Chapter 3: From Selfish
Capitalism To Materialism To Distress
At the end of the 1970s, the governments of the USA and Britain broke with the Keynesian consensus which had dominated since the war and adopted neoliberal policies – what was called Thatcherism and Reaganomics, and what I term Selfish Capitalism. Eventually, it prevailed in the other English-speaking nations as well. Although some Selfish Capitalist elements were adopted by some mainland Western European nations, they remained largely Unselfish Capitalist in form. This difference, I maintain, explains why one set of countries (the English-speaking) has twice the prevalence of distress of the other (mainland Western Europe). Above all, Selfish Capitalism engenders distress through the pressure it places on citizens to be materialistic, although it distresses in many other ways as well.
3.1. Defining Selfish Capitalism
Selfish Capitalism is a form of political economy that has four defining features. The first is that the success of a company is judged largely by its current share price, rather than by its underlying strength or its contribution to the society or economy. The second is a strong drive to privatise collective goods, such as water, gas and electrical utilities. The third is minimal regulation of financial services and labour markets, including the introduction of working practices that strongly favour employers and disfavour trade unions, making it easier to hire and fire. Alongside this, taxes are not concerned with redistribution of wealth, making it easier for corporations and the rich to avoid them, and to use tax havens within the law. The fourth defining feature is the conviction that consumption and market forces can meet human needs of almost every kind.
Selfish Capitalism is an impersonal mechanism. Although some of its elements are centuries old, in its present form it has mutated out of advanced industrialisation. It encourages social, economic, political and cultural forms and contents that maximise it, and works against those which impede it, especially if they might improve the emotional well-being of the population. Selfish Capitalism cannot afford for us to be satisfied, for that would stifle rampant consumerism and materialist values, which are essential for its operation.
The economic and theoretical roots of Selfish Capitalism can be traced back, via Leo Strauss and Milton Friedman in the 1970s, and David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus in the nineteenth century, to Adam Smith in the eighteenth century. It has many close siblings with names like market liberalism, free-market economics, Neo-Conservatism, Neoliberalism, Reaganomics, Thatcherism. As a basic theory of political economy, it approximates most closely to Neoliberalism. The American political scientist David Harvey describes NeoliberalismÕs basic tenets as the proposition that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within a state-provided framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade, seeking to bring all human action into the domain of the market. At this level of abstraction, Harvey demonstrates that Neoliberalism can coexist successfully with the political Left as well as Right, so that it was adopted in modified form by Social Democratic Sweden and theoretically Communist China in the 1980s, as well as being imposed upon much of the developing world (through the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Treaty Organization) and the post-Soviet societies, to greater or lesser degrees. Whilst a close political blood relative of Neoconservatism, Neoliberalism does not include as part of its definition the NeoconÕs rampant and all-encompassing moralism, its love of nationalism as a rallying cry or its penchant for authoritarianism.
In terms of practical political policy, the best account of the kinds of measures which tend to accompany Selfish Capitalism is known as the Washington Consensus, a list of eleven key policy commitments largely devised by American and British political economists to facilitate globalisation after 1975: the liberalisation of international financial markets; the same in domestic financial markets; trade liberalisations (especially in developing nations); labour market ÔflexibilityÕ; security of private property, financial and physical assets; weak rights over human assets (particularly skills); reduced public sector spending, for example via privatisations and making business less regulated by the State; shifting the tax burden from rich to poor and from capital assets to workers, with subsidies increasingly for capital rather than workers; independent central banks; reduced welfare provisions, such as sickness and unemployment benefits; and privatisation (to charitable or voluntary organisations) and liberalisation of social policy.
However, none of these measures, nor the tenets of Neoliberalism, capture precisely what I want to convey with the words ÔSelfish CapitalismÕ, for they refer to an underlying principle akin to the biological notion of natural selection. Nor is Selfish Capitalism the sole preserve of any form of governance, political persuasion or single nation. On top of that, in choosing the word Selfish, I hope to spell out the underlying impulse of the politics entailed, cutting to the truth behind three decades of doublethinking obfuscation (ÔThe Third WayÕ) and faux-science (Monetarism): itÕs a look after Number One, bugger everyone else, way of organizing things, selfish, in fact.
