Debunking the Spirit Level

This video is a 45 minute speech and presentation to the Centre for Independent Studies by Professor Peter Saunders. He does a devastating critique of the book The Spirit Level, pointing out all the ways they cherry-picked both the countries and the data to support their proposition that countries with less income inequality do better on many social and economic indicators.

Saunders also covers how they gained spurious causation with outliers (such as US on homicides) and ignoring third variables. My favourite part is when Saunders constructs a social misery index showing that social misery is higher (r^2-0.39, p<0.001) is countries with greater income equality by focusing on racist bigotry, suicide rate, divorce rate, reverse fertility rate, alcohol consumption and HIV infection rate.

The first few minutes are a bit dry, but I really encourage people to view the whole video. If you are really rushed for time, just fast forward every few minutes to each slide, as the slides really tell the story.