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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: yard_man who wrote (8255)	10/21/2002 1:40:09 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

The New York Times columnist and a professor at Princeton Paul Krugman writes an interesting 11-part article in the recent Sunday Times Magazine... <<...Income inequality in America has now returned to the levels of the 1920's. Inherited wealth doesn't yet play a big part in our society, but given time -- and the repeal of the estate tax -- we will grow ourselves a hereditary elite just as set apart from the concerns of ordinary Americans as old Horace Havemeyer. And the new elite, like the old, will have enormous political power. Kevin Phillips concludes his book ''Wealth and Democracy'' with a grim warning: ''Either democracy must be renewed, with politics brought back to life, or wealth is likely to cement a new and less democratic regime -- plutocracy by some other name.'' It's a pretty extreme line, but we live in extreme times. Even if the forms of democracy remain, they may become meaningless. It's all too easy to see how we may become a country in which the big rewards are reserved for people with the right connections; in which ordinary people see little hope of advancement; in which political involvement seems pointless, because in the end the interests of the elite always get served. Am I being too pessimistic? Even my liberal friends tell me not to worry, that our system has great resilience, that the center will hold. I hope they're right, but they may be looking in the rearview mirror. Our optimism about America, our belief that in the end our nation always finds its way, comes from the past -- a past in which we were a middle-class society. But that was another country...>> The entire article ' For Richer ' is worth consideration and it can be read on the Times website... nytimes.com