[IP] NYTimes Magazine: How the permissive capitalism of the boom destroyed American equality.

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

------ 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


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