Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

The Challenge Ahead
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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manufacturing fell by 0.7 million in contrast to an increase of 1.3
million under Carter. The unemployment rate in 1984 was higher than
the average for any year of the Carter Administration, and would have
been higher still had the growth in the labor force not declined. Real
wages continued their decline at a rate faster than in the Carter years
while the share of government spending in the national product rose.
Inflation dropped, with about one-third to one-half of the reduction a
result of the levelling off of petroleum prices, much of the rest
attributable to the assault on labor and the Reagan-induced recession,
which had a serious impact elsewhere as well, particularly for the
“developing countries.” The change in real disposable income during the
Reagan years was as follows, by quintiles of the population (rounded
figures): bottom quintile, -8%; second quintile, -2%, third quintile,
+1%, fourth quintile, +4%, top quintile, +8%—a striking reflection of
the policy of shifting resources from the poor to the wealthy. 38 Some
additional successes of Reagan-style Keynesianism, implemented via the
Pentagon and aimed at enriching the wealthy, are revealed by a study of
a Harvard Task force on Hunger, which estimates that 20 million
Americans are hungry, with gains of the late 1970s reversed by cuts in
federal food aid. A mayoral Task Force on Hunger estimated that close
to 900,000 Chicagoans (one in four persons) are malnourished or
undergo frequent periods of inadequate food; one Catholic shelter in
Chicago with 75 beds for women and children turned away more than
14,000 people in 1983-84. The government pointed with pride to a
drop in poverty in 1984, failing to add that according to its own
statistics, the poverty levels were higher than before the Reagan-induced
recession, in fact higher than at any time since the mid-60s. In
September 1985, the civilian unemployment rate stood at 7.3%, the
highest on record for this stage in an economic recovery. In the