English riots and Income Equality

This is from the Equality Trust, giving evidence for inequality as one causal component of the recent riots:


* Levels of crime and violence are strongly linked to inequality – see our recent Research Digest # 1.

* The UK has very low levels of trust – barely 1 in 3 of us thinks that “most other people can be trusted”.

* Low levels of trust undermine community cohesion and produce low levels of social capital (social interaction) which is a breeding ground for mistrust, misunderstanding and antagonism.

* High levels of health and social problems, more common in poorer communities anyway, are further exacerbated by inequality leading to desperation in some people.

* According to UNICEF, the UK is one of the worst places in the developed world to be a child or teenager.

* Inequality encourages status competition and a “me first” approach to life which can be witnessed across society – from bankers to MPs to looters.

* Greater equality would improve the overall quality of social relations in the UK and reduce the chances of a repeat of the riots.

Christopher Snowdon's use of ex-Soviet countries

There is a debate over at Prospect on the Spirit Level thesis that a more equal society is better for everyone.  W&P are the proponents, Christopher Snowdon is one of the opponents.

My 2p:


Snowdon objects that W&P's method "relies on comparing whole countries, a notoriously unreliable method which leaves unlimited scope for misinterpretation". However, he uses this method in his book, adding in three countries, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Hungary, which has the desired effect of reducing or inverting the gradient in W&Ps results.

Clearly, there are many factors which go to generate the data that any one country will display. Overall wealth, culture, traditional social bonds, climate, ethnic mix, pollution levels and politics; these are a few that come to mind. Considering these many factors makes it all the more remarkable that W&P have produced so many clear correlations between inequality and health. They mention in TSL that the multifactorial nature generates the wide scatter on so many graphs. If we had a reliable means of weighting these factors, producing an index of income equality modified by other variables, the scatter might be reduced.

The effect of Snowdon's introducing the trio of ex-Soviet countries is interesting. Although more equal, they tend to score higher with some social problems, which suggests that there are special factors associated with the rigid political system that they are emerging from. Communism may have produced income equality, but there was a huge inequality of political power between the people and the Party, and Marmot's work suggests that this would produce health problems.

Having read W&P and Snowdon, I am confident that W&P's thesis is robust, but capable of adapting to and incorporating some of the dimensions that Snowdon's book suggests - once they have been supported by serious research.

More

Spirit Level: Christopher Snowdon's fundamental delusion

I am reading The Spirit Level Delusion  (TSLD), which is a critique of The Spirit Level. Wilkinson and Pickett (W&P) have responded to TSLD here (.pdf), but I will be responding to my reading in the next few blogs.

The author Christopher Snowdon is an historian, working with the Democracy Institute, which is associated with the right-wing Cato Institute, a libertarian free-market group who are man-made global warming sceptics.

I'm going to start in the middle of TSLD, with the chapter on economic growth. He attacks not just Wilkinson and Pickett (W&P), authors of the Spirit Level, but also books by Oliver James (Affluenza) Naomi Klein, Richard Layard, Michael Marmot and Neal Lawson.

Snowdon's basic position is to criticise their position on consumerism, arguing that to try to reduce people's level of consumption is (a) anti-freedom and (b) politically impossible. He presents anti-consumerism as hypocritical and envy-driven, suggesting that its motivation is simply the desire for a Big Government and Big State, and taxation for its own sake.

Remarkably, Snowdon makes no mention of the root problem of perpetual economic growth as a precondition of economic prosperity. So let's state it clearly and unambiguously in terms of two self-evident truths:

1. It is impossible to expand forever into a finite space
2. It is impossible to take forever from a finite resource.

The dogma of the necessity and rightness of perpetual economic growth violates these two axioms. Greens have been saying this for some 40 years, and have been rewarded with either ignoral or general derision from orthodox commentators, although recently, two respected economists have murmured that humanity should start reconsidering the logic of perpetual economic growth. 

The doctrine of economic growth is relatively recent, as shown by Richard Douthwaite in The Growth  Illusion.  It should be noted that continual growth is also required to sustain a Ponzi Scheme.

To be precise, it is the growth in throughput of materials that is impossible - the economic hardware, as it were. A perpetual growth in economic software, such as knowledge, ideas, and culture is theortically possible in a finite planet, and at present we are in the happy position of being able to use Green Growth as a means of making a transition from the present unsustainable economy to the truly steady state economy that is the only reasonable objective of economics.

