After watching a TV report on poverty among blacks in an American city, a relative of mine reacted with irritation. Take those studies, books, op-ed pieces, and speeches lecturing us with statistics on how much better things are these days than they used to be, not just for us in the United States but also for people almost everywhere. No, says Economist Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Michel Chossudovosky, professor of economics at the University of Ottawa, and author of The Globalization of Poverty, agrees . But, anyway, between us, let's pretend that those glowing analyses are actually true.
Serious questions remain nevertheless.
Some modern parents or grandparents like to lecture their demanding offspring about the contrast between the soft life they have and how hard it used to be for the young of decades gone by. When a grandson of mine gets ice cream any time he wants it, I can't help remembering that for my sisters and me, as kids, ice cream was a special treat only on Sundays, if then. But I don't bring that up. The same point applies to issues beyond the consumption of ice cream. It is quite a reach to hark back to olden days in order to bolster a weak argument.