Scotland: The World’s First Referendum on Inequality?

According to the historian and land-reform campaigner Jim Hunter, Scotland boasts “the most concentrated pattern of land ownership in the developed world.”

.. In some quarters, the vote is already being hailed as the world’s first-ever referendum on economic inequality—an event that has less in common with other nationalist votes like Quebec’s in 1995 than it does with recent developments such as Occupy Wall Street, the adoption of “the 1 percent” as a global catchphrase, and the runaway success of Thomas Piketty’s 700-page tome on the collateral damage of capitalism. 

.. In general, the poorer the Scot, the more likely she is to vote ‘yes.’ The Economic and Social Research Council found that 46 percent of low-income Scots support independence, compared with 27 percent of high-earners.

Does Moving Poor People Work?

The results are striking. The low-income minority children from public housing all started with similar math scores. But after seven years, those who went to schools where fewer than 20 percent of their classmates were poor shot ahead of those who went to schools where 20 to 80 percent of their classmates were poor.

.. Fryer and Levitt argue that the elimination of “the test score gap that arises by the end of junior high school may be a critical component of reducing racial wage inequality.”