The authors quash myths and misconceptions about the notion of meritocracy ... Although numerous charts and graphs interspersed throughout a heavily referenced discussion can make for a slow reading experience, the message is clear and critically important: embrace egalitarianism—for better health and quality of life.
Much of the heavy lifting of analysis and argument has already been done in the previous book [The Spirit Level], and this one contains more opinion, speculation and arguable interpretation of evidence, as the authors wander off briefly into different fields of inquiry ... For all the power of the book’s data and charts the reader may remain unconvinced that inequality explains everything bad, and greater equality explains everything good, about happiness levels in different countries ... But, the authors argue, capitalism also needs to be overthrown because climate change demands a social revolution ... this nice rhetoric is a bit woolly, and short on persuasive details of how a zero-carbon, zero-growth nirvana may be achieved.
The Inner Level is not a page-turner in the usual sense. But it holds readers’ attention by elaborating a phenomenon most will already have observed, and by providing an explanation for the dysfunction they see around them, from the brazen disregard for rules among many corporate and political leaders to the nihilism of drug addicts and school-shooters. And yet the idea that inequality alone is responsible for all this, and that reducing inequality will solve it, does not in the end convince. That is partly because the authors are not always as circumspect with their evidence as they should be ... Reversing the cycle of institutional fraying, gaping inequality and mental distress seems likely to require a much broader civic rejuvenation.
The Spirit Level relied on a succession of dubious scatterplots for evidence. The Inner Level has no shortage of similar graphs, but is more focused on explaining how inequality is supposed to cause so many problems ... if you have your doubts about whether 'shyness' and 'party anxiety' are bona fide mental disorders, you will want some evidence. Or, at least, a coherent argument. The problem is that Wilkinson and Pickett are not very good at laying one out. Unable to see a tangent without going off on it, they fill the book with mini-essays about everything ... Through a one-sided interpretation of cherry-picked evidence, they paint an unremittingly gloomy picture of life in 'less equal' nations.
While they painstakingly present evidence of correlation between, for example, mass shootings or bullying and higher income inequality (or better well-being and more equality), their assertions about causation are more speculative. They also take something of a kitchen-sink approach, devoting entire chapters to ideas tangential to the main thesis ... Though stylistically somewhat dry, with an academic slant toward statistics rather than illustrative anecdotes, this book will strongly appeal to readers interested in well-being, equality, or both.
Making a strong case that 'inequality is divisive and socially corrosive,' the authors assert that greater equality and environmental sustainability can be achieved ... A cogent, well-supported analysis and hopeful, if idealistic, suggestion for change.
