Ken Hanly wrote:
>If someone in a developing country is displaced from a subsistence farm to a
>starvation job in the city by neoliberal policies this will register as a
>rise in income for such people. From no income in the market to a starvation
>wage will be registered as a plus when standard of living will have
>decreased rather than increased. You and others continue to use money
>incomes as indicators of living standards without so much as a blush and do
>not even consider distributional or other issues such as I just raised.
I'm guessing this "you" is directed at me, in which case I can only
say you have no idea what you're talking about. I write about
distributional issues all the time. I'm quite aware of how someone
displaced from subsistence to the paid labor force can appear in the
national accounts as a plus; I'm also aware of Keynes's remark that a
man who marries his housekeeper reduces the national income. I
seriously doubt that displacement from subsistence is relevant to
Argentina, a country that is almost 90% urban, and was over 80% urban
25 years ago.
And I've been to both Canada and Mexico. There's just no humanly
relevant way in which Canada resembles a colony. New York City has
quite a few neighborhoods more reminiscent of Mexico than anything
I've seen in Toronoto, Montreal, or Vancouver. It's presumptuous
bordering on the obscene to use the same words to describe Canada and
Mexico.
Doug
