A Hedge Fund Republic? - NYTimes.com.
Nicholas Kristof is another columnist calling attention to the increasing economic inequality in this country. But all he can come up with as solutions are things that are merely bandaids, like extending unemployment insurance, or measures which, while they may reduce the deficit, don't strike at the root of the problem? Higher taxes on wages are a very blunt tool, and do not make things better.
Why are Americans so incurious about the structures which CREATE the inequality? I know that most of us have high hopes -- or did -- that we might strike it rich, and perhaps that leads to a tendency to (a) be willing to protect the privileges of the rich just in case we somehow join them; and (b) to be less than curious about the means by which people acquire wealth, and whether there is a relationship between their wealth and our labor that goes on beyond their being smart to their profiting from privileges that have been permitted for so many generations and which we are now nearly blind about (or, alternatively, protect as if we benefited from them, too.)
Nicholas Kristof is another columnist calling attention to the increasing economic inequality in this country. But all he can come up with as solutions are things that are merely bandaids, like extending unemployment insurance, or measures which, while they may reduce the deficit, don't strike at the root of the problem? Higher taxes on wages are a very blunt tool, and do not make things better.
Why are Americans so incurious about the structures which CREATE the inequality? I know that most of us have high hopes -- or did -- that we might strike it rich, and perhaps that leads to a tendency to (a) be willing to protect the privileges of the rich just in case we somehow join them; and (b) to be less than curious about the means by which people acquire wealth, and whether there is a relationship between their wealth and our labor that goes on beyond their being smart to their profiting from privileges that have been permitted for so many generations and which we are now nearly blind about (or, alternatively, protect as if we benefited from them, too.)
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