The idea that economic inequality contributes to social dysfunction is pretty straight forward. All one has to do is imagine an average industrialized city and compare it with the average back country town. There are so many more social problems in cities than rural towns that it doesn't seem fair. The real question is how political parties manage to snag more followers in places that don't operate on their views. Liberals who'd vote for more equality are mainly concentrated in the cities, where inequality is rampant; conservatives who'd vote for more inequality are mainly concentrated in the country, where the only expensive things to buy are tractors and farm animals. I'm as confused as you are.
Most people in the world, even in the U.S.A., believe income inequality is a problem. What makes it convoluted is that many people in rural towns have never been to the cities, so they don't know what life is really like there. To them conservatism is about keeping things as they are where they live, which they seem pretty happy with and find little reason to change. Conversely, many people in the cities can't imagine what life is like in the country. They are blind to the fact that maybe things are pretty good out there, perhaps even better than the city they love, since there isn't as much crime, drug abuse, mental illness, etc. Quite simply there isn't as much cause for social change needed in the country as there is in the city. That's why this reverse effect is going on; city-dwellers are more aware of social problems because they happen far more frequently around them.
In The Spirit Level, the authors go through countless pages demonstrating how income inequality contributes to the following social problems: general health, mental illness, violence, homicide, child well-being, education, obesity, social mobility, prison population, teenage birth rates, literacy scores, aspirations, high-school drop outs, life expectancy, infant mortality, drug use, women's status, spending on foreign aid, trust, anxiety and depression. The statistics they presented were convincing enough for me, however we must remember that these are only correlations and not verifiable causes.
In addition to the above, more equal countries on average recycle a greater proportion of their waste; they work less hours per week; they have less consumerism, which contributes to many other social problems; their citizens are more innovative (perhaps counter-intuitively); and their market crashes aren't as severe. It's no coincidence that the two biggest Wall Street crashes of the last 100 years (1929, 2008) were during periods when American inequality rates were at their highest.
So besides getting more people in the cities to vote, what can people in the U.S. do to make it a more equal society?
Many have proposed increasing taxes on the wealthiest 1% of the population. Taxing the rich doesn't have to be an exclusive way to combat inequality, although it is one of the most effective. There are countries and states that don't have to tax the rich to make a more equal society, such as New Hampshire and Japan. The problem here is most rich people don't like to concede their income to taxes for the benefit of society, so it's hardly worth the effort campaigning against them. Perhaps if taxing the rich at higher rates weren't on their agenda, equality seekers wouldn't be as threatened by the political parties that oppose them.
Instead of fighting taxation domestically, we have the option of getting legislators to organize a multinational agreement that would prevent TNCs (transnational corporations) from evading taxes by moving their money offshore. Many TNCs are now richer than many nations. A big reason for that comes from the tax loopholes in international trade. If we had more strict international tax laws, we wouldn't have to worry about pandering to the political parties that support tax cuts for TNCs.
Many in the U.S. mistakenly believe the failed eastern European states of the Soviet bloc prove that the current capitalist structure is the only one that works. However, you can have an alternative structure without concentrating power into the state, which has the effect of making production more efficient and minimizing the corruption centralized power breeds. The best examples of this are the Scandinavian countries, which have a high number of programs that combat inequality without having power so centralized.
Most importantly, domestic laws can be put in place to combat inequality. Employee-shared ownership in stock, which grants shares to employees simply because they work for a corporation, would help tremendously in allocating income from the upper class to the lower. If that sounds like a far-fetched idea, it shouldn't. No matter how insignificant you are on the chain of command, you contribute your energy to the company you work for, so you should be getting rewarded for the success it has. You should be getting a share of the profits your company makes for the work you put in- that's just common sense. Otherwise, 100% of the profits go straight to the top, for CEOs to do whatever they wish. Maximum and minimum wage laws can also be put into place, to make sure the people at the top aren't getting a disproportionate share of the profits to those at the bottom. Ideally these would be relative to the revenue of a company, not based on its location.
We have a tall mountain to climb in our country, being one of the most unequal in the world. It seems we've made a joke of our Declaration of Independence, which states that "all men are created equal." Yet our society is highly charged by motives that lead to the opposite. None of the founding fathers foresaw how wildly the Industrial Revolution would divide the middle class. Even if they could have, slavery still managed to exist, so there's no reason to believe they'd have written laws to combat inequality. In its truest sense, we are a nation of hypocrisy. It’s time to start doing what we said we would.
