Educating Ju-chang (Gini indeces etc)

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Sep 6 21:12:25 PDT 1999


Max Sawicky wrote:


>Since I raised it,
>I'll reveal my own unproven hypothesis: people in the
>U.S. don't give a damn about inequality.

Oh yes. My impression is that inequality had more salience as a political issue when liberals could blame it on Reagan and Bush, and not the normal operations of American capitalism. Inequality is worse now than in the 1980s, but you hear a lot less about it now. You could say similar things about civil liberties (wiretaps have boomed in the Clinton years, and the Prison Litigation Reform Act is one of the worst? the worst? incursions on habeas corpus since the Civil War) and the environment (Jeff St Clair could fill us in on the details). But on both, the liberals are largely silent.

Doug



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