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Krugman writes: "I don't think the poor are invisible today, even though you sometimes hear assertions that they aren't really living in poverty -- hey, some of them have Xboxes! Instead, these days it's the rich who are invisible."

Paul Krugman. (photo: NYT)
Paul Krugman. (photo: NYT)


Our Invisible Rich

By Paul Krugman, The New York Times

30 September 14

 

alf a century ago, a classic essay in The New Yorker titled “Our Invisible Poor” took on the then-prevalent myth that America was an affluent society with only a few “pockets of poverty.” For many, the facts about poverty came as a revelation, and Dwight Macdonald’s article arguably did more than any other piece of advocacy to prepare the ground for Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.

I don’t think the poor are invisible today, even though you sometimes hear assertions that they aren’t really living in poverty — hey, some of them have Xboxes! Instead, these days it’s the rich who are invisible.

But wait — isn’t half our TV programming devoted to breathless portrayal of the real or imagined lifestyles of the rich and fatuous? Yes, but that’s celebrity culture, and it doesn’t mean that the public has a good sense either of who the rich are or of how much money they make. In fact, most Americans have no idea just how unequal our society has become.

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