In some respects, Selfish Capitalism theory imitates DarwinÕs famous explanation for the evolution of species. He showed that species which prospered were chosen by natural selection, the ones that were well adapted to their current environment flourishing, and the ones that were not, eventually dying out. With the discovery of genes, the argument was elaborated: evolution occurred through random genetic mutations, some of which aid successful adaptation, which leads to increased likelihood of survival and incorporation of those mutations into the species gene pool.
Analogously, I maintain, social forms and contents will be selected by Selfish Capitalism if they support it and will disappear if they do not, a point I develop in chapter 5. In choosing the word ÔselfishÕ to label this form of capitalism, as well as trying to be provocatively explicit about its goal, I am intentionally echoing Richard DawkinsÕ famous use of that word. I wish to question the extent to which the ÔselfishnessÕ of our genes should exercise us in explaining our contemporary psychology, as much as this form of capitalism. My use of the word challenges a fundamental premise of classical economic theory and much social science: that individuals will maximise their material gains at the expense of others, and expect others to do the same. Although this can be true of some people, in some circumstances, a vast body of evidence shows that we can also be altruistic: concerned with fairness and reciprocity, and ready to sacrifice gains and to punish others who do not play fair. Most crucially, what kind of society and family within it that a person is from hugely affects how selfish or unselfish they are as individuals.
A significant difference between Selfish Capitalism theory and sociobiology, or evolutionary psychology as it is also known, is that it is falsifiable. For example, when I contend that Selfish Capitalist governance creates economic inequality, it is relatively simple to examine the levels of economic inequality in Selfish and Unselfish nations, and see whether they differ in the predicted manner, after allowing for other factors. The theory allows for other causes of economic inequality and testing of its specific predictions.
I use the term ÔUnselfish CapitalismÕ to refer to its opposite, a capitalism which limits personal profits and fosters personal well-being. The epitome of Selfish Capitalism is the USA and Denmark is its opposite. Both government and business in the English-speaking world prior to the 1970s approximated more closely to Unselfish Capitalism. After the Second World War egalitarianism, meritocracy, social mobility and, arguably above all, the mass media began to spread materialism to the masses as well as the elites, by encouraging everyone to aspire to anything. The spread did not occur immediately. It was not until the sixties that traditional class hierarchy and patriarchy began their rapid demise. There had been considerable privation during the war, so that a growing desire for money and possessions (but not yet the yearning for fame or universal obsession with appearance) in the ÔyouÕve never had it so goodÕ fifties was an extension of wartime survival materialism, rather than the relative variety. Until the seventies, developed nations were becoming increasingly equal, with very substantial proportions of the poor and of women gaining access to unprecedented incomes, as well as freedoms. Both government and business still regarded the emotional well-being of the population as important, reinvesting much higher proportions of profits in business innovation and social welfare.
By contrast, substantial economic inequality is among the most significant of the many consequences of Selfish Capitalism. It demands rapid and substantial returns on capital in the name of shareholder value. Executives take share options in public companies as an incentive to increase the value of shares, although it is highly questionable whether this is actually the outcome. What does happen is that wealth rapidly concentrates in a few hands. Companies become commodities to be bought and sold in a turmoil of takeover, merger and demerger. Manufacturing is rapidly replaced by financial and other services as drivers of the economy. Job insecurity becomes widespread as employers impose short-term contracts and demand ÔflexibleÕ working. Saving is replaced by debt. Marketing and advertisements become a larger proportion of GDP as companies go for quick fixes to sell products, in order to jack up the share price (although, again, it is doubtful that this is actually what is achieved).
Like many other people, my eyes tend to glaze over when I read accounts of the increase in the wealth of the rich in the last thirty years. It stimulates a sense of Ôyeah, yeah, yeah, I know, youÕre repeating yourselfÕ. Just for a moment, I would plead with the reader to resist this reaction and also, to put their political beliefs to one side. Try to read closely and to think about the following facts, familiar though the territory may be:
- In Britain, the top 1% of income earners in Britain have doubled their share of the national income from 6.5% to 13% since 1982.
