Gunter Grass on globalisation

Max Sawicky sawicky at bellatlantic.net
Tue Aug 14 22:20:09 PDT 2001


The U.S. does some stats but might do others.

For instance, it would be nice to know how many are in poverty by state, before you count means- tested benefits. Then you would have some idea of the 'before' and 'after' effect of these benefits. People do estimates of these based on micro-data, but it is not an official stat. It is not 'enumerated.'

I have no idea how India compares. U.S. stats are pretty good, relatively speaking. The great social-democracies, for instance, have no counterpart to the information here on taxes and incomes.

mbs


>From Noam Chomsky, *Propaganda and the Public Mind* (South End Press,
2001), pp. 174f.:


> India, unlike the United States and like practically every other
> industrial country outside the U.S., keeps regular social
statistics.
> The U.S. is maybe the only industrial country that doesn't do this.
> India has a regular publication of social indicators
========= Exskweeeze me, the US doesn't keep social statistics? What does the census bureau, doc, itc, pentagon,cia, fbi, doj, nsa and all those other acronyms we love so well do if not statistics?

Ian



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