> > the right. The federal government of 1997 is a very different creature
> from that of, say, 1977--more egregiously corrupt and sycophantic toward
> wealth, more glaringly repressive and even less responsive to the needs of
> low- and middle-income people. . . . >
>
> [Max] What's the metric, one wonders, in vain, for
> any of these comparisons?
>
> >
> > . . . For me that point [where government could be imagined as
> marginally useful -- mbs] was passed with the repeal of welfare in 1996,
> after which I could no longer imagine that my federal taxes served any
> compassionate function--or, more generally, that the government plays any
> redistributive role other than to promote the ongoing upward redistribution
> of wealth.>
>
> [Max] If she looked at a table once in a while, she might
> have a clue.
>
> > . . . The power to levy taxes, for example, is increasingly deployed to
> tithe low- and middle-income people to subsidize the state functions--such
> as corporate welfare and the military--favored by the corporate elite. >
>
> [Max] More unquantified nonsense.
>
> BE can't count.
I don't necessarily doubt this, innumeracy being a typical essayist problem (perhaps even more so than innumeracy plaguing journalists in general). But I wonder if Max would take a more numerate crack at Ehrenreich's assertions--that is, back up his criticisms. What do the numbers show?
jf