- Internationally, the income gap between the bottom one fifth richest countries and the top one fifth richest changed from 1:30 in 1960, to 1:60 in 1990 to 1:74 in 1997.
- The worldÕs richest 200 people more than doubled their net worth in just the four years between 1994 and 1998 to more than $1 trillion.
Now consider these less often mentioned facts:
- Real wages (adjusted for inflation) have either decreased or remained static in the USA and Britain since the 1970s. For example, the post-war peak in the USA was $15.72 per hour, falling to $14.15 in 2000, even though productivity was constantly rising.
- The growth in average household income that has occurred in the last 30 years has been achieved in two main ways in the Selfish Capitalist world:
1. By women becoming as likely as men to have paid employment (ie average income has not increased, getting women into the workforce to create dual income households is what has raised overall affluence).
2. Working hours have substantially increased for the average household, especially the average middle class worker.
- The ultimate justification of Selfish Capitalism is that it promotes general well-being by promoting economic growth, yet it is now accepted by many economists that its sole reliable achievement is to have reduced inflation. Hence, despite having been systematically disseminated to many parts of the globe since the early 1980s (albeit with patchy implementation), global annual rates of growth were highest in the Keynesian 1960s (3.5%) and 1970s (2.4%), lowest in the Selfish Capitalist 1980s (1.4%) and 1990s (1.1%).
- Taxes for the wealthiest people have dropped since the 1970s.
In short, it is an undeniable fact that the rich have got a very great deal richer under Selfish Capitalism. It is also undeniable that the rest of the population have had to work harder for less or no increased reward.
There is a strong case that Selfish Capitalism came into being when it did for one very simple reason: the rich were getting poorer and they wished to re-establish their wealth. David Harvey sets the scene for this scenario, as follows: After the Second World War Ôthe economic power of the upper classes was restrained and labour accorded a much larger share of the economic pie. In the USA, for example, the share of the national income taken by the top 1 per cent of income earners fell from a pre-war high of 16% to less than 8% by the end of the war and stayed close to that level for nearly three decades. While growth was strong this restraint seemed not to matter. To have a stable share of an increasing pie is one thing but when growth collapsed in the 1970s, when real interest rates went negative and paltry dividends and profits were the norm, then upper classes everywhere felt threatened, In the US the control of wealth (as opposed to income) by the top 1% of the population had remained fairly stable throughout the twentieth century. But in the 1970s it plunged precipitously as asset values (stocks, property, savings) collapsed. The upper classes had to move decisively if they were to protect themselves from political and economic annihilation.Õ Harvey goes on to provide persuasive evidence for this account of what happened next.
Realizing that their position was threatened, the wealthy elite teamed up to create consent for the re-establishment of their position. American businesses joined federations, Ôboss unionsÕ like the American Chamber of Commerce (its membership grew from 60,000 firms in 1972 to 250,000 in 1982). The explicit intention of the leaders of this movement was to influence government, the academic world and the media. An organization of CEOs called The Business Roundtable declared itself Ôcommitted to the aggressive pursuit of political power for the corporationÕ. The corporations involved amassed a huge war chest and began spending $900 million annually on achieving influence, a vast sum in the 1970s. Not all was spent on buying politicians, considerable amounts were also used to set up thinktanks with authoritative sounding names, like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute (in the UK in the Seventies came the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Centre for Policy Studies). American academia being already privatized, it was a relatively simple matter to pay academics to do serious economic and socio-political scientific studies which supported Selfish Capitalist tenets. Before long, the likes of Milton Friedman were becoming highly influential in economics departments and business schools, institutions which were used to train the next leaders of the developing world. This was to prove very helpful in the coming decades in persuading them to take out huge loans from the IMF and World Bank on the condition that they implemented Selfish Capitalist policies in return, ones that frequently bankrupted the countries or destroyed their social fabric, or both.
