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It is only among the very richest countries that health and wellbeing are no longer related to Gross National Income per person.
By playing on our fears of being seen as of less worth, advertisers may even contribute to the level of violence in a society.
Mistrust and inequality reinforce each other.
there is no relationship between the amount of health spending per person and life expectancy.
In the past the rich were fat and the poor were thin, but in developed countries these patterns are now reversed.106
Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education.
Just saying ‘No’ prevents teenage pregnancy the way ‘Have a nice day’ cures chronic depression.
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.
In the USA, a child is killed by a gun every three hours.
In the United States, two out of every three murders are committed with guns, and homicide rates are higher in states where more people own guns.216
In less equal states more people think they would do better than average in a fist fight.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
In California in 2004, there were 360 people serving life sentences for shoplifting.239
Prison data show us that more unequal societies are more punitive.
‘most effective way to turn a non‐violent person into a violent one is to send him to prison
the criminal justice and penal systems have been operating under a huge mistake, namely, the belief that punishment will deter, prevent or inhibit violence, when in fact it is the most powerful stimulant of violence that we have yet discovered.201
since 1984, the state of California built only one new college but twenty‐one new prisons.264
more unequal countries and states seem to have developed legal frameworks and penal systems in response to media and political pressure,
There is no connection between the proportion of single parents and national standards of child wellbeing.
in more unequal countries a higher proportion of Gross Domestic Product is spent on advertising,
An important ideological cost of the Cold War was that America gave up its historical commitment to equality.
The truth is that modern inequality exists because democracy is excluded from the economic sphere.
It used to be argued that goods for which the marginal costs were close to zero were inherently public goods and should be made publicly available.
Nor should we allow ourselves to believe that the rich are scarce and precious members of a superior race of more intelligent beings on whom the rest of us are dependent. That is merely the illusion that wealth and power create.
