Volume 39, Number 19 · November 19, 1992
The Deficit: A Way Out
By Robert L. Heilbroner
The US is now suffering from a 'contained' depression. It is visibly present in the social pathologies surrounding us, which are particularly pervasive in our disintegrating cities, and less visibly present in the decade-long decline of real incomes of all families, save those at the very top. At least 60 percent and as much as 70 percent of the increase in national wealth during the Reagan years went to the richest 1 percent of families; the incomes of the approximately 70 million families that make up the lower four fifths declined. The depression has been contained only because the economy has deposit insurance, social security, and unemployment benefits. Without these safeguards we would be in an uncontained fall similar to that of the 1930s—not simply worried over a rise in unemployment to 7.5 percent of the labor force, but in despair over a rise in unemployment to 25 percent.
Feature, 2444 words
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