[Pen-l] a letter to the NYT

["Jim Devine" <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

New York TIMES / November 1, 2008

To the Editor:

Re "But Have We Learned Enough?" (Economic View, Oct. 26), which
compared the present-day financial crisis with the Great Depression
without mentioning income inequality or overproduction as factors
common to both times.

Is it pure coincidence that American levels of income inequality have
grown in the last 15 years? Or that average real American incomes
stagnated or declined as auto manufacturers spoke of overcapacity?
Doesn't a strained limit of consumer purchasing power, in addition to
lending and derivatives practices, ultimately underlie the housing
crisis?

Apparently, to answer the headline, we have not learned enough.
Perhaps it is time to reread Keynes, who understood capitalism to be
innately crisis-prone — or better yet, Marx — and look to the economic
tendencies hollowing out working-class incomes and living standards.

Christopher Phelps

Mansfield, Ohio, Oct. 26

[They published this?!?]

-- 
Jim Devine /  "Nobody told me there'd be days like these / Strange
days indeed -- most peculiar, mama." -- JL.
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