see, the fact that the US has a `richer rich’ and an wider wealth gap in the population goes a long way to explaining why although the US is consistently at or near the top of GDP number etc., it is never a threat for that position in any reasonable quality of life index that I’ve seen. This doesn’t mean it notably low in such indices, just noting the looseness of correllation. Granted, q-o-l indices are tricky, but this is roughly what we are *really* talking about.

In the other direction, though, it is completely clear that income level alone is not a very meaningful comparison here. The social programs (in particular, health care) available to people at these threshold levels is really not comparable.

soubzriquet,

What I am saying is this. Pick a threshold level for poverty. Say 20K US. Now adjust the income levels in France for PPP, a dollar buys more in France than in the US, so adjust French income level upwards to compensate. Add means tested transfers to both sets of income. (I am pretty darn sure that state provided health care counts as a means tested transfer. Actually US residents probably receive more non means tested transfers, US poor receive more stuff that is left out of the calculation.)

Now compare the % of people in France that live below this level versus % of people in the US that live below this level.

The % is pretty much equal.

The reason the US ranks so low in so many material quality of life indexes, is because this common sense gut approach is not used. Instead the indexes are based solely on income inequality. So because the US the rich earn more than the rich in France, the US has a higher level of income inequality, and ranks lower.

(There is also an implicit disregard for cultural effects when these indexes are used.)

Income inequality is important. But when comparing poverty between Europe and the US, I am extremely doubtful that income inequality is the correct guage. It might be a part, less than 50%, of the guage. But is used because the culturally Social Democrats must use it.

(Bonus points to anyone who can point out why it is pretty much the only guage used. Hint, think non flattering thoughts about conservatives. Darn liberal media is incorrect.)

Hirvi,

Child poverty defined as income inequality or as
% living below cloud 0.

That is my point the % living below cloud 0 in the US and France is similar.

Inequality is not about poverty. Pretending that it’s all about poverty is a trick used by both conservatives and liberals in the US.

It’s about Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. It’s about majority of the population (85-90%) being robbed by a small group of plutocrats, as demonstrated here. So, enough about the poverty already.

Chris, the claim is that “the poor in the US have had to work increasingly harder and longer over the past 30 years.” However, I’m having trouble squarring this with some other studies on the distribution of leisure time in the United States.

First, John Robinson and Geoffrey Godby found on the basis of time diaries that the average American has gained 6.2 hours of free time over the past 30 years. Second, it seems that more educated people in the labor force have lost leisure time, while the less educated have actually gained it. Godby and Robinson has found that the “working” class has seen a more rapid reduction in working hours than people in the higher end of the distribution. You can find the reference here.

Also, we should note that “more working hours” does not always translate into less leisure. One time diary study, for instance, found that Americans work more hours than Germans, but Americans actually have slightly more leisure time after you factor in household maintenance.

I don’t think Eberstadt can be so easily dismissed. There is a genuine mystery about the consumption patterns of the people in the bottom of the income distribution which isn’t accounted for by more working hours or transfer payments.

I haven’t read Marmot, I’ll see if I can track it down. However, I do think that the claims of Richard Wilkinson and his followers are suspect. I don’t know if Marmot advances the same claims.

In the British family both partners worked and shared domestic labour and childcare, the German family was much more, um, patriarchal. All this is merely anecdotal, of course.

I’m living in Germany right now, so I know what you mean!

My experience of central Europe (the Czech Republic) is that Britain is massively more equitable in its distribution of ordinary domestic duties/childcare, etc. Most British women I know simply wouldn’t accept the division of labour that many in the Czech republic take for granted.

I’d imagine the situation in Germany is quite similar.

bigmacattack: I’m not convinced that the income inequality is the dominant reason that US rates lower in quality of life indices. If so, I would agree those particular indices are broken (but my gut feel is that fixing them won’t put US above countries like Canada, Netherlands, Sweden, etc.)