The modern economy is a linear process that hoovers up materials, fashions them into consumables, then spits them out as waste. We mine metals, minerals, and fossil fuels, use them for a short time and then emit mountains of plastic, metals and toxic compounds. This is stupid enough, but the crowning glory of our folly is to destroy intrinsically renewable resources, such as fisheries, forests and soil. Forty years of study have detailed our actions in destroying the biological systems which sustain our present way of life, and I do not need to review the depressing facts here. We only need to note that free market fundamentalists (FMFs) (aka neo-liberals - a term that some may consider unfair to liberty) in general, and Snowdon in particular simply turn a blind eye to these facts. They are mere market externalities  - "A consequence of an economic activity that is experienced by unrelated third parties."   - to FMFs.

It is this huge, all encompassing blindness to the real world beyond the narrow consideration of the "Market" that underlies the clash between the FMFs  and the new economics, the emerging way of looking at economics that is known by many names: new, green, ecological and even post-autistic.

FMF is an idealism, a pure, fact-free thought construct that insists that happiness can come only if the market is left alone, free of regulation and free of any information about negative externalities. Is there any wonder that it clashes with the new green economics that begins with consideration of the living biological system that provides our water, food, shelter, energy and absorbs (or not, as the case may be) our wastes?


Snowdon is totally and absolutely wrong to ignore the realities that lie behind the critique of economic growth. 

Having said that, some of his criticisms of W&P's are interesting, and add to our fuller understanding of the impact of economics on human societal and individual well-being, as later entries on this blog will detail.

Spirit Level: new Fischer yawns in the Boston Review

David Aaronovitch tweets approvingly of this review of the Spirit Level in the Boston review. The reviewer, Claude S Fishcer, is a sociologist, and is vaguely critical of the thesis that equality is better for social functioning.

He starts by setting up a straw man - if we exiled the richest 5% of a country, the level of social functioning would improve. Nuff said.

Next, the criticises Wilkinson&Pickett's (W&P) chosen indicator - income. There are other measures of wealth, and he mentions capital ownership and consumption  patterns, which might produce different results. OK, but income inequality is what W+P have been studying, and what this book and its thesis is about. If people think distribution of possessions would produce a different picture, let them amass evidence for this point of view.

Fischer points out that suicide rates and births outside of marriage are inversely proportional to inequality. W+P are not suggesting that all social problems (assuming for a moment that unmarried mothers are such a problem) are related to inequality - only the ones for which they find positive evidence. Which are quite enough.

Fischer disses W+P's explanation of suicide rates - that in unequal societies people project their status anxiety outward, blame others rather than themselves, and thus end up killing others rather than themselves, but suicide rates also go down in times of war, which tends to back them up.  As a sociologist, Fischer should have remembered this.

His next objection is remarkable. He complains that average rates of outcomes hide the fact that individuals within nations may buck the trend. Although the average Japanese life span is longer than the average US citizen, some US peeps may live longer than some Japanese. Well, and the Pope is a Catholic.

Here's a more valid criticism, which I will throw in : recently we find that some long-lived Japanese are only living longer virtual  lives, for social security purposes, and that their physical bodies have signed off years ago. A critic will seize on this as a crowning objection; a scientist will see it as just a cause for another necessary adjustment to the dataset.



Fischer's next objection is more interesting. Other equality sceptics have asserted that the observed differences are racial, and that the more equal and more healthy Scandinavian societies are perhaps genetically predestined to be more equal and healthy. He points out that the international differences between healthy Nordic cultures and unhealthy Anglo-Saxon cultures is also reflected in the US state pattern, with Nordic Minnesota being more healthy than Anglo-settled states.


Tellingly, he says: The Nordic-British contrast also corresponds to the difference between social democratic and neoliberal states, which can confuse cause and effect even more. Is there something about the Nordic region’s history or culture that leads those nations to be welfare states, relatively equal, and healthy, and something about Anglo-Saxon history or culture that does the opposite—with varying levels of inequality being simply a byproduct? 

Is there Something Else? Please? Any explanation will do, except the idea that more social democracy type equality is good for people?

