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there is no misunderstanding in my use of the term equality.
sorry.
think about what you are saying...think about the extent to which, for example, your understanding of poverty and what it means is a version of one of reagans most ethically indefensable statements, the one concerning the "welfare queens"?
it is obvious that a significant problem in the exchanges across this whole thread is that there is no agreement whatsoever on the frame of reference, so it is nearly impossible to have a coherent discussion---what one side excludes in order to start their chain of deductions is not excluded by the other. and both sides operate entirely within their respective frame of reference--whenever it comes down to a question about the frame of reference, the conservative folk in this thread in particular do not react--it is as if they cannot relativize their framework--or they cannot explain or defend how the variables they work with or defined.
why is that?
and is there any way to get us all (myself included obviously) to step back a second and see if by opening up the frames of reference to debate that we might be able to deepen the conversation?
otherwise it will continue as it is--an example of why people operating in different ideological positions--and these are ideological questions, political questions, that are at stake in how one is understanding what is and is not relevant in the matters being discussed--why different ideological positions cannot talk coherently to each other.
and might it be possible when it comes to throwing around data that one also at least note where the source is politically? over the past 20 years, the network of right thinktanks have specialized in producing pseudo-proof for their position--the reason it is pseudo-proof is because of the way the data is analyzed, what is included, what is excluded--the problems star t **before** the deductions, which may in themselves be formally correct.
and an aside: my suspicion has long been that people operating in a more neoclassical frame cannot or will not move to this level of conversation either because (a) they cannot do it--in which case what prompts you to accept the frame in the first place? or (b) are unwilling because they suspect that in a conceptually oriented debate, they could not defend themselves.
but i would be really pleased to find myself in a conversation that proved me wrong about this assumption.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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