Ho-hum, another engrossing, anthologizable, perfectly true article by Theodore Dalrymple, a.k.a. Anthony Daniels. How many of them does he write, two a week? This article is about Britain’s National Health Service and public attitudes toward it. A paragraph reminded me strongly of “the income gap.” You remember our old friend the income gap. I grew up in its religion.
“The gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider!” they said. And they, of course, blamed Ronald Reagan. They should have blamed rising universal prosperity — and the laws of economics. And of math. Let’s say that one man makes $20,000 a year and another man $100,000. Now double their incomes. You’ve got the poorer man making $40,000 and the richer man $200,000.
You’re a wicked person, don’t you see? Sure, the poorer man is making twice as much money as before, but you’ve doubled the income gap. And that is appalling, unacceptable. Margaret Thatcher memorably addressed this issue in Parliament. You can see it in a popular YouTube video. The hand gestures she makes are some of the most famous hand gestures in political history — right up there with Rocky’s bird.
Anyway, I thought of all this when reading Dr. D. (it’s “D” either way):
. . . equality in health is not necessarily desirable in itself. Suppose that the infant-mortality rate in the highest social class is three per 1,000 live births, while that in the lowest is six per 1,000 (approximately the case in Britain today). Then suppose that we could reduce the rate by one death per 1,000 births in each social class, yielding two per 1,000 in the highest class and five per 1,000 in the lowest. A cause for rejoicing, certainly — but not from the point of view of equality, for the ratio of deaths in the lowest class to deaths in the highest class would widen from 6:3 to 5:2 — that is, from 2.0 to 2.5. Surely, however, only a latter-day Lenin would reject such an improvement because it increased inequality. Similarly, an increase in the infant-mortality rate of the highest social class, to six per 1,000, would represent an advance to complete equality; but again, no one but a Lenin would wish it.
I have known many “latter-day Lenins” in my life. All too many. You?