W&P back the claim that the correlation is causal with several lines of evidence, two relating to developments over time. After WWII, Japan was unequal and unhealthy, the US was more equal and more healthy.  Over time, those positions have reversed. Secondly (and Fischer has the grace to air this) after the reunification of Germany, East Germans, moving into a more unequal society, developed some of the problems that W&P would predict.

Fischer counters with a fall in US homicides over a period when inequality increased. Fair enough. Social affairs are complex, multifactorial things, and Fischer acknowledges that inequality plays a part in social problems; he just wants it to be less than W&P would have.

Finally, he takes W&P to task for not setting out their plan for remediation of inequality, apart from their endorsement of workers cooperatives. W&P make no claim for setting out a full political programme. Unlike some.  It is the job of politicians to pick up the equality issue and develop economic policies designed to reduce the Rich Poor Gap.  The Green Party is on the case (though we still need to adopt the Green Wage Subsidy) 

David Aaronovitch's tweet that led me to this read: "Excellent centre-left US critique of The Spirit Level here - http://bit.ly/bbNpXv Not the basket where the Mili-eggs should be put." 

Clearly, he wants Labour to avoid any commitment to equality. He needn't worry. Milliband D is going to win the Labour leadership, and carry on the tattered, bloodstained banner of NuLabour. But the Green Party will continue to pursue economic policies that tend to greater equality and therefore greater social cohesion and health.

What strikes me is the central robustness of the Spirit Level thesis. We must expect attacks from the Right, because it threatens their core ideology. I find the objections from the centre left, both from the Rawlsians on openDemocracy, and now from sociologist Fischer, both puzzling and illuminating. Puzzling because they do not accept it as a seminal new addition to the field. Illuminating because it suggests the central problem with centre-left intellectuals. They are suffering from cognitive sclerosis. 

Spirit Level : John Rawls, relative poverty and so much the worse for the facts

Over at openDemocracy, there is a debate about John Rawls and the idea that inequality causes social and health problems.


My 2p:

If we accept for the sake of argument that Wilkinson&Pickett's thesis about equality is correct (which is a good bet as things stand - the criticisms have been  pretty underwhelming), the next step is to look for a plausible causal pathway.

Kate Pickett suggested in a talk at the Green Party Conference that the phenomon might be rooted in the time we spent as tribes. Tribal economies are based on sharing - hunters hunt, gatherers gather, and in the evening, there is a communal meal. Equality, sharing even , comes naurally to us.

Let's take things a bit further. Imagine Tribe A rubbing along as above, who suddenly they find themselves dominated by a more powerful Tribe B, who live among them, albeit a little apart, with more and beter food, and in much larger tents.

Tribe A is going to be in a perpetual state of stress, secreting more cortisol among other things. This might provide a clue to the observed health effects, and at least some of the social effects.

Marmot's findings about the health of civil servants meshes in with this idea that it is the relative positions of rich and poor which is the operative factor. It's a relationship. We are part of a system.

So, whatever the correct interpretation may be of Rawls' idea, the weight of evidence points to the desirability of reducing inequality.

The point was made:  "Rawls makes a moral proposition. No empirical data can prove it "wrong"."  That reminds me of the don, who, on being told "The facts are otherwise" responded with "So much the worse for the facts".

Spirit Level: the causation question

One of the common objections of consrevatives to Wilkinson and Pickett's book, the Spirit Level, which provides evidence that  more economic equality is better for a society, is to accept that they have found a correlation, but that does not prove causation.

Of course, "proof" does not happen in science, it is a matter of pattern recognition, but there is a body of evidence to back up W+P, and nothing (afaik) to back the argument that the arrow of causation runs the other way, that social problems cause economic inequality.


Several lines of argument that inequality leads to social dysfunction rather than the reverse. One of the clearest is the history of the US and Japan since WWII. In 1946 the US was more equal than Japan, and head better health. These positions are now reversed.

There are other lines of argument which support this view, not least primate experiments where social status is changed and material conditions do not.

I do not know of any studies which have supported the view of reverse causation.

Equality - the truth will out

Well, I went to Lunnon yesterday. Pleased to note that there are Keep Left signs on the stairs at Bristol Temple Meads and Paddington. The train was 45 mins late, thanks to the wrong kind of idiot on the line, so I only got 30 mins of the Spirit Level Debate at the RSA  on the thesis that social problems are less in less unequal societies.

