In his January 1st Op-Ed column, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof promotes a new book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger by “distinguished British epidemiologists” Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.
According to Kristof, “The heart of their argument is that humans are social animals and that in highly unequal societies those at the bottom suffer from a range of pathologies.”
If this argument were true, then all the social ills discussed in Mr. Kristof’s article would be easily solved: just make everyone equally poor by government redistribution of wealth. Since misery loves company, then we would all be happy souls in the equality of our poverty.
Of course, this is absurd. Crime, obesity, drug abuse, high teenage birthrates, and the other pathologies Mr. Kristoff mentions may certainly be due to ignorance, poverty, and most of all, poor moral character; but if there is anyone who attributes such problems to socio-economic inequality, they are simply making excuses - either for their own bad behavior or, as I suspect in Mr. Kristoff’s case, for their fear and hatred of the responsibilities entailed in America’s economic and political freedom.
One need not read any "scientific" study or book by “distinguished British epidemiologists” to know BS when it stinks as bad as the tired, old, debunked arguments for egalitarianism regurgitated by leftists under the guise of science.
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