So there's a scientist, Wilkinson is I believe his name in the U.K., who analysis all over the world inequity and association with health outcomes, and he argues that if you have high inequity in a country, meaning that the rich have more of the resources than anybody else, if you have high inequity you have poor health outcomes.
And so for example, the U.S. has a health care system that takes up twice as much money as in most other industrialized nations, but the longevity in the U.S. is actually shorter than in most other industrialized nations, shorter than in Japan, shorter than in most countries in Europe. So how come that the U.S. has poorer health outcomes despite the fact that you put a lot more money?
Well, one of the reasons is of course the inefficiencies of the health care system, but even the rich in this country, the wealthiest people in this country, even those they live shorter than the wealthiest people in Europe and so the reasoning of some of these democracies is that high level of inequity creates tensions and these tensions translate into tensions in society and that they translate into stress levels that are higher which is why people live shorter lives.
So inequity has all sorts of consequences. Our monkey experiments that we've done similar things with chimpanzees and with other species indicate that it's a very profound and very ancient reaction to react negatively to getting something less than somebody else. Basically, it has enormous consequences, probably also health consequences in human society.
R.K.: I have been very interested in billionaires and I've written a number of articles about calling for an end to billionaires because I have mostly looked at it from the point of view of indigenous tribal cultures. I believe that, and I have talked to anthropologists about this, that in an indigenous tribe if somebody acted like a billionaire, hoarding four hundred times more than anybody else, or even more, they would be treated as crazy, or they would become outcasts.
F.W.:Yeah. I think that's probably true
R.K.: How does that apply to primates?
F.W.: Yeah. that's probably true. It's that" certainly primates who share food like chimpanzees, or Capuchin monkeys, they share food and so they will protest if they don't get from somebody... so let's say, you have an enormous amount of food and you are not sharing with anybody, you're keeping that all for yourself, yeah, there will be a revolt probably at some point.
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