I read up the free-market fundamentalist (FMF) critique of Wilkinson and Pickett's thesis on the train. Their methodology is interesting; they remove data that does not fit their case, that is, the data from the USA (extreme inequality, extreme social problems) and data from the most equal countries (Scandinavia and Japan). This mostly removes the significance of Wilkinson+Pickett's findings - though, interestingly, they cannot refute the case that infant mortality is worse in unequal countries.

The critics do provide a valuable service in testing the robustness (?robustiosity?) of W/P's statistics, and WP will present a full defence soon. It is interesting that the critique was not done at the time of peer-review, nor after publication, which just goes to show that the scientific process is not perfect.

My 2p worth at this stage is this: the critics are OK to pick up on the fact that the US is an "outlier" in the data set, but it is not on simply to remove the US data. It would make more sense to moderate the US data, bringing it within the boundaries of statistical probability.

The other thing is that it is outrageous to claim, as the FMFs do, that Scandinavians and Japanese are genetically and/or culturally different from Anglo-Saxons, and therefore can be removed. For them to do this, they need to present some pretty good genetic or sociological evidence. In fact, we share a lot of genes and cultural heritage with the Scandinavians.

So the debate will, rightly, go on apace, and I am confident that we will win. The position is that the advocates of Free Market Fundamentalism are waging war against science on two fronts - climate and now sociology. They are bound to lose, just as the religious fundamentalists lost the battle against evolutionary science in the 19th century. The problem is that while we have science on our side, they have loadsamoney on their side, and loadsamoney buys politicians and publc opinion, through the mass media.

In the end the truth will out.


Good review of the other evidence on equality here.

The Spirit Level debate next week - the key debate of our times.

I've just reserved my place at the Spirit Level RSA debate next Thursday 22 July 1300. It is in London, but I don't care, it's worth it, because it is between the scientist who have amassed a vast body of evidence to support the idea that equality is good for human beings, and 2 free market neo-liberal conservatives who believe that it is perfectly OK for some people to make more money in a week than other people make in a whole lifetime.

This divergence is the most important philosophical issue of our time - indeed all time. The first question in Judaean mythology comes from the fratricidal  Cain, who asked "Am I my brother's keeper?" Should humans act primarily out of self interest, or are we social animals?

Ethics and religion all agree that we should treat others as we would have them treat us. The scientific point of view is that we are social animals. The science of global warming indicates that humanity has to act as a co-operative community to avoid ecological and economic catastrophe. Wilkinson and Pickett have gathered objective evidence that we are better off if our economics recognises that there is  such a thing as society.

This is a pretty strong coalition. Against it we have an even stronger collection of special interest - the aforementioned cabal of individualists, whose political philosophy rejects the notion of society. These individualists are very rich, and control the majority of the mainstream media and through that, public opinion. They are able to keep the public in ignorance of the merits of greater equality, and give prominence of the arguments of the inegalitarians.

So this is a critical debate. Watch out for the results next Friday.

Equality - dare we hope for an increase?

Letter to my MP. Please feel free to copy and paste to your own MP.  This is the key question for any Government from now on.
You can use www.TheyWorkForYou.com

John Penrose MP
Minister for Tourism
House of Commons
SW1A0AA

Dear John

First, belated congratulations on your re-election, and becoming Minister for Tourism.

You may remember our discussing the work of Wilkinson and Pickett, published in the Spirit Level, http://bit.ly/djB4rn .
It shows an impressive and convincing array of evidence that income equality is associated with a more healthy society. Physical health, mental health, obesity, teenage pregnancies, child welfare, drug use, educational attainment, imprisonment rates, violence and social trust all show up as better in nations where there is a smaller gap between rich and poor.

As you know, the Labour Government’s record in inequality was poor, with a slight trend towards equality, defeated with a sharp up-tick in inequality since 2008.

I note that “Fairness” is one of the three main values nailed to the masthead of the Government.  I hope that this aspiration will translate into the hard currency of a trend towards increased income equality.

I would like to ask you therefore whether or not it is the clear intention of the Coalition Government to increase equality in its years in power?

Thank you for taking the trouble to clarify this point.


