Inequality: Cain, Abel, & Andrew Yang
“Woah! Woah! Everyone take a deep breath… I’ll go ask God about a universal basic income.” — Andrew Yang to Cain and Abel.
Cain, Abel, Jacob, and Esau
I’ll begin with two biblical stories that illustrate the consequences of inequality, each featuring a pair of rivalrous brothers. The first is Cain and Abel; the latter Jacob and Esau.
Cain and Abel’s story is more concise. As the two children of Adam and Eve, both make sacrifices to God. God favored Abel’s sacrifice and rejected Cain’s. So, Abel went on to live a prosperous life, and Cain did not. Simple enough. Later, after years of playing second fiddle, Cain becomes deeply resentful. He tricks his brother, leads him out into a field, and kills him. God sentences Cain to a life of restless wandering around the earth, a punishment that he says he cannot bear.
The second story is a little more complex. As the eldest, Esau received a birthright that Jacob did not. Esau is a bit short-sighted but favored by his father. Jacob is tricky and manipulative and favored by his mother.
After a long day working in the fields, Esau comes home exhausted to find his brother Jacob eating soup. Jacob refuses to share and Esau quickly grows angry. After some argument, Jacob makes an offer, seemingly tongue-in-cheek: soup for birthright. Desperate, Esau quickly agrees, eats the soup, and forfeits his firstborn responsibilities to his brother.
Years later, their father is sick, blind, and dying. He announces that he will give his sons their blessings in his final act. As the eldest (and his father’s favorite), Esau expects to receive the greater gift. But Jacob has other plans. With help from their mother, Jacob disguises himself as Esau and tricks his blind father, stealing the greater blessing meant for his brother.
Jacob took advantage of his brother’s moment of weakness and then tricked his blind father—not exactly a great guy. Still, God follows through on both claims and leads Jacob to a more prosperous life.
Years later, after Jacob has matured, he goes to make amends with his brother. To show his sincerity, he offers to share his fortune. Even after Esau declines, Jacob insists. The shared fortune allows Esau to forgive, and they live together peacefully.
Maintaining good relations within societies overrides other faults. Jacob swindled his brother and tricked his blind and dying father, but he shared his wealth. So, things work out well for him. Abel made the right sacrifices and treated people respectfully, but it didn’t matter in the end. He allowed his brother to become resentful, and he paid the price. Despite Abel making his wealth morally, he’s dead, and Jacob is not.
It’s easy to assume what matters most is how wealth was earned. If you played fairly and won, why shouldn’t you keep all your winnings? Cain and Abel provide an answer—as long as life is unbearable for the losers, things will get violent. Wealth fairly earned only gets you so far if your neighbor is homicidal. However, if the have-nots can live a life with dignity and without resentment, society can persist—even if other things are going wrong.
The Spirit Level
People seem to have always had the intuition that inequality hurts social cohesion. In The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett provide empirical evidence.
The book concerns inequality in developed countries. In developing countries, economic growth remains essential for well-being, but the authors point to a plateau once countries achieve a certain level of economic prosperity. This limit concerns the top 20% of earners in unequal societies (there isn't precise data on, say, the 1%).
Well-being is a general term that Wilkinson and Pickett used to describe a variety of measures, including objective measures like life expectancy and subjective measures like reported happiness. Below, I'll specify more directly when the authors refer to specific measurements.
A one-sentence summary
Wilkinson's one-sentence summary of the book is, "problems we know are related to social status get worse when you increase the social status differences." This claim seems nearly self-evident. Still, the authors have received a lot of pushback. The rich in unequal societies haven't hesitated to treat Wilkinson and Picket as the bearers of bad news.
More specifically, the authors treat inequality as a measure of the importance placed on hierarchy. Inequality creates a steeper slope of social status within a community. More significant income differences mean larger social distances, and larger differences lend more importance. The more unequal a society, the more high-status members are rewarded, and the more low-status members are punished. The kicker comes in two parts: (1) the list of problems related to social status is a lot longer than you think, and (2) they argue these problems are actually caused by inequality, not just related to it.
