globalization & Pynchon?

[KXX4493553 at aol.com]

No, I'm not saying that you are a nationalist but sometimes it's useful to 
compare the social situation in different countries.

Please do not think I'm one-sided: f. e. the German red-green government 
published a so called "poverty report" yesterday - the first in the history 
of Germany. There you can read that 19 % of the German population is 
"relatively poor" (less than half of the average income) and 15 % have got an 
income between 50-75 % of that average rate.

For me there's a clear connection between the unemployment rate and the high 
numbers of prisoners in the US. Drug abuse and drug trading - what else is 
this than a reaction on poverty and unemployment? (I know that a lot of 
middle class people also are "on drugs". But drug trading is clearly a way of 
generating income in the "informal sphere" (Saskia Sassen wrote interesting 
things about the "informalization of labor").)

And let's compare the system of punishment. If a 13-year-old child would run 
amok in the school what would happen in Germany? Nothing. He/she would be 
sent into psychiatry. Nobody under the age of 14 can be punished here. And if 
he is older? Highest punishment: 10 years, between 14 and 17. Between 18 and 
20 you can be punished either as a teenager or as an adult. What happens in 
the US? From state to state, very different. It's a question of "luck".



Kurt-Werner Pörtner