Kind regards

Richard

Let us press the new Government on equality

OK, so we have a new coalition Government. The time of mourning, and of mutterings about a marriage of convenience &c is passed. If we want PR, we have to get used to coalition governments, and we must optimistically hope that the LibDem influence, and Cameron's aspiration to have taken the "nasty" out of the Nasty Party, will overcome the Tories' innate inclination to favour the rich and clamp down on the poor.

Cameron wants a Big Society. For that to mean anything at all, it means increasing equality. To their everlasting shame, NuLabour failed to do this. It will be a challenge to get the Conservatives to do this, but they are in coalition with the LibDems who do understand the importance of equality (for instance, in taking those below £10,000 out of income tax). Now, while they are fresh, is the time for us to press David Cameron and perhaps Ian Duncan Smith (Dept of Work and Pensions) to give a clear and unequivocal undertaking to increase income equality in our country their term of office.

Paltry Conservative attacks on the science of social equality

I have been debating green economics with a libertarian (Nikhil) on the Tory Attack post. I'd rather be debating with a Conservative Party economist, but the libertarian seems to be a reasonable proxy for their position.

The critical issue of difference is over the evidence that more equal societies are more healthy societies.

Nikhil points me to this "refutation" of the Spirit Level by exiled UKIP (or possibly ex-UKIP, they seem to have a short residence time) blogger Tim Worstall.

His arguments:
1 In three cases, social hierarchies, not economic hierarchies, cause the problems.
This relies on the doubtful assumption that economic status does not affect social status.

2 Some races are more egalitarian than others. Swedes are an egalitarian race, Brits are not. So Swedes  are a more egalitarian and happy society, and incidentally accept the taxation rates that allow economic reality.

Blimey.

To be fair, Worstall adds: "I don't insist that this is true of course, merely propose it as an alternative explanation."
Er, yes, exactly, Tim.

3 Even if we made Britain more equitable, British class structure would still keep us in our present position of misery, so there's no point in trying.

Blimey again. 
Is this the best they can do, in dealing with a whole succession of strong scientific evidence showing a positive correlation between inequality and social breakdown? He advances a couple of wild guesses, and thinks that is sufficient to negate years of patient scientific work. He does not have to design and work on experiments to test his hypotheses.

A second right-wing think tank blog challenges the evidence for a link between life expectancy and inequality beyond the 5% level of statistical significance. Using methods that are eerily reminiscent of climate change deniers, the "Super-Economy" site infers from one case that the whole Spirit Level case is dismissed.

I will not divert into the intricacies of this here and now, but just point out that even if there should prove to be no correlation between life expectancy, "infant mortality, low birth weight and self-rated health have repeatedly been shown to be worse in more unequal societies". (Kate Pickett).


So the Conservatives think-tanks are going to have to get busy, nit-picking the entire body of evidence that Wilkinson and Pickett have assembled. Sadly, they have the resources to do it, and the media outlets and contacts to megaphone their opinions on the matter.

In the meantime, it is the job of serious politicians to work on the problem of creating a more equitable economy and society.

Tory Manifesto - one good leg, not enough for role of Tarzan

(Many thanks to Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (both in Heaven now, or somewhere) for the laff)

I did not manage to look at the Conservative Manifesto yesterday - the call of the Sunlit Wild was too strong -  but I saw well enough from the news what poor Dave would be about. Local control, strengthening the power of the local community, personal empowerment. And it is all good.

Yes, I'll say that again. Dave has a bunch of good initiatives here. He has lifted a great slab of stuff from the Green Party's Manifesto for a Sustainable Society, (now renamed as Policies for a Sustainable Society) and made it his own. Never let it be said that Green Party policies never get implemented - they do. Commentators say other parties are stealing our clothes. That's fine. Our clothes are there to be stolen.

So I like the Conservative agenda. It is a good left leg to stand on. As soon as they came in with it I thought, "That is a perfectly good leg". I have nothing to hold against against their communitarian policies.The trouble is, neither do they, as we will see in a minute.

Of course, what I have just said is highly controversial. The orthodox method of conducting electoral politics is the Knee-Jerk Refutation. Other parties, and commentators from Jeremy Paxman downwards, all do it. Politician A says Black, Politician or commentator B says white. It is like conducting a conversation with a sulky teenager. We psychiatrists have a word for it: oppositional or negativistic behaviour. It is probably an identity-formation ploy. That is one of the reasons that people are turned off by the election process.

