Mr Khan said:
Kasz216 said:
Mr Khan said:
Economic inequality is the single greatest determining factor for or against democracy. A society united in poverty (as in the middle phases of the Soviet Union) is going to oppose democracy, and a society with high inequality is necessarily going to have class antagonism
Marx had the right idea in that class warfare is what drives the political changes in countries, but this comes from alienation between the classes and always leads to a non-democratic alternative. Democracy only functions when there is low tension between classes, which only works with relatively low inequality (though not super-low, as that indicates a general lack of economic activity)
Hence with the swing of inequality exacerbated by the economic crisis causing lowered support for democracy. How do you think it happened inbetween the World Wars? |
Except Economic inequality decreased during the economic crisis... and in reality is lower then 1994... and really europe hasn't had much of a gini coefficent even in the terms household.
See Individual Gini coefficent vs household/family gini coefficents to see the "lie" in the statistics.
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=137687&page=1#12
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But household inequality is up, and this increases differential class consciousness, which in turn increases alienation
The key to economic analysis of politics is how economics breeds perceptions. If people perceive greater inequality, that is how they will act
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Part of that was the second part of my post i didn't have time to write... however i wouldn't argue that it's nessisarily perceived greater inequality, so much as it is backwords growth in ones wallet breeds jealousy. I think most people realize the rich have lost more percentage wise.
Didn't post that part cause I was in a hurry and jealousy is a particularly loaded term, can't really think of another term though.
When your moving backwords your much more sensitive about the things you don't have that others do, even when they are also moving backwords.
