[lbo-talk] WSJ edit page: forget about that p. 1 story!

snitsnat snitilicious at tampabay.rr.com
Wed May 18 08:17:49 PDT 2005


At 10:18 AM 5/18/2005, Chuck0 wrote:


>I mentioned the NY Times feature on class to one of the older anarchists
>here in Kansas City and he started going off about how "we disproved that
>class mobility stuff back in the 1960s." He expressed dismay that more
>work by radicals in the academy were being ignored in favor of discredited
>social science.
>
>Chuck0
>___

I didn't read that article too carefully, but what i skimmed sounds like it came out of CPR's LIS studies. hardly a hotbed of radicals, believe me. staid policy wonks. The economics department pumps out a lot of rational choicers/neo-classicals (I used to have to debate one every semester on inequality and publich schooling! Great guy, he just couldn't understand what our criticisms were all about. "*everything* can be measured, a price tag put on it, he'd say. It might be hard to do, but it can be done! What are you guys complaining about now?" )

Anyway, Smeeding went to Wisconsin-Madison in the early 70s, but he's hardly a radical in the sense you mean. Burkhauser? I didn't know him very well, but he didn't impress me as a radical. The one lone Marxist in that economics department seemed really marginalized and disgusted with everything. Though he did have a cool schtick about the "dog bone economy" that used to get him really animated when he talked about it, sharing a teaching idea that worked well for him.

That said, I don't know how Michael Perelman would label him. Max thinks the think tank is heterodox. But I don't really think that kind of heterodoxy is what you mean by radical. *shrug* Not sure.

kelley



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