Re: Re: Re: Income Inequality and Health

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bill wrote:
> I like the (Reich-type?) political 'explanation' of these issues --
> variables like income inequality roughly represent relative social power.
> Mortality rates in the US are worse than in other countries because the
> capitalist minority in the US has relatively more power to impose their
> interests on the majority. There is less social solidarity. 'Free' markets
> are unhealthy.

I wouldn't call it a "Reich-type" explanation, since it comes from the
"Harvard radicals" of the late 1960s & early 1970s (Bowles, Edwards,
Gintis, Reich, etc., who left Harvard, and Marglin, who didn't leave) who
put a lot of emphasis on divide & conquer of workers by capitalists (for
example, in their explanation of labor market segmentation). It's in Marx,
too, though he didn't emphasize it as much. (One aspect of his concept of
alienation, however, involves being divided from other human beings and
thus conquered.)

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine