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  Wednesday  December 4  2002    12: 22 PM

we're number 1!

Israel No. 2 in West in social inequality

Israel is now rated second in the Western world, after the United States, in terms of social gaps in income, property, capital, education and spending, as well as in the extent of poverty. While many countries have suffered from a widening of social gaps caused by the influence of globalization and the technological revolution over the past 20 years, this trend is more pronounced in Israel than elsewhere.
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Hey, Lucky Duckies!
by Paul Krugman

Carping critics of the conservative movement have been known to say that its economic program consists of little more than tax cuts, tax cuts and more tax cuts. I may even have said that myself. If so, I apologize. Emboldened by the midterm election, key conservative ideologues have now declared their support for tax increases — but only for people with low incomes.

The public debut of this idea came, as such things often do, on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. The page's editors, it seems, are upset that some low-income people pay little or nothing in income taxes. Not, mind you, because of the lost revenue, but because these "lucky duckies" — The Journal's term, not mine — might not be feeling a proper hatred for the government.
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Aron, at Aron's Israel Peace Weblog, had this to say about the above articles:

One wonders if it is mere coincidence that the two most war-mongering societies in the West are No. 1 and No. 2 when it comes to social inequality.

Of course it isn't. If the leaders in a country can find no compassion for their less fortunate tribesman, how can one expect them to show any compassion for people of a different tribe?