The GINI coefficient http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient is a relative measure of income and "wealth" equality. It can, if interpreted judiciously, thinking about the structures and cultures of the countries being assessed, give an accurate picture of the relative health and stability of a nation, based on it's measured inequalities.
In this case, if we just look at "industrialised" nations, the U.S. is quite low in the assessment, meaning the inequality in wealth, and income, is very high. Note that Mexico, and China, are now in the same grouping, as the U.S. However, remember, this is a relative index. But, in U.S. average income terms, which are much higher than those in Mexico, or China, our society is as unequal as theirs. Of course, in Mexico, and to a certain extent, China, the population of these nations as a whole, have less access to the things we accept as "normal", namely, clean safe tap water, wherever we are, proper sanitation, and a "safe" food supply, wherever we choose to obtain it. In addition most "poor" people in the U.S. have electricity (pre-supposing they are able to afford housing) and the ability to at least obtain food that will ensure their survival in a basic sense.
However, these things are not to be taken for granted. If current trends and policies continue, the U.S. will develop the structure and insecurities of current "third world" nations within a decade or two.
Your lead editor has visited, lived in, and experienced other countries, where the GINI Index is much lower. And have felt that, as a whole, the majority of the people in these countries, feel happier, and are more satisfied with their nations, feel more a part of and connected to their neighbours and with how they fit in, their nation's role at large, in the World. Countries like Australia, and Canada, and of course, most of Western Europe. Why don't we learn from them, after all, most of us can trace our ancestries back to these countries, and still have connections with them.
OK, here is a quick assessment of what I learned about Australia, when I stayed there for six weeks in 2008/09. It has a "social democracy" similar to the U.K., New Zealand, Canada, and most other western European countries.
Minimum Wage: $15.38 per hour AUSD (exchange rate in 2008 with USD about .85)
Health Care: All citizens have universal insurance coverage. Complete health care is available to all. Similar to the U.K.
Vacation: All citizens receive at least four weeks leave, private or public sector.
Unemployment: $1543 AUSD per month. Unlimited, but they have strong, successful fraud monitoring, job application requirements, and job placement services.
Yet, something is different about the U.S., amongst all the industrialised nations. This chart tells a very big picture. Other than Singapore and Hong Kong, the U.S. is far and away the most inequal. And measures poorly in many other of these statistics. This is a direct result of the concerted political strategies of "conservative" politicians since the 1970s, but which really accelerated in the 1980s, and continue unabated to the present day.
We liked this article. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/06/05-1 It is written by a true psychologist, so someone who would be able to provide informed and unbiased assessments.
The Rise of the Second-String Psychopaths
The great writer Kurt Vonnegut titled his final book A Man without a Country. He was the man; the country was the United States of America. Vonnegut felt that his country had disappeared right under his – and the Constitution’s – feet, through what he called “the sleaziest, low-comedy Keystone Cops-style coup d’état imaginable.” He was talking about the Bush administration. Were Vonnegut still alive in the post-Bush era, he would not have felt that his country had returned.
How had our country disappeared? Vonnegut proposed that among the contributing factors was that it had been invaded – as if by the Martians – by people with a particularly frightening mental illness. People with this illness were termed psychopaths. (The term nowadays is anti-social personality disorder.) These are terms for people who are smart, personable, and engaging, but who have no consciences. They are not guided by a sense of right or wrong. They seem to be unaffected by the feelings of others, including feelings of distress caused by their actions. Straying from a decent way of treating people, or violating ethical codes causes no anxiety, the anxiety which is what causes the rest of us to moderate our more greedy impulses. If most children feel anxiety when they are pilfering the forbidden cookie jar, psychopaths feel just fine. They can devour the cookies, shatter the jar as evidence and stuff it in the trash can. When accused, they can argue with apparent sincerity that the cookie jar has been missing for at least a week. There suffer no remorse, no guilt, no shame. They are free to do anything, no matter how harmful.
Psychopaths can be very tricky to recognize. As psychiatrist Dr. Hervey Cleckly wrote in his classic The Mask of Sanity in 1941, psychopaths are not technically insane. They don’t have a psychosis, like schizophrenia. They are experts in appearing normal. They can act the role of a caring, concerned executive, even though they actually do not seem to experience such feelings. If they hurt somebody, they don’t modify their behavior.