The list of problems related to social status includes life expectancy, literacy rates, infant mortality, violence, imprisonment, teenage births, trust, obesity, drug and alcohol addiction, mental illness, and social mobility. I'll focus mainly on health, violence, and trust.
Health, Violence, and Trust
More unequal societies mean that social status matters more. So, every single social interaction is more meaningful and more stressful. This stress has a direct and negative impact on both physical and mental health.
We know chronic stress leads to a deterioration of health and a shorter life expectancy. So, it's unsurprising that life expectancy is lower in unequal societies because people in unequal societies are more often chronically stressed. Chronic stress leads to the weakening of our immune and cardiovascular systems. It changes physiological priorities. It uses all the body's resources right now and doesn't save for the long term. This resource depletion makes the effects of chronic stress look the most like rapid aging. This connection makes perfect sense, as aging is nearly equivalent to using up the body's physical resources.
As status matters more, we pay more attention to and place greater importance on where we fall in the hierarchy. Therefore, greater inequality leads to more significant social anxiety, which leads to a deterioration of mental health.
By the nature of hierarchies, everyone cannot be a winner. People who do not win the status games respond to these pressures in two main ways: social anxiety (panic) or narcissism (willful blindness).
Narcissism arises more frequently in unequal societies because many people are punished for their lower status. Instead of accepting their relatively low placement, narcissists live in their own world—they lie to themselves about their abilities and status. Narcissists must pretend they're better than they are, or their life would be unbearable.
Violence is connected to social status because violence is triggered by humiliation. Inequality increases the feelings of superiority and inferiority and, therefore, creates more opportunities for embarrassment. More embarrassment means more violence.
Finally, if everyone is slightly more mentally unwell and violent, it isn't much of a stretch to imagine they would also be less trustworthy. You can see how one problem lends itself to the next.
But inequality is better for the rich, right? Maybe not.
Unsurprisingly, policies that would create more economic equality meet immense resistance. Those at the top benefit by maintaining their wealth. Or, at least they believe they do. Wilkinson and Pickett disagree.
In more equal societies, those in the top 20% of the income bracket face lower rates of drug addiction and other mental illnesses, expect a slightly longer lifespan, and are less likely to become victims of violence. Status anxiety (worries about how you’re seen and judged) is higher at all income levels in more unequal countries. And, of course, that makes sense. There are more substantial consequences of losing status in more unequal societies.
Wilkinson and Pickett argue that the day-to-day existence of the upper class is worse in unequal societies, but I’d even take this a step further. An additional existential threat looms in the most unequal societies: Cain turning violently against Abel.
Potential Solutions
Wilkinson gives two recommendations. (1) Pass legislation requiring employee representation on company boards. Half the member countries of the European Union have done so in one way or another. German laws are quite strong and have been effective at maintaining low levels of inequality. The income gap has still widened, but not as much as in countries without employee representation (i.e., the US and Britain). And (2) deal with tax avoidance and tax havens. These loopholes make the tax burden fall much heavier on those who can less afford it.
These moves are straightforward, actionable steps in the right direction. But I don’t think they account for the changing world. Things are about to get more unequal, much more unequal. We need a solution that meets the magnitude of the problem.
The War on Normal People
“If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.” — Steven Hawking
The vision Hawking lays out is too large a shift from most of our worldviews to settle in immediately. For me, the idea of machines producing everything we need goes down like a cheap tequila shot. That’s why Andrew Yang has taken a book, some podcasts, and a presidential run to solidify it in the national consciousness. In doing so, he was able to add some much-needed urgency. I’ll break this down below and, hopefully, help Hawking’s description go down a little smoother.