At the same time, it was a simple matter for business to disseminate Selfish Capitalist thinking. Providing campaign funds for politicians who already thought that way was straightforward. Equally, since the vast majority of newspapers and television companies, and subsequently, of publishing houses, were owned or soon to be owned by Selfish Capitalist moguls, it was hardly difficult to ensure that the public were told the ÔrightÕ story. Of course, many of the politicians, journalists, academics and authors who told it did sincerely believe their own rhetoric. They believed that in deregulating business and financial services, disempowering unions, reducing tax for the wealthy, reducing state expenditure on health, education, public housing, pensions and social welfare, they were setting the people free. The meritocratic rhetoric of the postwar consensus was employed: Selfish Capitalism would allow the individual to flourish, it would permit upward social mobility for those with talent, it would allow women, immigrants, and eventually even homosexuals (in the UK the likes of Tories such as Matthew Parris, Michael Portillo and Alan Duncan could be outed without suffering) to realize their true potentialities. There is no doubt that the thinkers and politicians who espoused these ideas believed these would be the consequences of their policies - that making the rich richer was not their primary intention.
In the UK, for example, there is little question of the sincerity of Margaret Thatcher or Keith Joseph that they would fulfil these ideals through neoliberalism, or of many of the journalists and other fellow-travellers, academic or social policy minded. They believed that the policies would raise the wealth of all, creating a trickle down effect. It is only very recently that it has finally become accepted by almost all serious economists that the evidence shows that the very opposite is what happens – a flood upwards of wealth - that, whatever your political convictions, it is an undeniable fact that Selfish Capitalism robs the poor to give to the rich; that may not be the intention of its adherents, some of whom may even regard it as a regrettable by-product, but it is undeniable. Whether senior figures in British or American corporations, or in the world of finance, felt this as sincerely or passionately is more doubtful. They were very confident that such policies would lead to much greater personal wealth for themselves and most probably, if sympathetic politicians and members of the intelligentsia told them in speeches, books and newspaper articles that this would be for the good of all, then they were happy to believe it, assuming they gave it any thought at all. As for the old rich, as they read about ThatcherÕs ideas in their newspapers, they could feel nothing but relief on hearing them, whilst quite possibly sincerely believing it would be best for the nation as well as their bank balances.
But as David Harvey meticulously maps out, it was very quickly apparent that once Selfish Capitalism was implemented, it was very far from being for the common good. Taking the example of New York City, he shows how the cutting of public services and destruction of public goods rapidly led to a broken society (in speaking of mending it, David Cameron, the current British Conservative leader shows no sign of realizing that, without Unselfish Capitalism, no amount of talk about strengthening the family will help). Neoconservatism from politicians soon filled the social void, with promises to get tough backed by flamboyant moralizing, toxic nationalism and racism, and what was true of New York was true for the rest of the USA and the UK. 1980s Selfish Capitalism brought high unemployment, high inflation at the end of the decade, lower wages for harder work, and the mantra that it was up to the individual to take responsibility for failure, as the ÔliberatedÕ individual was increasingly made to pay for services on an individual basis. When the social glue came unstuck, Reagan and Thatcher responded with high-falluting Neocon rhetoric to justify the armed suppression of rioting masses in Los Angeles and Liverpool. But above all, from the standpoint of the general economic good, the success stories of the 1980s were not the UK or the USA but West Germany and Japan – except, that is, for the top 1% of Britons and Americans, whose wealth massively expanded.
As David Harvey repeatedly points out, in all the debate about the rights and wrongs of Neoliberalism or Selfish Capitalism, this latter single fact is almost invariably ignored: that these forms of governance make the rich richer, and that is why they have been so successful. They have demonstrably not been successful in their declared aim of promoting general well-being by promoting generally increased wealth – all the rise in affluence occurred from getting women out to work and from imposing longer hours with more insecure working conditions. Always, everywhere implemented, Selfish Capitalism coincides with massive increases in the wealth of the top 1%. That makes it highly attractive to the elites who run countries and is the principal reason it flourished. The only problem was how to sell the idea to the masses and in Thatcher and Reagan, two first class salespeople emerged. But as I shall argue in chapter 5, Selfish Capitalism also has a self-sustaining capacity to automatically attack anything which threatens it and support that which sustains it.