The United States corporate and government spheres have become, Vonnegut suggested, a perfect habitat for psychopaths. What has allowed so many psychopaths to rise so high in corporations, and then government, he wrote,
“is that they are so decisive. They are going to do something every fuckin’ day and they are not afraid. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they don’t give a f..k what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich!
In a country in which much of human culture has been rendered into machines for the manufacture of money, psychopaths are the ideal leaders. They are very focused. They are outcome oriented. They are frequently charming, and usually very bright and able. They can lay off thousands of people, or deny people health care, or have them waterboarded, and it does not disturb their sleep. They can be impressively confident. Psychopaths can be dynamic leaders of enterprises, but are handicapped by their lack of feelings for relationships. They may be accomplished captains of industry, or senators, or surgeons, but their families are frequently abused and miserable. Most psychotherapists have seen the wives or husband or children of such accomplished people.
Since psychopaths are usually very smart, they can be quite competent at impersonating regular human beings in positions of power. Since they don’t care how their actions affect people, they can rise to great height in enterprises dealing with power and money. They can manufacture bombs or run hospitals. Whatever the undertaking, it is all the same to them. It’s just business.
The economic system that remains after the destruction of American local cultures has created an excellent employment picture for psychopaths. But the opportunities open to them are now so vast that there is apparently now an actual labor shortage. At least that is the only explanation I can find for the rise of a cadre of psychopathic leaders who resemble the usual type in all ways but one: they’re simply not that smart. One has only to look at right-wing not-so-Christian fundamentalists to see the peculiar emergence of a second-string of psychopaths.
The US has been endowed with abundant resources, and there have always been a more than sufficient supply of psychopaths of the first intellectual grade to supply corporate suites and their subsidiary, the Congress. Why is there now a downgrade to the dumb ones, like the lowering of standards for military recruits to deal with a shortage of cannon fodder?
It is no secret that the Koch brothers and others of the super-rich seem to have undertaken a final push to consolidate control through the conversion of a marginally democratic to an essentially fascist state; extreme right-wing, authoritarian, and demagogic. This kind of government is ideal for control of a populace by the moneyed elite. To carry this out requires the employment of many ‘kept’ politicians to excite and misdirect scared and angry – and ignorant – voters. Lest the citizenry realize who stole their money and storm their castles with torches, the rapacious elite need politicians who will carry out the work of re-directing anger at teachers, or labor unions, or the poor. I can only conclude that the people who now own the country couldn’t find any first-rate psychopaths to carry out their work. Or maybe the smart ones were all occupied. So they had to go to second-stringers, people who could actually believe what they were told to say.
We are a country who has become second-best, even in the quality of our psychopaths.
How had our country disappeared? Vonnegut proposed that among the contributing factors was that it had been invaded – as if by the Martians – by people with a particularly frightening mental illness. People with this illness were termed psychopaths. (The term nowadays is anti-social personality disorder.) These are terms for people who are smart, personable, and engaging, but who have no consciences. They are not guided by a sense of right or wrong. They seem to be unaffected by the feelings of others, including feelings of distress caused by their actions. Straying from a decent way of treating people, or violating ethical codes causes no anxiety, the anxiety which is what causes the rest of us to moderate our more greedy impulses. If most children feel anxiety when they are pilfering the forbidden cookie jar, psychopaths feel just fine. They can devour the cookies, shatter the jar as evidence and stuff it in the trash can. When accused, they can argue with apparent sincerity that the cookie jar has been missing for at least a week. There suffer no remorse, no guilt, no shame. They are free to do anything, no matter how harmful.
Psychopaths can be very tricky to recognize. As psychiatrist Dr. Hervey Cleckly wrote in his classic The Mask of Sanity in 1941, psychopaths are not technically insane. They don’t have a psychosis, like schizophrenia. They are experts in appearing normal. They can act the role of a caring, concerned executive, even though they actually do not seem to experience such feelings. If they hurt somebody, they don’t modify their behavior.
