The Broken Ladder Book Summary - The Broken Ladder Book explained in key points

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The Broken Ladder summary

Name: The Broken Ladder
Rating: 4.2 (60 reviews)
Author: Keith Payne

Keith Payne

How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die

4.2 (60 ratings)

20 mins

Topics

Class Social Philosophy Wealth

Table of Contents

The Broken Ladder
Summary of 8 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 8

What’s in it for me? Discover the far-reaching consequences of inequality.

Why does feeling poor shave as many years off your life as actually being poor? What does the brand of your neighbor’s china have to do with the level of cortisol in your blood? Why do financial successes lead to anti-democratic thinking?

In these blinks, you’ll learn the answers to these questions and many more. They will walk you through the cognitive impact of today’s staggering income inequality and the way it changes how you think, behave, work, and live.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why someone paid $28,000 for an old grilled cheese sandwich;
why low social status leads to increased stress levels; and
why the best MLB players should stop making so much more money than everyone else.

Feeling poor has less to do with your material circumstances than with how they compare to those of others.

Have you ever visited an old castle and wondered what it was like to live there? Maybe you’ve imagined yourself master of Versailles, feasting on the finest foods, strolling the perfectly manicured gardens.

But if you consider the nitty-gritty of daily existence, life in a seventeenth-century palace suddenly seems less appealing. Louis XIV didn’t have hot water or air conditioning, after all. And he definitely didn’t have a microwave. In fact, by today’s standards, he lived in utter deprivation.

The key message here is: Feeling poor has less to do with your material circumstances than with how they compare to those of others.

Research shows that only about 20 percent of people who report feeling poor actually are poor. So what’s happening with the other 80 percent? Why do so many people see themselves as poor even when their income places them squarely in the middle class? Or even, in some cases, the upper-middle class?

Consider a family doctor earning $200,000 a year. She probably lives in a big home in a safe neighborhood, drives a nice car, and owns a lot of nice things. She may have everything she wants, but if she compares herself to the brain surgeon next door, the one making $800,000, she’ll feel poor. Depending on her expenses, she may even feel as though she’s living paycheck to paycheck, barely scraping by. That may sound crazy, but it’s actually quite normal.

Consider yourself. Let’s say someone asks you how much money you make. You might be put off, but you know the answer. Now imagine someone asks you if you make enough money. What do you say? What does enough mean? How do you measure it?

If you’re struggling to come up with a good answer, there’s a reason. While we have physiological sensors in our bodies that help us answer a material question like “do you have enough food?” we don’t have sensors for answering an abstract question like “do you have enough money?” The only way we can make a judgment about that is by comparing ourselves with everyone else. Do other people seem to have nicer things? Do they seem to suffer less financial difficulty? If the answer is yes, we feel poor, no matter our actual income.

In the coming blinks, we’ll explore the impact that has on us as individuals and on the societies we create and inhabit.

Even people who aren’t objectively poor suffer negative consequences when they feel poor relative to others.

Here are some things that are more likely to happen to you if you feel poor – brace yourself, it’s not a pretty list. You’re more likely to experience depression, anxiety, and chronic pain. You’re more likely to have weight issues, diabetes, and heart problems. And not only that, you’re more likely to believe in conspiracy theories, underperform at work, and make bad life decisions. All that, not because you actually are poor, but only because you feel poor.

Yup, you heard that right. It’s not just poverty itself that has devastating consequences – it’s also the feeling of poverty.

Inequality changes the way we think and act, encouraging risky and self-destructive behavior.

Imagine you’re taking part in a study. An interviewer asks you a series of questions about your finances, spending habits, and personal interests. A computer program, you’re told, will use this information to calculate a score indicating how much money you have compared to other people similar to you. The interviewer clicks away at the keyboard, a progress bar loads on screen, and voila! A number appears showing that you either have more net worth than most people like you or less.

After that, the interviewer gives you $20 and offers you two choices: you can either pocket the money or use it to gamble and, if you’re lucky, go home with a bit more money. Do you think your decision would depend on the comparative income score you received? In other words, would your relative income relation to your peers affect the way you make choices about risk-taking? If you’re like most people, it would.

Inequality leads to social division and political partisanship.

If you’ve been paying attention at all the past years, you know that a lot of democracies have grown more and more divided. Politics are polarized, pundits scream at each other on TV, and protestors exchange blows in the streets. Sometimes, you even have to avoid conversation topics with members of your own family! Our societies, in short, are more divided than ever.

So what does that have to do with inequality? According to researchers, a lot.

Societies with high inequality have worse health outcomes than those with more equal distribution.

You probably know that life expectancy is higher in rich countries than in poorer countries. And that, within rich countries, people with more money tend to have better health outcomes than people with less. But what you probably don’t know is that within these wealthy countries, people’s subjective experience of status is a better predictor of health than their actual income.

That’s right. If you live in a developed country, feeling poor affects health and longevity as much as being poor.

Inequalities in power, wealth, and status skew our perceptions of reality.

What would you do if you had $28,000 to spend? Buy a new car? Pay off your student loans? How about spending it on a grilled cheese sandwich?

Sound crazy? In 2004, someone did just that. Why? Because the sandwich had toasted in such a way that it seemed to show the face of the Virgin Mary. This wasn’t an isolated incident. People see these kinds of apparitions all the time. In Wales, a family saw Jesus in a smear of savory Marmite paste spread on its morning toast. In Russia, a whole village worshipped a birch tree whose bark showed the image of Christ. All over the world, humans detect patterns in randomness. But in places with high inequality, they detect them more often.

Inequality undermines workplace performance and heightens dissatisfaction.

The average person will experience inequality most directly and frequently at work. Silicon Valley’s flat structures notwithstanding, workplaces are still largely organized as hierarchies.

You’ve probably been taught that this is a good thing. Hierarchies create incentives, right? Without a ladder to climb, without more money to aspire to, we’d grow lazy and unproductive. Alas, the data tells another story. While pay inequalities can be motivational, they can also breed resentment. Today, they’ve reached such staggering heights that they’re more demotivating than inspiring. Far from improving outcomes, increasingly enormous pay differentials are making things worse.

There are things we can do to mitigate the negative effects of living with inequality.

By now, you might be feeling a bit depressed. Income inequality is higher than ever with no sign of letting up. It’s making us unhappier and unhealthier and tearing apart the social fabric of our lives. The poor are suffering from both poverty and inequality, and even the affluent feel and act as though they’re poor.

And yet, there’s still some hope!

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What is The Broken Ladder about?

The Broken Ladder (2017) explores the psychological, physical, and social ramifications of rising inequality. As the rich get richer, it powerfully demonstrates, everyone else feels poorer, regardless of material circumstances – with devastating consequences for all.

Who should read The Broken Ladder?

Social psychology
Anyone who wants to better understand inequality

About the Author

Keith Payne is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina and a leading expert in the psychology of inequality. His research on the cognitive and emotional impact of wealth distribution has been featured in the Atlantic and the New York Times, and his articles have appeared in Scientific American and Psychology Today.

Categories with The Broken Ladder

Psychology Society & Culture

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