NP Worthy look at contemporary capitalism
alice wellintown
alicewellintown at gmail.com
Thu Feb 28 05:48:30 CST 2013
"Inequality is indeed increasing almost everywhere in the
postindustrial capitalist world."
This is utter nonsense. It's a game of numbers, numberrs that have
become a meaningless mantra if old-Left rhetoric, numbers that don't
reall add up, and can't figure in the same equation that sums up the
reality that real people are experiencing under late capitalism.
Sure, we can use the numbers, the big data, the stats to support this
claim that the rich are getting richer, grabbing more power and
wealth, undermining democracy, electing billionaires to
government...so on. Sure, we can confirm this obvious and very
troubling development. We should not ignore or deminish in any way the
suffering this inequality is causing to people, to the planet. But
this argument fails to account for the fact that billions of people
eat better, sleep better, work better, play better, live better than
they did before capitalism spread its global tenticles. When we look
at the world we see something else entirely. Capital with a conscience
is agreat success story. Look to Brazil.
Brazil's internationally praised monthly stipend program has pulled 36
million people from extreme poverty since it was first expanded in
2003 by Rousseff's predecessor and political mentor, Luiz Inacio Lula
da Silva. In eight years in office, Lula oversaw an economic boom that
helped create a vast middle class in a country long known as a society
of haves and have-nots.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/19/us-brazil-poverty-idUSBRE91I14F20130219
On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 1:40 PM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:
> From this month's Foreign Affairs magazine:
> http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138844/jerry-z-muller/capitalism-and-inequality?cid=emc-mar13promoa-content-02192013
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