The United States corporate and government spheres have become, Vonnegut suggested, a perfect habitat for psychopaths. What has allowed so many psychopaths to rise so high in corporations, and then government, he wrote,
“is that they are so decisive. They are going to do something every fuckin’ day and they are not afraid. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they don’t give a f..k what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich!
In a country in which much of human culture has been rendered into machines for the manufacture of money, psychopaths are the ideal leaders. They are very focused. They are outcome oriented. They are frequently charming, and usually very bright and able. They can lay off thousands of people, or deny people health care, or have them waterboarded, and it does not disturb their sleep. They can be impressively confident. Psychopaths can be dynamic leaders of enterprises, but are handicapped by their lack of feelings for relationships. They may be accomplished captains of industry, or senators, or surgeons, but their families are frequently abused and miserable. Most psychotherapists have seen the wives or husband or children of such accomplished people.
Since psychopaths are usually very smart, they can be quite competent at impersonating regular human beings in positions of power. Since they don’t care how their actions affect people, they can rise to great height in enterprises dealing with power and money. They can manufacture bombs or run hospitals. Whatever the undertaking, it is all the same to them. It’s just business.
The economic system that remains after the destruction of American local cultures has created an excellent employment picture for psychopaths. But the opportunities open to them are now so vast that there is apparently now an actual labor shortage. At least that is the only explanation I can find for the rise of a cadre of psychopathic leaders who resemble the usual type in all ways but one: they’re simply not that smart. One has only to look at right-wing not-so-Christian fundamentalists to see the peculiar emergence of a second-string of psychopaths.
The US has been endowed with abundant resources, and there have always been a more than sufficient supply of psychopaths of the first intellectual grade to supply corporate suites and their subsidiary, the Congress. Why is there now a downgrade to the dumb ones, like the lowering of standards for military recruits to deal with a shortage of cannon fodder?
It is no secret that the Koch brothers and others of the super-rich seem to have undertaken a final push to consolidate control through the conversion of a marginally democratic to an essentially fascist state; extreme right-wing, authoritarian, and demagogic. This kind of government is ideal for control of a populace by the moneyed elite. To carry this out requires the employment of many ‘kept’ politicians to excite and misdirect scared and angry – and ignorant – voters. Lest the citizenry realize who stole their money and storm their castles with torches, the rapacious elite need politicians who will carry out the work of re-directing anger at teachers, or labor unions, or the poor. I can only conclude that the people who now own the country couldn’t find any first-rate psychopaths to carry out their work. Or maybe the smart ones were all occupied. So they had to go to second-stringers, people who could actually believe what they were told to say.
We are a country who has become second-best, even in the quality of our psychopaths.
We at the Alaska Progressive Review, think that the reason so many people of this type are in charge of our political and economic system in the U.S. is because of the nation's unresolved and often suppressed racism. That is to say, a majority of the major ethnic group of it, European-descendants, are still afraid of other groups, African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics, and Native Americans. And that the "corporatocracy", or oligarchy, the major powers in U.S. society, the financial sector, fossil fuel, military-industrial, insurance, and other large corporate sectors, use this to persuade people to continue to vote against their own interests. How else can you explain Republican (and now even Democratic) politicians who would decimate social security and medicare, continue to grant tax benefits and breaks to the top few percent of the population and large corporations (that continually send more and more jobs to other countries, with U.S. government support) continuing to get re-elected? Of course, the corporate media does it's share to keep people uninformed, and that is a very large concern. Not to be ignored, and worthy of great concern.
But, the reason these other nations have benefits and security like they do, is because the people in them have more empathy, are not afraid of, and relate more, to their fellow people. A nation gets the government they deserve, in the sense that it is a reflection of the overall feelings and beliefs of the people in it. We think this idea is a good starting point for working for positive change. How do we really feel about people different from us? Of other cultures and ethnicities? Are all people equally worthy with respect to the culture we consider ourselves to be parts of? Are Indigenous peoples, who have completely different world-views, than most of ours in the U.S, culturally and spiritually "equal" to ours? Because if we don't think so, we'll never effectively solve global problems like overpopulation, resource depletion, environmental destruction, and global warming. Which if left unchecked will all combine to render a World much less inhabitable, for our descendants, within the next century. Cheers.
