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Politics : Did Slick Boink Monica? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zoltan! who wrote (8554)	2/26/1998 11:15:00 PM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 20981

Hi, Duncan!! I am not any kind of expert on economics. However, there seems to have been a pretty big shift from a large middle class, to a system with more people slipping into poverty and wealth becoming more concentrated at the top. The most recent statistic I read on that was last week, and the percentage figures were that the upper one percent of American society held more wealth than the entire lower ninety percent. This is dramatically different from the early eighties, when Reagan and Thatcher started taking away the safety net, and fighting unions. I am not arguing that in the age of global competition we could have kept everything the way it was in the fifties and sixties, when more families were doing well, but I do believe there has been a deliberate policy of taking something away from the poor. The long lines of the unemployed in the Reagan documentary brought back a lot of memories for me. It was in Reagan's term that the homeless became a huge problem, as well, but more specifically, when he was governor here in California I believe he initiated a policy to get most mentally ill and severely retarded people out of state hospitals. Sadly, the promised community care never materialized, and these people ended up treated very badly, many of them on the streets. Even a conservative Republican society would have some responsibility for those who truly cannot help themselves, yes? I really want to see the Waco documentary. I have also heard that it is excellent, but it played only very briefly here. Do you know whether it is available on video yet? Christine (feeling liberal tonight)