Globalisation:Taxpayers' Alliance: Impact of the Taxpayers' Alliance

Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s book, ‘The Spirit Level’, presents the argument that income inequality is the cause of all social problems such as: murder; obesity; teenage pregnancy; and depression. The authors also take the argument beyond this, going further to suggest that inequality even limits life expectancy itself. The book, which concludes that either taxes must rise on the rich or their incomes must fall to increase equality, received an overwhelming level of cross-party support .

Despite this conclusion, the Taxpayers Alliance, whose flagship ideology is for the campaign of lower taxes and lower spending, issued a report to oppose the ideas put forth in the Spirit Level . Their report argues that ‘the Spirit Level makes the claim that life expectancy; mortality and health in industrial societies are heavily impacted by stress caused by income inequality…however, using international standard statistics regarding income distribution, life expectancy and health from the UN, OECD and WHO, it is difficult to support the claims made regarding international health and mortality comparisons in The Spirit Level’. In addition, they argue that ‘all empirical assertions and descriptions of the state of science made in The Spirit Level should therefore be treated with caution and the other claims in the book require careful scrutiny’. The TPA research director, Matthew Sinclair criticised the book, by arguing that "on almost no measure does the central claim of the Spirit Level, that income inequality decreases life expectancy, stand up to scrutiny," .

Moreover, the Policy Exchange, often described as Cameron's favourite think-tank, produced its own report: ‘Beware False Prophets’. Its author, sociologist Peter Saunders, said The Spirit Level could "contaminate an important area of political debate with wonky statistics and spurious correlations ... Very little of Wilkinson and Pickett's statistical evidence actually stands up, and their causal argument is full of holes" . Despite the timing and findings of both the TPA and the Policy Exchange reports, the Taxpayers Alliance denies acting in alliance with the Policy Exchange.

Richard Wilkinson responded that: "It is now something for the left and we would rather have avoided that. People on the right will feel relieved knowing they don't have to treat this seriously and will be happy to know it has been rubbished." .

Notes

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