I am quite certain that the poor in Canada are on average better off that the poor in the US (notwithstanding native population, a complex issue). I would guess the same is true of the average, but without certainty, and likewise not true of the rich. Comparisons with EU countries are harder for me, as I haven’t lived there for any significant length of time. Canada vs. US comparisons have there own problems, of course.

I’ll have to do some reading to respond very meaningfully though, and that isn’t likely to happen very quickly, I’m afraid.

hirvi, if you were a North African refugee and you could choose between the U.S. and France,… do you get my drift?

Bill b:

“if you were a North African refugee and you could choose between the U.S. and France,… do you get my drift?”

I don’t know what point you want to make, but in that situation I’d take France, of course.

if you were a North African refugee and you could choose between the U.S. and France

depends … how black would I be?

‘Since the points have been made using not only income measures but also outcome/functioning ones your comments really are beside the point.’

Well, gee, Chris, if income levels are irrelavent, what exactly was the point of your post?

Denmark ranks 3rd in GINI and behind the US in life expetancy. I am pretty sure regression analysis of life expectancy and GINI amongst OEDC wouldn’t indicate a correlation.

Culture not GINI is what matters for that other criteria.

(Check out the adult literacy scores for the English speaking nations. You immediately think methodology or culture.)

The impact, if any, of income inequality on these other measures is vague and nebulous at best.

When comparing and contrasting the advanced capitalist nations what is striking is not the level of inequality, what is striking is how well they all provide for all their citizens.

Most ordinary people can see this without having to parse through this or that study.

Status inequalities may have a negative effect on health, but the role of income inequality is unclear. The two types of inequality do not necessarily track each other perfectly. In fact, recent research on the relationship between income inequality and health indicators has, I think, shown that the corrleations between them are weak at best. Angus Deaton, an economist at Princeton, has a comprehensive review of the research here. For the United States at least, race is far more important than income inequality for health outcomes.

I think a much better argument for greater income equality is somehting like, an honest days pay for an honest days work.

Oh, wow, who would’ve thunk? I’m in full agreement.

It’s sure freezing here where I am, but that’s because of the damn Bize.

Engels, then you are claiming that poverty, not inequality, is the culprit for bad health outcomes? Or is there some other link? It is true that people who earn less income have worse health outcomes. But how to explain this result?

First off, do they have lower incomes because they are less healthy or the other way around?

Second, even if they have poor health because they have low incomes, what is the causal mechanism? It seem obvious that it would be lack of access to health care, but that’s disputable. Health care access has a very small impact on mortality or disability rates across entire populations. This paper reviews a series of studies which find this surprising result.

You might say “it’s status inequalities.” I would probably agree and add it’s also poor nutrition and less exercise. But income inequality in itself has a tenuous connection to these things.

Engel’s

The study you link to is about the impact of status not income on health. And the summary of this study concludes that status cannot be re-distributed and instead reccomends more autonomy for those with less status.

I politley suggested you were not totally familiar with the study you claimed irrefutablely demonstrated that income inequality impacts health. No, actually worse, I have made the context perfectly clear –

‘Rather, I am arguing, that measuring the difference in impact of US inequality GINI 45 vs French inequality GINI 32.7, on each nation’s poorest citzens is going to be next to impossible. That is what I mean when I say vague and nebulous impact of income inequality.’

Given that, a suggestion that you are not familiar with the data, is polite. Perhaps ad hominem but polite.

Javier – I agree that access to health care appears counterintuitively unimportant. Status (as mentioned) and education may be more important to health than income (in itself) in advanced capitalist societies. But egalitarians wish to narrow the distribution of all these goods and they are all very unequally distributed in the US. I think, though, that income is clearly connected to status, especially in the US, and it would be very odd to try to deny this.

Bigmacattack – I know Marmot’s study was about status inequalities and I clearly said it was. The passage you quote does not say that “status can not be redistributed”. Is it too much to ask that you read these things?