Even Monkeys Know Inequity Is Wrong

You cannot use the gross domestic product (GDP) as a barometer of how a country is doing as a whole, and the well being of the people. The GDP deals in averages and aggregates. Aggregates hide the nuances of inequality, which is one of its prime faults. The GDP looks at the stock market and unemployment to gauge what is good or bad, but unemployment, which is currently at 4.1 percent is not a true number as many people are working at gig jobs and being paid in cash just to survive while hoping for a full-time job with healthcare and a pension, which by today’s standards are a pipe dream. Ten years ago, the French president Nicolas Sarkozy wrote that the gap between reported well-being and people’s lives experience was creating a gulf of incomprehension between the expert certain his knowledge and the citizen whose experience of life is completely out of sync with the story told by data of the GDP. The gulf, Sarkozy put into words, summarizes the anger that is currently tearing so many societies apart is dangerous because the citizens end up believing that they are being deceived. Nothing is more destructive to a democracy as when its people lose trust in it. One might read about the experiment involving the capuchin monkeys and inequity. Two monkeys were in cages next to each other and given treats. The scientist gave one monkey a better treat than the second monkey, the second monkey, feeling violated, became irritated with the scientist and the inequality in treats. The monkeys sense of fairness supports the evolution of humans and our reactions to the violation of cooperation between our efforts on a job and the payoffs for our efforts. Wages have not kept up with inflation. The minimum wage, had it kept up, would be around $22 to $24 an hour today. With fewer jobs, we should be looking at new ways to support our capitalist system, like the universal basic income, Medicare for all, and free education, like the old G.I. Bill. To see a GDP looking good does not tell the true story. The GDP is out of date. It was invented in the U.S. in the 1930s, and even then some like Simon Kuznets, a Belarusian-American economist, had doubts about using the GDP when they counted financial speculation and armaments as positive outputs. Those are not the services that dominate a modern economy. It is the inequality that must be fixed or democracy will go away and replaces by what?Even Monkeys Knoe Inequality Is Wrong