The speaker will probably surprise you, since he's not exactly famous for saying things like this. It's none other than Milton Friedman.

I was also recently surprised in two ways: by Milton Friedman, and then, by his wife. Milton is against the war in Iraq and views it as pure aggression; his wife is of the view that it was a necessary war in a changed world, and that freeing Iraqis from Saddam was well worth supporting. I think I read it in the Wall Street Journal last week.

Ah-here it was. Tunku Varadarajan (I simply love his name) was their interlocutor.

Without reading further I can say that there are lots of anti-capitalist measures which the government undertakes that creates this widening. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of a state which intervenes in an economy is that it tends to pit people once against another.

Of course, if one does read the piece one will note that the comments were made in reference to his call for privatizing education. In other words, public schools suck and that lays the ground for divisions in society where muscle jobs go where the labor is cheapest.

Thank you.

I always refuse to have this debate on this type of ground- it cedes the assumption that there is something inherintly wrong with a wealth gap, even an enormous one. Although that is a tenant of the left, it is a moral assumption akin to religion. Logically the guy cutting grass isnt affected one way or another by how many billions Bill Gates has, aside from the jobs a Gates's wealth generates to benefit him. The only impact is psychological. In other words the entire argument is based on jealousy, and i am deeply uncomfortable with policy based on the basest of human emotions. Particularly when from a pragmatic point of view wealth generation most certainly lifts all ships.

In other words, viewing the working poor by comparing them to the megarich is purely emotional. Looking at them in comparison to their lot in life in the past and compared to the rest of the world is simply logical, but is rarely done. To even begin to compare Americas poor, the vast majority of whom have homes, cars, X-boxes, and airconditioning, to the 3rd world is just absurd. America's lower classes have an obesity epidemic, see how sympathetic Ugandas poor are to that comparison. Ironically, the smallest rich poor gap you will ever see is in the most backwards of subsistance tribal societies. Combined with their adoration of 'green' living, maybe this is indeed the Lefts preferred living condition... for the rest of us of course, never for themselves.

We shall not be willing to see a group of our population move into Third World conditions.

What is this supposed to mean? Who is "our population"? An illegal immigrant moves to this country to escape Third World conditions. Move them back? Don't move them?

Or are we talking about the population of native born, high school drop outs, whose wages are harmed by competition from illegal immigrants (3% to 8%). How about education reform?

Having gone back and read the Friedman piece at Catallacy, I think Friedman would not agree with the immigration analogy being used here.

He's pointing out that capitol wants cheap labor and that revolutions in communication and transportation have made it easy for capitol to hook up with third world labor. He's predicting that low-end labor in this country will be forced either literally or figuratively into the third world.* He identifies two solutions: (1) protectionism which he disdains and is clearly trying to head-off, or (2) a drastically improved educational system which improves the quality of our labor force.

If these are the choices, then the economic argument against illegal immigration is simply a distraction which will not ultimately help the high school dropout.

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*Note: If low-end labor will literally move to the third world, then we won't have an immigration problem, but an emmigration problem.

MB: "Looking at them in comparison to their lot in life in the past and compared to the rest of the world is simply logical, but is rarely done."

When my grandfather returned from the war, he bought a 3/2 house downtown and supported a wife and two daughters as a barber and sometime painter.

I wonder how well that works these days?

Could it be that the lot of the working poor in America - which is, as you point out, much better than that in the developing world - could be getting worse?

(It's not like they can flee to Mexico for free health care and a job.)

And if so, I wonder what illegal immigration conributes to the situation? What would be a rational policy in the face of an increasing divide between the rich and the poor?

Lectures on the evils of envy?

Geeze.

"When my grandfather returned from the war, he bought a 3/2 house downtown and supported a wife and two daughters as a barber and sometime painter."

And my grandad was an HVAC guy and lived in a 2 bedroom 1 bath with my grandma, dad, and aunt in a lousy neighborhood (still does). Average HVAC salary in illinois today is 54k a year, no college degree, great benefits. More than I make with a white collar and college degree.

Its easy to play the anecdote game. But the statistics say more Americans own their own homes (68%), own a car(89%), invested in the stock market (55%) than ever before.

In living memory, the 1930s, more than half of Americans didnt have cars, telephones, or refrigerators. Nearly every American (even the vast majority of those below the poverty line) have those now.
Even in 1950, 1/3 of Americans didnt have a complete plumming, the vast majority didnt have AC. If anything its the things taken for granted that have changed.

In the bottom 20% the buying power adjusted income is above the buying power adjusted per capita income of that notorious third word country Sweden. 90% of the bottom 20% families own cars. Better than 90% have microwaves. etc. etc etc.

The streets of America are still (as they said in 1900) paved with gold.

I read some where (if my memory serves) that 70% of third generation hispanics speak no Spanish. Anecdote: we have a 3rd generation Mexican friend. My Spanish (beans and bus tickets - i.e. travelers Spanish) is better than his.

Joe,

Winds of Change would be a much better blog if you would post more often. What's up?

"If the widening of the wage differential is allowed to proceed unchecked, it threatens to create within our own country a social problem of major proportions. We shall not be willing to see a group of our population move into Third World conditions at the same time that another group of our population becomes increasingly well off."

The differential may be increasing but the excerpt quoted does not make the case that the standard of living of low wage workers is going down. He has to show that to argue they are decending into 3rd world conditions.

That immigrants legal or otherwise come here from thrid world countries just proves that the low wage earners here are much better off than in such countries.

There will always be people in society who are happy living on a small income. I know because I am one. To my way of thinking the people who are working 60-70 hours per week, spending many hours per week commuting, and who are cronically sleep deprived so they can have a big house and a big SUV are deranged. I don't mind if their greed drives up my equity investments but I wish they would all just calm down a little and stop yelling curses at me because I don't drive faster than the speed limit. The important things in life are your relationships with your family and friends and these work out a lot better when they're based on spending time together rather than when they are organized around material attainments.

Sociological research has shown that more money doesn't make people happier. This also implies that less money doesn't make them less happy. If our culture was more concerned with values like love, kindness, respect, forgiveness, tolerance, rather than the values of peoples net worth, society would be a much better off. The problems in our society will not be solved with money but by changing the values that our society admires. These values are taught by example and it is to society's detriment that our role models, actors, tv and movie characters, musicians, atheletes, politicians, do not set very good examples.

It is not suprising that so many people can't recognize that this country is at war with Islamists. Without understanding our own culture we assume all cultures are alike. We never think about our own values or how they affect us, so we can't recognize that another culture with different values might be threatening us.