At 07:10 PM 06/25/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>. I argue
>that Kuznets himself warned against applying what were some "hunches"
>about the early development of presently industrialized countries to
>currently 'developing' economies.
without those warnings, the "Kuznets hypothesis" (that rising inequality is
eventually solved by economic growth) is nothing but the trickle-down theory.
I've wondered about the view that workers "have to make a sacrifice" to
promote or save capitalism, whether it's trying to "take off" and become
developed or it's in crisis. But in the orthodox theory, isn't interest the
reward for saving, i.e., for abstinence? so shouldn't the working class be
paid interest for making sacrifices? even better, shouldn't it be given equity?
Some might argue that these sacrifices sometimes only involve relative
deprivation, not absolute deprivation. But both the take-off and economic
crises create new needs, which undermine the utility-value of "real" wages.
So what looks like merely relative sacrifice could be absolute.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
