Food for Thought

In the New York Times, Nicholas D. Kristof writes about the politics of tax cuts, defining social class and the wealth inequality in this Opinion article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/opinion/05kristof.html

I found it interesting because he compared our system with that of Pakistan, only to find few differences. He highlights the Federal Reserve statistic showing that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans already have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent, something that was discussed in class too. The coming Presidential elections are not only a betting game to see if Obama will be a two-term president, but also a ceremony of affirmation of the Obama Administration's policies, most notably those affecting health care and the controversial "Bush Tax Cuts". Both these weighty issues have many implications on social inequality and affect a large number of Americans. As Kristof rightly states at the end, the subtle underlying issue is that of whether to adopt a neo-liberal approach to governance or maintain the regulatory measures that have been put in place following the 2008 financial crisis, and how this decision will affect our country (and its social inequality) in the future.

Another article from the Times is an intriguing one by Andrew Sorkin: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/weekinreview/15tax250copy.html

It talks about how $250,000 became the "magic number" that supposedly separates the "rich" from the "ultra rich" and the implications of choosing this number to stratify the upper parts of society. In some way, these two articles are related, and show us how politics and government intervention has a lot to do with controlling and possibly perpetuating some forms of inequality (for example, the gender and healthcare inequalities that were discussed in our guest lecture today).