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A review by erintby
The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die by Keith Payne
3.0
This is worth the read as a quick, accessible primer on inequality. Payne provides an overview of many fascinating studies about how inequality affects individuals and society, showing that high levels of inequality are related to high levels of polarization, racial prejudice, unhappiness, and more. Extreme economic inequality is a common denominator for so many public policy issues, including education, health, crime, and housing.
There were even some fascinating studies that show that liberals and conservatives may have more in common than it's easy to think. As one example, in Chapter 9, I learned that when surveyed, people thought CEOs should ideally only be paid between 4-5 times the average worker; liberals leaned closer to 4 times, conservatives closer to 5 times. Participants estimated that in fact CEOs are paid around 30 times more, revealing gross ignorance of the much larger actual ratio of CEO to worker pay of 350:1.
Overall, I agree with Payne's conclusion that income inequality in the US should be treated like a public health issue, as this fits nicely into the medical anthropology perspective that I have. Yet, throughout the book, Payne tries to find common ground between theories of poverty that emphasize behavior and that emphasize environment. There is definitely a feedback loop between the two, and while I agree with most of what he says, I do feel like for as much as he discusses how poverty changes behavior, he doesn't spend enough time exploring how poverty constrains agency. This could be explained by looking at David Brady's (2019) article "Theories of the Causes of Poverty"... it seems to me that Payne discusses behaviorist and structuralist theories but doesn't spend enough time illustrating the difference between what Brady calls structuralist and political theories.
There were even some fascinating studies that show that liberals and conservatives may have more in common than it's easy to think. As one example, in Chapter 9, I learned that when surveyed, people thought CEOs should ideally only be paid between 4-5 times the average worker; liberals leaned closer to 4 times, conservatives closer to 5 times. Participants estimated that in fact CEOs are paid around 30 times more, revealing gross ignorance of the much larger actual ratio of CEO to worker pay of 350:1.
Overall, I agree with Payne's conclusion that income inequality in the US should be treated like a public health issue, as this fits nicely into the medical anthropology perspective that I have. Yet, throughout the book, Payne tries to find common ground between theories of poverty that emphasize behavior and that emphasize environment. There is definitely a feedback loop between the two, and while I agree with most of what he says, I do feel like for as much as he discusses how poverty changes behavior, he doesn't spend enough time exploring how poverty constrains agency. This could be explained by looking at David Brady's (2019) article "Theories of the Causes of Poverty"... it seems to me that Payne discusses behaviorist and structuralist theories but doesn't spend enough time illustrating the difference between what Brady calls structuralist and political theories.