So, fair play to the Tories for putting forward their little ideas for strengthening social cohesion. It is attractive, even though unfunded, and little problems such as a tendency to rule by the retireocracy.

But. BUT. There is a great big But. The Tory plan is doomed to failure because their economic policies will increase the RPG - the Rich Poor Gap.  How do we know this? Because they are Tories. That's what they do.  Charlotte Vere, the Tory candidate standing against Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party, put it in these terms: "We will not throw money at the problem of poverty". Words to that effect.

Wilkinson and Pickett in their revelatory, revolutionary work the Spirit Level , show that all social problems they have measured, sole exception of suicide, are worse in more unequal economies. So if Dave wants to mend our Broken Society, he will have to lower the RGP that free-market anglo-saxon economics is aiming at the community bus.  And he cannot do that, because it is against Tory "Principles".

Sorry, must dash.

The Spirit Level: get one now, and get busy sorting out Broken Britain.

Inequality, the Rich-Poor Gap (RPG), is a weapon of mass destruction aimed at the heart of civil society.

In their book The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett demonstrate with good, hard statistical evidence that countries with greater divergence between rich and poor have worse outcomes for social and medical problems than countries where the divergence between rich and poor is not so wide. The Spirit Level is a seminal book, a standard that can draw all progressives together. It is evidence based, solid scientific evidence, evidence that appears as pictures, and so is accessible to ordinary people. It is also an easy book to read. 

It is very clear that to ameliorate a whole slew of social and medical problems (I nearly said "all", but that would seem too good to be true), we need to reduce the RPG.  

Here is a list of problems associated with increased inequality:

• Mental illness
• Poor child health, infant mortality
• Poor educational performance
• Obesity
• Teenage pregnancy
• Drug abuse
• Poor social mobility
• Low levels of community trust
• Violence and homicide
• Imprisonment rates
  
  All worse in unequal societies. 

So the question is, how do we achieve greater equality in a society?  Your average politician will come back with "Progressive Taxation". Well, OK. Except it doesn't work on its own. We are dealing with a system here, and systems require multiple inputs.

Here is my start-up list, off the top of my head, and in no particular order.

1 Citizen's Income, introduced by means of the Green Wage Subsidy.
2 Community spaces and community workers.
3 Government issued Quantitative Easing-type grants, zero- or low-interest loans to sound investment projects for the Green New Deal.
4 Progressive taxation
5 Robin Hood Transaction Taxes
6 Close tax loopholes used by rich individuals and corporations
7 Abolish tax havens.
8 End the monopoly of banks on money creation
9 Internalise all environmental and social costs caused by multinationals (that is, make them pay for the damage they cause)
10 Put a legal limit on the ratio between the pay of the best and worst paid employees that a company may pay.
11 Tradeable Carbon Quotas

Adam Ramsey suggests these measures also:
11) breaking up the banks (starting with the publicly owned RBS, mutualising the retail functions (giving everyone in the UK a share), and turning the project finance asset finance sections into publicly owned green/social investment banks.

12) change public procurement to processes to count co-operative/mutual ownership as a social good under the 2003 EU public procurement directive, and build consideration of this into the public procurement rules.

13) End the private finance initiative, and replace it with models of public public partnership similar to that used by Stockholm water, where public assets are owned through a combination of the municipality, the users, and the state.

14) introduce tougher monopoly laws, breaking up the major supermarkets and other monopolistic companies.

15) Extend the Land Reform (Scotland) act to the whole of the UK, including urban areas, granting communities the right to buy potential community assets.

I'm not absolutely convinced at first glance that these will all directly increase equality, but it is better to be inclusive than exclusive.


The key change would be to take away from the corporations their monopoly to create new money, and to assert the right of the people, through the Bank of England, to issue money to projects that will produce renewable energy.

Any more?

Add a comment if you think I have left something out.
More important - buy and read the book. And Join the Equality Trust.


Maybe it is because of the Spirit Level that three of the four main political parties in Britain have "fairness" in their election slogan. The Fourth, the one that doesn't have "fairness" as a slogan is of course the Conservatives, prefer vacuity, but even they have spoken of Broken Britain. So they know there is something wrong, but they are unaware of the Spirit Level, or if they are, it is unacceptable to their corporate sponsors, so they are waiting until a free market solution to inequality shows up. Be a long wait.