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Angus Deaton on inequality: ‘The war on poverty has become a war on the poor’
(www.theguardian.com)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Scottish-born winner of the 2015 Nobel prize for economics struggled at first to understand why there was so little interest in a subject most European economists regarded as a central concern of post-war policies to reduce poverty and build more equitable societies.
Deaton persevered, building a reputation as a contrarian for scrutinising the prevailing orthodoxy that an unfettered free market would deliver greater economic equality and individual liberty, and that government intervention and regulation would undermine both.
The result, said Deaton, is a predatory brand of capitalism in the US that enriches corporations and the wealthy at the expense of working people, deepens inequality of wealth and opportunity, and – although many Americans will deny it – is fuelling the rise of a class system.
Deaton is now a US citizen married to an equally renowned economist, Anne Case, who coined the term “deaths of despair” to describe the rising mortality rate among white, middle-aged Americans driven by drugs, alcohol and suicide, a unique phenomenon in wealthy countries.
Deaton and Case then wrote a bestselling book, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, highlighting the part played in reducing life expectancy by the US economic system, not least its lamentable health industry in killing staggering numbers of patients while making Americans poorer.
He points to president Lyndon B Johnson’s 1964 “war on poverty” legislation pulling families back from the breadline and improving lives with food stamps, housing assistance, and federal health care for the poor and elderly among other programmes.
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