Matthijs Krul wrote:
Doug Henwood schreef:
On Jun 16, 2008, at 5:23 PM, Charles Brown wrote:
Yes, that 's why it is important for lefts to emphasize that
pauperization and immiseration are also, normal, secular aspects of
capitalism.
Where is this pauperization happening exactly?
Doug
I would say: in the Third World.
Matthijs Krul
There is plenty of immiseration in the Third World, and in pockets of
the U.S., but
I don't think that can be a central radical criticism. For one, people
in that circumstance
aren't in much shape to do anything positive about it.
More to the point is the gap between what people expect and what they
get, which is
more about inequality, not absolute deprivation or literal starvation.
A problem is that
people use terminology about absolute poverty when they are really
talking about
inequality (relative poverty). Second, the inequality frame is still
stuck on GDP as
a giant bundle of private goods and glosses over public goods,
externalities,
non-market amenities, and leisure. Inequality measurement studies tend to
ignore what is difficult to measure and arguably of equal or greater
importance.
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