Monday, April 12, 2010

"Confronting Inequality" by Paul Krugman

Nowadays, in a society with a need of feeling superior and more powerful than others we have been segregated into socioeconomic classes. I found out this essay very informative and Mr. Krugman points out facts and issues about how inequality can affect us all in our common effort of progressing as individuals and members of a very "competitive" society. I quote competitive because with respect to Mr. Krugman's statements i could infered that before individuals could make their own place in a society with regard to their effort and education", however, now, " A society with highly unequal results is, more or less inevitably, a society with highly unequal opportunities, too". "One reason to care about inequality is the straightforward matter of living standards", our society have been segregated into many social, politic, economic and religious subgroups but two main classes have divided our society into two, from my perspective, we belong either to a working class or a rich class, with inequality, in other words the middle class has basically been eliminated, rich are becoming richer and poor, emarginated. With highly unequal opportunities people with less power in this case less money are limited when having options to choose from. In the book they say, i say and from specific the article Confronting Inequality by Paul Krugman i can highlight the phrase "another way in which inequality damages us: it corrupts our politics". For me it makes a lot of sense and at the same time no sense at all in the way that if politics are corrupted by a class with more power then laws will be made or reformed to their own benefit affecting in many positive ways the rich and in negative ways the poor respectively. If politics are in charge of making laws and organizing our society to benefit the society as a whole then there is no sense in having regulations that benefit a class more than an other. Why is there an interest in the benefit just in terms of individuality and not as a whole, a society? to respond to my own question the answer is simple and mentioned before, a need of power and a feeling of superiority over others.

1 comment:

  1. Great reflections and questions. One thing I wish Krugman spent more time talking about is how a more equal society could benefit all of us in terms of being healthier, having less stress and anger and more of a sense of community.

    The quote you use that says "A society with highly unequal results is, more or less inevitably, a society with highly unequal opportunities, too". is REALLY important. What do you think he's saying there?

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