It Didn't Just Happen

https://portside.org/2017-12-18/it-didnt-just-happen
Portside Date:
Author: Economist Dean Baker
Date of source:
Truthout

'In his speech on inequality earlier this month President Obama proclaimed that the government could not be a bystander in the effort to reduce inequality, which he described as the defining moral issue of our time. This left millions convinced that Obama would do nothing to lessen inequality.

'The problem is that President Obama wants the public to believe that inequality is something that just happened. It turns out that the forces of technology, globalization, and whatever else simply made some people very rich and left others working for low wages or out of work altogether. The president and other like-minded people feel a moral compulsion to reverse the resulting inequality. This story is 180 degrees at odds with the reality. Inequality did not just happen, it was deliberately engineered through a whole range of policies intended to redistribute income upward.'


Source URL: https://portside.org/2017-12-18/it-didnt-just-happen