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NYTimes Magazine: How the permissive capitalism of the boom destroyed American equality.
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 05:02:04 -0400
------ Forwarded Message From: johnl () iecc com (John R. Levine) If you liked Paul's op-ed piece on Friday, you should read his featured article in today's NY Times magazine which expands on some of the same themes. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/magazine/20INEQUALITY.html For Richer By PAUL KRUGMAN I. The Disappearing Middle When I was a teenager growing up on Long Island, one of my favorite excursions was a trip to see the great Gilded Age mansions of the North Shore. Those mansions weren't just pieces of architectural history. They were monuments to a bygone social era, one in which the rich could afford the armies of servants needed to maintain a house the size of a European palace. By the time I saw them, of course, that era was long past. Almost none of the Long Island mansions were still private residences. Those that hadn't been turned into museums were occupied by nursing homes or private schools. For the America I grew up in -- the America of the 1950's and 1960's -- was a middle-class society, both in reality and in feel. The vast income and wealth inequalities of the Gilded Age had disappeared. Yes, of course, there was the poverty of the underclass -- but the conventional wisdom of the time viewed that as a social rather than an economic problem. Yes, of course, some wealthy businessmen and heirs to large fortunes lived far better than the average American. But they weren't rich the way the robber barons who built the mansions had been rich, and there weren't that many of them. The days when plutocrats were a force to be reckoned with in American society, economically or politically, seemed long past. ... -- John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl () iecc com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------ End of Forwarded Message ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- NYTimes Magazine: How the permissive capitalism of the boom destroyed American equality. Dave Farber (Oct 21)