Above all, from the standpoint of emotional distress, Selfish Capitalism strongly promotes materialistic values and their behavioural manifestation – compulsive consumerism. The most important single prediction of Selfish Capitalism theory is that nations which embrace it will have higher rates of emotional distress than ones which do not. There are two simple ways of testing this. The first is to examine whether rates of distress rise when societies shift from relatively Unselfish to relatively Selfish mode. The other is to compare rates between todayÕs Unselfish and Selfish.
3.3. Has the Prevalence of Distress Increased More Rapidly in English-Speaking Nations Since the 1970s, Compared With 1945–1980 and Compared With Relatively Unselfish Capitalist Mainland Western Europe and Japan?
Selfish Capitalism emerged during the 1970s in the USA and the UK, as well as in the other English-speaking nations to greater or lesser degrees. If its introduction accelerated the incidence of distress in those nations, compared with relatively Unselfish, unchanged societies, that would support the theory. The same should be true of direct comparison of Selfish and Unselfish contemporary developed nations.
The most reliable evidence for examining time trends comes from studies which have used the same methods to measure rates in the fifties, the late seventies and the recent past. Nationally representative samples of Americans were questioned about their emotional well-being by Joseph Veroff in 1957, 1976 and 1996. The same basic instruments and methods were employed in each study, making it an almost unique project in its temporal sweep. A key question was, ÔHave you ever felt that you were going to have a nervous breakdown?Õ, to which 15% more replied replied ÔYesÕ in 1976 than in 1957. Between 1976 and 1996, the proportion who gave this answer was two-thirds higher still. This is a solid indication that US rates were increasing faster after 1976.
In Britain, three large, nationally representative samples born in the same weeks in 1946, 1958 and 1970 have been questioned when in their thirties or early forties. By most criteria, rates of distress almost doubled between people born in 1946 (aged thirty-six in 1982) and 1970 (aged thirty in 2000). For example, 16% of thirty-six-year-old women in 1982 reported having Ôtrouble with nerves, feeling low, depressed or sadÕ, whereas 29% of thirty-year-olds reported this in 2000 (for men it was 8% in 1982, 13% in 2000). This is evidence of a substantial increase after 1982.
Another British study compared the results of a 1977 survey of Ôpsychiatric morbidityÕ in a representative sample of 5,684 people with those from a study conducted in 1985 of 6,437 people using the same methods. ÔPsychiatric morbidityÕ included neurotic symptoms such as panic attacks and phobias as well as depression. Whereas 22% of the 1977 sample reported psychiatric morbidity, this had risen to almost one-third of the population (31%) by 1986. Again, Selfish Capitalism would be a plausible explanation for this increase.
A striking example is what happened in Australia just between 1997 and 2001, a period of accelerated Selfish Capitalism. In particular, consumer credit and home loans were deregulated in the mid-nineties, and average mortgages increased by 70% in the ten years between 1991 and 2001. The average value of a mortgage rose from 2.8 times the average wage in 1994 to 4.2 times in 2004. Although the number of people living in a household was steadily decreasing, the size of homes increased. Between 1995 and 2004, personal debt other than mortgages nearly trebled (from A$40 billion to A$110 billion), and on average, personal saving has disappeared below zero. Australians each now have three times as many credit cards as West Europeans. In an explosion of materialism, much of the borrowed money is spent on imported foreign luxury goods such as cars and kitchen equipment. By no means was this all funded by the growth of the thriving Australian economy: the national debt doubled between 1996 and 2004 (up from A$194 billion to A$393 billion). To pay for their debt-ridden materialistic lives, Australians have had to work ever harder. Today, they work the longest hours in the developed world.
All these trends can be traced back to radical Selfish Capitalist governmental policies implemented in the early to mid-nineties, such as deregulated borrowing and employment laws. They are of special interest to Selfish Capitalism theory because it so happens that levels of emotional distress were measured in two nationally representative samples of Australians in 1997 and again in 2001. If a substantial shift towards Selfish Capitalism occurred after the mid-nineties, was there a concomitant increase in emotional distress? Overall, the studies revealed that the proportion who were severely distressed in 2001, to the extent that they would urgently require treatment, had increased by two-thirds compared with 1997. For women it had nearly doubled, with the most dramatic increases among the under-forties. Rates had also risen substantially among those with ÔonlyÕ high or moderate levels of distress.
