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you know, there's a side of what you're saying that seems to me obviously the case, pan: class distinctions are getting wider. the reason for that is the absence of state action, however. under the reagan administration, the united states saw the largest transfer of wealth into the top 5% and away from everyone else that has yet been recorded. the stratification of classes in the united states is by far the worst in the industrialized world. but the reason for that is that the united states is by far the least social democratic of the industrialized countries--the most conservative, the most phobic about the state as a mechanism to redistribute wealth and maintain a politically viable class structure.
this seems a matter of historical fact, so is not really movable. the interpretations of why this is the case are variable (as interpretations are, after all) but the fact of the matter isn't.
it's a consistent tic of yours (and you are far from alone in it)...so i don't get where it comes from.
it runs toward the idea you seem to have that capitalism on its own distributes income in a flat manner that's somehow distorted by the action of the state through taxes. that's upside down.
it also runs toward the idea that somehow or another the state is **Responsible** for the reorganization of capitalist production that's happened over the past 30 years and which is, at bottom, the explanation for structural unemployment---which might well be what we're looking at across this transition period, a massive expansion of structural unemployment. but the fact is that the government deregulated industry, created tax incentives and otherwise collaborated with the vaporization of american jobs--this under both republican and democratic forms of neoliberalism--but it was capitalist firms that did the actual reorganizing.
but this is all obvious.
where does the idea come from that the state is driving all these problems, pan?\
like i said, i think it's empirically not the case.
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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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