Re: Harvey
Doug Henwood wrote:
4) In the US, homeland of neoliberalism, average incomes are almost flat at the middle of the distribution (household income for the middle quintile up 4% between 1989 and 2004 - not per year, but total - cf. top 5%, up 30%; bottom quintile, 0%). Real wages have resumed their decline, after rising in the late 1990s for the first time since 1973. If this is the best the US can do, with all its imperial advantages, what can you expect in the rest of the world?
I should add: growth in the US has been possible only with huge borrowing. That doesn’t mean that a big smashup is ahead - that’s one of the things that Leo Panitch & I took issue with Harvey on - but it does suggest some kind of eventual trouble, and also that there are real aggregate demand problems when incomes are squeezed - debt can substitute for income for a while, but if your creditors get bored or nervous, you’ve got a problem.
Doug