These increases are exactly as Selfish Capitalism theory predicts and are in agreement with the international evidence that greater materialism is associated with distress. In particular, in the case of Australia two studies – the latest in 2001 – have demonstrated that materialists downplay intrinsically satisfying aspects of their lives, such as family and personal relationships, suggesting that the same mechanisms are operating as elsewhere. It is also of more than passing interest that the increases in distress between 1997 and 2001 coincided with a growth in the belief that genes cause distress – a correlation which may itself be caused by the growth of Selfish Capitalist governance at that time.
A large body of scientific studies demonstrates correlations between the conviction that psychological traits are inborn – genetic – rather than the product of nurture and society, and support for right-wing political beliefs. In general, genetic determinists are significantly more likely to be racist, sexist, homophobic and to possess Conservative political beliefs.
Other studies show that people who believe that emotional distress is caused primarily by genes are less supportive than those who donÕt when a relative develops distress, resulting in a worse outcome for the relative. Believers in genetics who develop emotional distress themselves are more likely to favour physical solutions (pills, ECT) and, possibly as a result, are less likely to recover. This explanation is suggested by another scientific literature showing that a considerable proportion of severe distress, including such problems as schizophrenia, is caused by childhood abuse and is a form of post-traumatic stress disorder. Treating such distress with drugs may slow the personÕs recovery. The muddling, befuddling side-effect of the drugs may interfere with the patientÕs need to understand how their delusions relate directly to having been sexually or physically abused.
For self-evident reasons, drug companies are not keen to promote any of this evidence. Although there is no conspiracy, the psychiatric establishment, most of whom have close financial relationships with the drug companies, promote the idea of ÔgeneticismÕ – that genes cause emotional distress and that drugs are the solution, acting as more or less unwitting salespeople for the pharmaceutical corporations. This is an uphill battle. Numerous international surveys suggest that the majority of people everywhere studied believe that depression and schizophrenia are caused primarily by environmental factors, such as stress, poverty and abuse.
The possibility that increased rates of both distress and geneticism are caused by Selfish Capitalism is suggested by the fact that, when two nationally representative surveys of eighteen- to seventy-four-year-old Australian attitudes were carried out, in 1995 and 2004, there was a significant rise in the belief that genes are a major cause of emotional distress. In the earlier study, 49% of respondents believed that genes could be the cause of depression; by 2004 this had risen to 67%. For schizophrenia there was a similar significant trend: in 1995, 59% thought genes important; in 2004, that had risen to 70%. The (psychiatric establishment-friendly) authors of the study speculated about the causes of the increases: ÔThe period between the surveys saw a lot of publicity about the Human Genome Project and the identification of various genes affecting a range of diseases. There may have been a generally increased awareness of the role of genes ÉÕ. They may well be right about this.
Since 1995 the reading public in the English-speaking world has encountered many books and newspaper articles suggesting that evolution has shaped our speciesÕ psychology and that, on the level of individual differences, genes are crucial. However, what the above studyÕs authors failed to examine is that there was a considerable growth of Selfish Capitalist governance in Australia during this period, based on a politico-economic creed which knits neatly together with genetic determinism. Since Australians are increasingly in the grip of these politics, they may be a great deal more open to geneticism. As more and more people, especially the young, became materialistic and distressed, they may also have been converted to geneticism as the explanation, increasing their vulnerability and decreasing the speed of recovery. As geneticists, they would have been more open to the idea of taking drugs to treat their depressions, coming to believe in a physical solution to a physical problem. This in turn would make them less able to address the childhood causes of their distress or the wider, socio-political ones, making individual or collective change for the better less likely.