Automation and Inequality
Andrew Yang wrote The War on Normal People in an attempt to ring the automation alarm bells. The United States is currently undergoing the beginnings of automation displacing workers. Yang calls this process “The Great Displacement” and clarifies that this transition isn’t hypothetical. It won’t happen some years down the line. It’s now, and it’s ongoing.
The Great Displacement isn’t a uniform transition. We have nearly entirely replaced some sectors and are still yet to touch others. Still, it’s essential to understand the process has begun and that urgency is required.
The first mass displacement of American workers was globalization. American companies increased profit margins by outsourcing their manual labor to other countries, leaving American manufacturing workers without a way to support themselves or their families. No one ever compensated this group in any way.
The result was a generation of unemployed American workers furious with the American elite, creating a wave of anger that led to a Donald Trump presidency and our current political dysfunction. Now, we are facing another mass displacement. We have an opportunity to right a previous wrong or allow the consequences to sink our country further into chaos.
Yang writes, “I remember the moment it finally sank in completely. I was reading a CNN article that detailed how automation had eliminated millions of manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2015, four times more than globalization.” Yep—that’s the holy shit moment. Think of all the anger, restlessness, and hostility that emerged in the aftermath of globalization. Automation has already quadrupled the same input, and there’s plenty more to come.
Capitalism incentivizes the completion of tasks (providing goods and services), not the employment of people. So, capitalists find the cheapest and most efficient way to complete tasks. In many cases, they now have cheaper and more efficient ways to complete tasks than employing workers.
This setup is effective because work is required for humanity to survive. We need people to farm, distribute, and sell our food. We need people to build our shelter and provide us with information. Once the basics are covered, capitalism incentivizes products and services that increase the quality of life—travel, entertainment, additional socialization. We reward those who complete these tasks and allow society to function.
A capitalist society compensates people for (1) creating and owning productive capital and (2) completing tasks with that capital. The owner of productive capital can earn money through completing tasks or hire workers to do the work for him. Slowly but surely, automation is becoming able to complete more and more tasks without the help of a human worker.
Automation means fewer workers can complete more tasks and therefore generate more wealth. But the wealth will go entirely to the owners of the productive capital. This leads to massive inequality, which then exacerbates the problems mentioned in The Spirit Level.
In a capitalist system, work is required for survival. Without opportunities for employment or ownership of productive capital, families face immense suffering. This was intentional. We needed people to work for society to function. But, if work is no longer required, we need a new system, or things will get very bad very quickly.
As a solution, Yang recommends a universal basic income whereby part of the wealth accumulated from automation is distributed evenly throughout society. This would still allow incentives for productive work when and where it is needed. But, it would eliminate the most desperate aspects of inequality.
This would address the inequality problems laid out in the Spirit Level because the lower tiers in society could live a life that’s bearable. You can stand to temporarily have your social status lowered because catastrophe will not immediately befall you. Still, what the hell will people do all day?
Breaking up with Work
Yang wrote, “Whether work is good for humans depends a bit on your point of view. We don’t like it and we’re almost certainly getting too much of it. But we don’t know what to do with ourselves without it. Oscar Wilde wrote, “Work is the refuge of people. Who have nothing better to do.” Unfortunately, that may describe the vast majority of us. The challenge we must overcome is that humans need work more than work needs us.”
Capitalism has allowed us to defeat the eternal death grip of nature. We rewarded those who did the work we needed and punished those who did not. We’ve almost tricked ourselves into believing that our lives should be worked away. They shouldn’t be. Our system was only set up that way because there was an infinite amount of work to do. That may no longer be the case soon, and, if so, we need a system. We may even need a new view of what it means to be human.
Instead of employing people, we need to look through the lens of problem-solving. Soon, our things can get from place to place without people truck drivers their lives to doing so. But, of course, another problem emerges, how do we ensure that the former truck drivers still have resources? They used to be paid for doing so and therefore incentivized to work. But, that was because we needed them to work. Now, we longer need them, but we can’t leave them out to dry. Globalization has already shown us that callousness comes back to bite.
