Suchergebnisse

What can be called the American standard method of reporting income inequality needs to be seen as a highly simplified treatment of a complex matter. Broad gen eralizations, particularly with regard to changes in inequality over time, are to be mistrusted. Special purpose distributions, including one on the distributional effects of a broadly con ceived system of transfers, might be more useful than the one overall distribution. The latter does not significantly help in understanding the causes of, and justifications for, existing income inequalities. It has had only limited use as a per formance indicator for the national economy and is seldom referred to when decisions about specific legislative measures that have redistributional effects are made. This may be because public concern does not focus upon overall income equality as such, but upon particular differences.

What can be called the Amer standard method of reporting income inequality needs to be seen as a highly simplified treatment of a complex matter. Broad generalizations, particularly with regard to changes in inequality over time, are to be mistrusted. Special purpose distributions, including one on the distributional effects of a broadly conceived system of transfer, might be more useful than the one overall distribution. The latter does not signif'ly help in understanding the causes of, & justifications for, existing income inequalities. It has had only limited use as a performance indicator for the nat'l economy & is seldom referred to when decisions about specific legislative measures that have redistributional effects are made. This may be because public concern does not focus upon overall income equality as such, but upon particular diff's. HA.

An analysis of Edward Banfield's, THE UNHEAVENLY CITY (see SA 1218/E6394), which attacked the secular religion of UMc Amer's, ie, those people strongly oriented to the future & to the world outside themselves, who willingly assume guilt for soc troubles they perceive, esp the existence of poverty & racial inequality. They seek to expiate their own guilt feelings by ill-considered acts which are valued not as remedies for problems but as redeeming acts of commitment. The secular religion leads to the acceptance of false indications that problems such as poverty & racial inequality are getting worse & reaching crisis proportions, but the most serious excess is to blithely assert that we can do anything we want to in the soc realm, & to deny that sometimes all we can do is deal with a few intermediate causal factors. Banfield calls for 'moral realism,' which means taking account of the consequences of how one formulates problems, determines causes, & selects remedies for them. Banfield is criticized for overemphasizing the constraint on policy choices which arises out of the existence of a Lc, ie, a group of people who are radically presentoriented & who are psychol'ly unable but his basic point, that policy choices must be constrained to the real world, & the programs he suggests, must be seriously considered. M. Duke.