The increases in distress since the 1970s in the USA, Britain and Australia do not apply only to adults. Children and young people in English-speaking nations, as well as their parents, would seem to have become more distressed. Particularly striking was a study comparing levels of distress in large, nationally representative samples of 15 and 16 year olds measured using the same methods and instruments in 1974, 1986 and 1999. Overall, between 1974 and 1999, the proportion of children with conduct problems doubled and with emotional ones (depression and anxiety) almost did so (up from 10% to 17%). Interestingly, problems in this age group are not restricted to children from low income families. A British study surveyed large samples of fifteen-year-olds in 1987 and again in 1999, finding a large leap in distress among girls from the top social class, from 24% to 38%, with no increase among boys or among girls from lower social classes. More generally, several American studies have found similar changes among both schoolchildren and university students, for both sexes. Indeed, a meta-analysis of 269 different studies of American university studentsÕ and childrenÕs distress levels made since 1950 concluded that the increase in levels of distress has been so large that, by 1950s standards, the average child of 1990 is in need of professional help. That much of the increase in depression and anxiety has been in the last two decades is suggested by the British study which measured large samples in 1974, 1986 and 1999. There was virtually no rise between 1974 (10.2%) and 1986 (10.5%), the vast majority happened between 1986 and 1999 (from 10.5 to 16.9%). There has been a two- to threefold increase in psychiatric medicines prescribed to children since the 1980s. In 1987, 0.9% of all American children were already being given pills for attention hyperactivity deficit disorder but ten years later the proportion was four times greater. Similar increases have occurred in Britain. Whilst new patterns of diagnosis and the alliance of child psychiatrists with the research and marketing departments of drug companies partly explain this, there is a strong likelihood that it also reflects an accelerating incidence of real distress.
On top of this, as a result of the WHO study of rates of distress in different nations, it is now clear that for developed nations there is a direct relationship between per capita income and level of distress. My analysis of these results (with Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson) and a separate one by Avner Offer both show that the richer the developed nation, the more distressed its people. Offer points out that once you remove strife-ridden Columbia, Lebanon and Ukraine from the equation, national per capita income explains over half of the difference in rates between countries. Other international comparisons indicate that suicide rates rise in direct relation to per capita income and economic growth. This suggests that the wholesale pursuit of materialist values at a national level, fostered by Selfish Capitalism, increases national distress.
What is more, a study I carried out with Pickett and Wilkinson found that there was a linear statistical relationship between levels of inequality in a developed nation and levels of distress (see Appendix 1). This is exactly what Selfish Capitalism theory predicts, as in another analysis I have done, with Pickett. (see Appendix 2)
Unfortunately, in the WHO 2004 survey of distress in 15 nations, only two English-speaking nations are included (USA and New Zealand) . But there have been other very large, nationally representative recent studies done in the other main English-speaking nations (UK, Australia and Canada) which can be argued to have used comparable methods. The average rate for the five English-speaking nations combined (23.1%) was over twice that of the average (11.5%) from the WHO study for the six mainland West European nations (France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Germany and Italy) combined with Japan. When rate of emotional distress and level of inequality are correlated in all the nations, there is again a strong, statistically significant, linear relationship: the greater the inequality, the higher the prevalence (Appendix 2). Given that Unselfish Capitalism is still relatively dominant in mainland Western Europe and Japan, this is as the theory would predict.
Similarly, if one correlates the amount of Ôeconomic insecurityÕ – a marker of the extent of a nationÕs Selfish Capitalism – with the rates of these different groups of countries (mainland European plus Japan versus English-speaking), there is a clear relationship. Insecurity levels around the beginning of this century were measured by the International Labour Organization in ninety nations using seven different indices, including job security and certainty of income. On all the indices, workers in the English-speaking countries were found to be considerably more insecure than those in mainland West European nations or Japan. These latter suffer half as much distress.
There are similar findings regarding differences between English-Speaking and mainland Western European nations for many other factors, for example, among children. A 2007 UNICEF study of children in 23 developed nations found BritainÕs to be the worst off, unhealthier and more miserable, with the USA the next worst. Mainland Western European nations fared far better. A WHO study of 33 nations in 2001-2 showed that British, American and Canadian 11, 13 and 15 year olds were much more liable than mainland Western Europeans to be both obese and engaged in dieting. The list of ways in which it is better to be raised in mainland Western Europe rather than an English-Speaking nation is long and shaming.
The changes reported in this chapter are consistent with Selfish Capitalism Theory. The next step is to explore more precisely the necessary and sufficient conditions under which Selfish Capitalism increases distress.